Loving You

Chapter 9

I stared at him. My head was buzzing with questions.

Why hadn't he said anything before? Why did he keep quiet? Was it because he had nothing to say back to me in return? Because he could never return my feelings?

I felt my eyes prick. I knew I would cry if I kept looking at him.

May be he knew it as well, because he looked away.

I still couldn't.

With a shaky voice I asked, "How? ...When?"

He remained quiet.

"Sahil, please...please, tell me."

He sighed and looked at me, "When you went to Delhi to get your visa done."

"Who...who told you?"

"Your Maa," he looked away from me, focusing on the city lights that were shining far away.

Maa. Maa had let my secret out. I couldn't blame her. Not anymore. I couldn't even be angry at her.

I remembered how emotional she had become when I went with Papa to Delhi for that visa. But I was hurting. Hurting so badly that she never stopped me.

I looked at Sahil. He had known it all along.

He had known about my feelings when I was avoiding his eye, trying my best not to let them out.

He had known it all, when I was staying away from his those last few days, scared that he would ask me not to go. Scared that I would agree with him. Scared that I would have to see him with Kiara.

He had known that the scholarship opportunity had been a lie.

He had probably known that I would not come back soon.

He had known.

And yet he had never stopped me. He let me go.

"Why?...why didn't you say anything before?" It wasn't the question I wanted to ask. But even now after all these years, my heart was scared of hearing the truth that I already knew. Truth that his actions had already proven: he never loved me.

"Why didn't you?" He asked quietly, "'I thought...I had always thought that you told me everything."

"Some things are not easy to say..."

"Are they?" He was so soft that I probably wouldn't have heard it if it weren't for the stillness of the night, "Everyone else knew..."

I felt a tear trickle down my cheek.

The distance between us felt like it was miles and not the couple of feet that it really was.

"Would it have made any difference if I had told you?" A sob escaped me despite trying my best to hold it in.

He went silent. He didn't have an answer for me.

"Would it have?" I questioned loudly. I was feeling angry. I was feeling helpless. But more than that I felt broken.

"Let go off it. It is the past."

I took a shaky breath knowing that it wouldn't help. It wouldn't stop the tears that were already flowing down my cheeks. 

Past. It is the past.