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It seems luck is on my side as Meher looks at the black beaded bracelet on her wrist with an unreadable expression. I don’t want her to ever take it off her wrist, and it seems like she agrees with me for now.
Vishnu appears visibly irritated by the tracker’s revelation but doesn’t push Meher further to remove the bracelet from her hand. Instead, he watches her closely, seemingly trying to decipher her emotions. I can’t help but wonder why he’s so invested in this. Can’t he see Meher’s love for me? My suspicions towards him increase manifold. Given his unwavering loyalty to Pratap Walia, it’s unlikely he’ll support our relationship. To avoid any further interference, I decide it’s best not to continue our discussions with Vishnu around.
Krish reads the sensitivity of the situation, and knowing I’m dying to talk to Meher in private, he jumps in to help.
“Vishnu, I don’t think Meher is in a state to talk to the cops yet. I think we should go and brief the cops about what happened here. So, shall we?” Krish says.
Vishnu glances at Meher before agreeing to this. He and Krish leave us alone. I try to pull Meher to me the moment they are gone, but she resists my touch.
“Meher, I’m sorry. I know I’ve hurt you deeply, and I admit that I acted irrationally. But please try to see things from my perspective as well. So much had happened that day in Dalhousie. I woke up that morning to find you gone. I felt lost and confused when our affair and pics were splashed across the media, and our plan to find evidence from Rima’s phone had also failed. Vishnu and Aksh added to my confusion by feeding me lies about you, and I didn’t know whom to trust. The day we met again at the NEP party office, your father was about to speak to the press, and you stood beside him in support. That somehow confirmed my suspicions that you were probably always by their side, never mine. In fact, youarestill supporting him.”
“Then what was I supposed to do?” she yells. “Vishnu dragged me back from Dalhousie that very morning when the scandal broke out. I was as shocked to see Vishnu there as you were.”
My heart beats rapidly as Meher continues to share her side of the story.
“Vishnu and I had a conversation long ago, even before I proposed to you. It was when my father had arranged my marriage with Niraj, and I felt trapped and unhappy. Vishnu suggested the only way I could make Niraj and his family back off from the alliance was by dating someone else and creating a scandal in the media. Obviously, he didn’t mean it. He was only trying to gauge if I would compromise my values for my independence. However, I immediately rejected his idea, and that conversation came to an end.”
I clench my jaw at this new revelation. Tears roll down her eyes as she continues.
“When Vishnu saw us living together in that chalet in Dalhousie, he realised that our relationship had progressed to a stage where my father would never approve of it. He knew that it was necessary to put an end to our relationship, so he resorted to lying to you in Dalhousie, referencing the scandal chat we had in the past.”
Damn hell! How could I not know that he was lying that day? All of this mess could have been averted. At least I wouldn’t have hurt Meher.
“I was going to tell you all this when we met again during that press conference. But you remember what you did, right?” Meher inquires, reaching for me and tightly gripping my t-shirt. “You grabbed my neck and accused me of deceiving you.”
She looks into my eyes, showing me the magnitude of my sins.
“At first, I thought you were angry as I was supporting my Dad, defending his innocence regarding your father’s accident. However, during our meeting at the café, you voiced your suspicions about my connection with Aksh bhai and Vishnu and falsely concluded that I never exchanged Rima’s phone, which wasn’t true. I realised that no matter what I said, you wouldn’t trust me without concrete evidence. I felt hurt, Ayaan. Hurt thatyou, above all others, required proof to believe in me.”
I hate her crying; I always have. So, I again try to gently wipe away her tears, and this time, she doesn’t resist. It’s all so overwhelming. Gosh, I want to take her home…my home and never let her leave.
After a few moments, Meher collects herself and steps back from me to continue sharing the rest of her story.
“I placed my trust in Vishnu and asked him to locate Raj’s whereabouts. Only he knew I had swapped the phones and given him Rima’s device to hack. I had a feeling that he had lied to both you and Krish, and I was determined to find out why and on whose orders. It took us weeks, but we finally located him. And when we confronted Raj yesterday, everything became crystal clear. Aksh bhai was the mastermind behind all of this. He discovered our affair by overhearing our phone conversation the night we planned to go to Dalhousie. From that point onwards, he devised a plan to achieve two objectives—expose our affair to the media, tarnish my father’s reputation, and deceive you by fabricating the story that I was siding with my family and withholding the evidence from Rima’s phone, ultimately leading to the breakup of our relationship.”
My jaw hardens. Aksh had really played a masterstroke here. Meher comes ahead and punches my chest gently with fresh tears.
“I gave myself to you, Ayaan. Heart, body, and soul. I am not the kind of a girl who would sleep with a man for some ulterior motive and then walk away. I genuinely loved you. How could you not see that? Love comes with trust, and you didn’t have the courage to trust the woman who was ready to give up her everything for you.”
F*ck! I had messed it bad. I try to grip her arms and pull her to me to soothe her pain, but Meher shrugs off my hands, not letting me touch her anymore. She is too hurt and too determined not to forgive me.My fault!This is all my fault!
“You never truly loved me,” she retorts sharply. “If your love was genuine, you wouldn’t have doubted me. Regardless of what it looks like, you wouldn’t have demanded proof of my loyalty. You never even asked for my side of the story before accusing me of betraying you. Since you convicted me without hearing my side, there was no point in me defending myself anymore. So, I decided never to clarify your doubts about my innocence and that you were intelligent enough to discover the truth on your own.”
F*ck. My intuitions that I’m so proud of could not see Meher’s innocence. I want to go back in time and reverse it all.
Suddenly Meher’s gaze falls upon the fresh bruise on my arm, where the assailant had pierced the knife earlier. She quickly tears a piece of her dupatta and bandages the open wound. I don’t even feel that pain anymore after realising the level of pain I have inflicted upon Meher. I wonder how she must have handled facing her family, taking their anger and emotional torture after she returned from Dalhousie. Now that I know her side, I can feel the enormous pressure on her mind and heart to tackle everything alone. My Queen didn’t give up. The fighter that she is, she stood strong, despite the King’s distrust in her and wrote her own destiny in this maze of love and politics.
Once she is done bandaging my wound, she looks into my eyes again, this time not painfully but with determination. As if she has decided that she is not going to give me a chance to make things right between us.
“Thanks for coming here and saving my life today, Ayaan.”
“I told you, I protect what belongs to me. Andyoubelong to me, Meher.”
She outright denies it, shaking her head. “Sadly, I don’t trust that anymore. I don’t want to belong to someone whose trust wavers at every nook and corner of the maze. Our family’s political enmity is here to stay, which means you’ll never stop accusing my father and trying to bring him down. And I can never give up standing and supporting him as a family. Given this scenario, I know there will be many instances in the future when your trust in me will falter again, and I don’t think I’m ready to face that kind of challenge again. I can no longer sustain treading the treacherous path of this maze. I’m done.”
“What do you mean?” I ask, trying to understand where this conversation is heading.
Meher takes a deep breath before looking calmly into my eyes.
