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The couple in front of them looked at Jiya.
“Are you with her?” Pavan asked, behaving as if he had all the right to ask him personal questions.
“I saw them together outside earlier…” Nandini smirked. “You have good taste, just like your father. After all, you are Vaibhav’s son—his flesh and blood. You are bound to be exactly like him.”
His heart raged. Molten anger rolled through him.You are bound to be exactly like him.
Pavan extended his hand to Jiya. “Hello. I’m Pavan Grewal, and this is my wife, Nandini.”
Jiya took a step forward, but Rohan pulled her back, refusing to allow her to be tainted by these people. Her forehead wrinkled.
And before the other couple could utter a word to stop them, he tugged out of the hotel and into his waiting Jaguar.
The driver quickly whisked them off to his office building, and within moments, they were seated inside his chopper and were airborne.
“What’s wrong, Rohan?” Jiya asked through the headphones.
He couldn’t reply. His mind had been rioting with images of the past ever since he’d laid eyes on that woman. He’d kept them at bay then. He’d kept them at bay for years, refusing to think of that traumatic time of his life, but now he had lost the battle with himself. His tightly-held control on his mind snapped. Images flooded in his mind’s eye. His ears echoed with sounds that he hadn’t remembered in so long now. Everything came speeding back.
Loud music filtering in his bedroom as he tried to sleep as a little kid…
His parents and their friends creating a ruckus late into the night…
A little him walking out in the middle of the night, searching for his parents… When he finally saw them, his mother instructed a servant to take him away to his room.
Another party going on at home…
A maid sitting with him throughout the nights till he was old enough to ensure he didn’t step out and bother his parents…
Him waking up to the staff informing him that his parents had gone on a sudden trip…without him…again…
Nandini at home with his mother during the afternoon, and them leaving together for some lunch or tea event...
Nandini and Pavan having dinner with his parents before they all left for a party together…
Him spending all meals alone with only staff for company…
His father and mother returning home sloshed…
A strange man in his room…
He wanted to throw up. More such instances from the past flooded his brain. He’d grown older, and still, the same routine had continued—the endless parties, his lonely meal times, the staff watching over him, the forced playdates with kids he never wanted to be with, the foreign holidays where his parents had no time for him.
While most kids became wild and rebellious because of the lack of attention from their parents, he, on the other hand, had withdrawn into a shell. By the time he was fifteen, he’d become too quiet, too serious, too studious, and too…alone.
All those loud parties, the music, the people—all of it had become trigger points to his anxiety, something he suffered till date. When he was young, he hadn’t understood what that meant. He hadn’t understood why his heart rate was accelerating. He used to hide in his room and put noise cancellation head phones to silence out the blare. It had helped him then. But it hadn’t cured him. He suffered this affliction till date. He was so broken.
But that was not all. One night, he’d left his room, and he’d caught… And then the fights between his parents began. Each one worse than the previous. Fuck. Even thinking about that made him feel hollow. The memories were gutting him from the inside.
“Rohan…Rohan...” Jiya shook his arm. “I’m worried. What’s wrong?”
“I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine,” she said.
“I said, I am fine.”
“Who were those people? Why did they affect you so much?”
