Beginning of The End

XXIV

"And all this time-" Ritika took in a sharp breath and gripped the table to balance herself, "-I held it against Virat that he never told us anything before leaving."

Mahi bhai nodded his head with a painful expression as he saw Ritika sit on the chair, hiding her face in her palms as she processed everything he had told her in the past few minutes.

"How come he never told me anything?" She whispered with regret, her mind going haywire with all the possible scenarios where she could have stopped Virat. 

If she knew what Anushka had been going through, she could have been there for her. If she knew the reason for his break was so severe, then maybe she could have helped him somehow. If only Virat had talked to her once.

If only she had talked to him once, Ritika corrected herself bitterly.

"I suppose," Ritika looked up at his voice, "He never dared to. The things we said, I don't know, they weren't exactly that easy to forget." Mahi bhai started in a low voice, deeply laced with guilt as his words came back to him.

"They weren't that bad bhai. If he wanted to, he would have called us a second time." Rohit forced the words out, feeling the bitterness claw at his throat. His feelings from all those months where he had stayed up blaming Virat for never coming back rushed into his heart.

He looked up at Mahi bhai, his eyes shining with desperation. "Isn't that what friends do?" He spat out distastefully, remembering all those nights when he had stayed up reading articles about them.

He remembered every word from those newspaper headlines accusing them of turning Virat away from the game. Reporters who wrote endlessly about their supposed rift, about how Rohit had never provided Virat the support that he needed in a difficult phase of life.

All of which could have been avoided if Virat had just let them know about everything once. Rohit shook his head in disappointment, hurt spreading through his chest as he recalled the unfortunate events.

"Exactly, Rohit." Ritika raised her head to glare at him, startling both the men. "Isn't that what friends do? Try a second time?" She stood up shakily and shook her head.

Mahi bhai looked dumbfounded at his words, even a little exhausted. He didn't know if he had any answers to Rohit's questions anymore. Not when the answers were right in front of him and he refused to acknowledge them.

He understood his hurt in the initial phase of Virat's return, maybe because he had shouldered it equally. He understood why it would be so much easier to blame Virat for everything and move on with their own concise guarded from any blame at all.

But now, after having all the reasons presented before them, as clear as crystals in daylight, Mahi bhai could not understand why Rohit would still choose to carry those feelings with him.

"Not even a second time, friends don't give up at all." Rohit frowned at his wife's words, her expressions which seemed to be blaming him for something unknown.

"Why are you talking to me as if I didn't try to mend things Rits?" Rohit said in a small voice because after experiencing such harsh words from someone who was supposedly a brother to him, he had hoped for some support from his wife at least.

Bunty's words were still ringing in his head, the way he held Virat's daughter like a glass doll, cradling her to his chest as he walked away from them all like their mere presence would be poison to her.

He tried to shake the memory away and focused on his wife who scoffed in disbelief, "I called him that day, you know I did." He reminded her in a pointed voice. "I asked him what was wrong with him. If only he had told me what was going on, things wouldn't have been this way."