Rekindled | ✓

Chapter 28. Let you be on your own?

🎶 1 step forward, 3 steps back

Published on 02.01.2023

❝ it's always one step forward and three steps back,
do you love me, want me, hate me,
boy, i don't understand. ❞

🥀

"Inaaya, your admission in Cambridge," Kartik tightens his hold around her shoulder, his tone murky. "Your admission was done by Ayansh."

Her face blanked for a moment before she felt a jolt as the words registered in her brain. She looked between the two, unable to believe the piece of information. "No," she murmured, feeling suffocated, her vision glassy.

Ayansh tried to explain. "Inaaya, listen- "

"I thought I got there on my own merit," she croaked out with difficulty, her voice barely above a whisper.

"You did!" Ayansh asserted and took a step forward when she instinctively winced, pushing herself closer to her brother. A fresh pang of hurt was felt by Ayansh as he tried to control the situation. "You got there by your own merit; you gave the exam, you passed with good marks, you got the scholarship."

"I- I'm not able to understand anything. What's- what's happening?" She inquired, stumbling upon her words like a scared child.

"Inu," his brother called out softly, freeing her from the cage of his arm and looking at him intently. "Remember the email?" She nodded frantically, remembering the confirmation mail that she had got asking her if she really wanted to opt out of the exam since she hadn't filled the second form and the deadline had passed. "Ayansh had requested them to send it to you. He was the one who talked to them and managed to convince them with the help of Mr. Stevens."

Her mind tried to wrap itself around the revelation.

Lie. Another lie. Is her life all about it? Getting out of one world manipulated by lies just to be pushed into another for years?

Her eyes snapped to her brother, an unreadable emotion swirling in them. "You knew?"

Kartik clenched his jaw and nodded stiffly as Ayansh looked away in helplessness.

"Since when?"

Kartik shared a look with Ayansh before he reluctantly said the truth. "Even before you."

She froze, every nerve in her body seemed to have stopped functioning for that one specific second. Everything came crashing down upon her and the next moment, she found herself chuckling at the situation or maybe that laugh was directed at herself for getting played by once again. "Et tu, Brute?"

"Inu, I can explain- "

"You knew and you didn't tell me," she laughed through her tears.

"Don't get me wrong, Inu- "

"You knew all this while and still you decided to never tell me." She chuckled through her pain.

"Inu- "

"You knew and you didn't stop him," sbe accused, a whimper leaving past her lips. "You knew yet you allowed it to happen knowing very well that I wanted to forget his bloody existence. How could you let him do it? How could you hide it from me? How could you allow him to decide for me- "

"Yes, I did because I was the one who asked him to stay away from you!" Kartik snapped, spilling the truth, making her mind go numb, making her thoughts to come to a standstill, making her breath get caught in her throat.

"What- what do you mean?" She asked in dread, her voice breaking and her eyes slowly going to Ayansh who bit the inside of his cheek and blinked looking above to not let tears escape his eyes.