Unkept Promises

Her vile intentions

Avantika's POV

"Bye momma. Aaru will miss you."

I pecked his forehead while he was tucked within my arms. As I had told Abhiram yesterday, I made an excuse of some really important work and promised Aaru an entire day of baby-momma outing. He seemed quite reluctant to travel without me to visit his grandparents since that had never happened, but then this had to be done.

After all, as Abhiram had pointed out, they did not want me in their happiness. His words had hurt so much, it felt as though we had never been. As though 'us' had never existed. Was it really so simple for him to disregard it all?

But I just did not understand what was the matter with him today. Since the morning, it felt as if he wanted to speak with me, the first in these six months. In fact, yesterday night when I returned home, I found him sprawled on the living room couch as though he had been waiting for me. I do not know what to make of this. Prior to Kinjal's venomous plotting, whenever either of us would be late from office, the other person would wait on the living room couch, it was our cute little tradition. We would tuck Aaru in and wait for each other. But seeing him here after such a long time perplexed me.

What's more is, I have been feeling his eyes on me since the morning. Even when we were in the kitchen putting together some snacks for Aaru in case he would require them, I constantly felt his gaze on me. It even seemed that he tried to speak with me, but I had learnt my lesson of not looking into things too much. He wanted to be a stranger or more like just a co-parent for our Aaru, he had iterated that many times and now I would be a fool to not follow it.

"Avi can I please speak with you?", the softest tone that I have heard since a long time. I averted my eyes from Aaru to see my husband gazing at me with compassion and confusion in his eyes? I do not know. But Avi, which Avi, I wanted to ask.

"Avantika", I replied instead steeling my gaze which had managed to soften for a miniscule moment.

He was about to open his mouth to speak more, to argue, I am not sure, but we were disturbed by my shrill ring tone.

"Baby, momma has to attend a phone. Go to dadda.", pecking my little boy once again on his forehead, I put him near Abhiram and giving one last glance at his seemingly unsure self, I sauntered off towards the kitchen to pick my phone. Must be Rahul. We had decided to meet today to discuss the argument we had decided for a double murder case. It wasn't some urgent work as I had to lie to Aaru, but nonetheless since I had time, I decided to get it done. I had been used to such types of cases in all these years, but here the opponent wanted to plead insanity. Now this was quite rare when it came to murder cases in the country, but it would be interesting to see what they actually would present in the court.

I was quite thankful for this phone call since it would help me avoid whatever conversation Abhiram wanted to have with me. I have had enough of him running away from me whenever I would initiate a talk and now, especially after his very cruel words yesterday and many times before yesterday, I wanted nothing to do with him.

"Momma, bye.", I heard them coming into the kitchen while I was still on the call.

"Rahul, ek minute ruk.", I put the call on hold.

(Rahul, wait for a minute)

"Bye momma's little boy. Take care. And only trouble dadda, no one else, hmm?", I bade him goodbye completely ignoring Abhiram's attempt to do the same.

Pata nahi, achanak se ise kya hua hai?

(I don't know what has happened to him all of a sudden)

I resumed my call with Rahul.