Together Till Forever || A MaNan Fanfiction

9| Crossroads

Warning: A slow placed but crappy written chapter ahead😅😅

Shower your love guys ❤️

***
|| You need to feel the pain
as much as you feel love ||

🔹🔹🔹

"Let's leave it behind Nandini. Let all these things remain in the past. Let's start again", Manik smiled his trademark pearly smile at her, forwarding his hand for her to take. Her breathe hitched as she saw him, all smiling like this after god knows how many hours. Excruciatingly remorseful hours of pain.

With scrunched brows and eyes still in trance, Nandini was in no situation to reciprocate or contemplate even one word that Manik had said. It all had felt too surreal, almost unreal, thinking all this will be gone soon. Yet, it felt so right. As if it was the best thing to do.

Finally after having a moment to herself, when she was really ready to give into Manik's appeal, she heard a faint sound of someone calling. Just the voice coming with no source or body. Just someone calling her, lurking her into a trap and she went with it, either her limbs took her there. Notwithstanding her heart, which refused to leave Manik.

When that sound became undeniable, only then did Nandini open her eyes to see an elderly lady softly calling out her name, "Chote baba ne chai bhijwayi hai aapki". Nandini looked on with her stupor. Her senses as well as mind did not take the transmission properly. "Manik?", she asked clueless regarding his disappearance. "Ma'am chote baba living room mein hai", she replied to her meek query and was gone sooner.

Nandini evaluated her surroundings, realising at last that she was in Manik's bed, in his bedroom, neatly tucked. 'Didn't I sleep on the couch?', she questioned herself for she vividly remembered dozing off on the couch in the living room on Manik's floor. When she had come up last night, she was met with one of the greatest shocks of her lifetime. Manik Malhotra locking his bedroom door was news, not a positive one if you see.

It was sure that Manik brought her here. But this was not what she wanted to know. Did he sleep beside her was the bigger question? The perfectly made bed of her opposite side however told the opposite tale. "Ahh!!", Nandini groaned. First that weird dream that meant something and now this, what a morning it was to kick off things with.

The only ray of light in that morning was the hot tea that was kept on the side cup. How desperately Nandini need some good chai in her system to restart it and get it running. She whiffed, inhaling the familiar scent of freshly strained tea leaves and ginger. By taking just one sip, she knew who made it. Can she ever not recognise the taste? She was 200 percent sure that it was Manik's special tea, that he made for her initially and got her all addicted to it. The perfect amount of sugar mixed with perfect amount of tea and ginger, made it the shining light in her misery.

The soothing tea, gave her energy to fight the rest of the day. If she had to meet Manik, she needed to get ready within one hour, or else Manik will leave for sure. She anyway did not have time to waste. Payal had already sent her the schedule for today and it was indeed tight. Moreover, she had a relationship to sort out too.

Nandini didn't linger on the bed for long and was soon up and running whilst keeping an eye for Manik too, even when in her heart she knew he would have left to have breakfast. Just Manik and his ways of showing anger.

~•~

Nandini moved out of the elevator and strode towards the main living area of the Mansion, fixing her watch on her hands and trying to imitate a conversation between her and Manik, in her mind.