He didn’t.
Amaal got up and sprinted to him, catching his elbow before he reached for the door handle.
“Samar.”
‘What?” His head turned over his shoulder.
“Don’t snap at me!” She barked. His eyes softened.
“Amaal, you do not deserve this rage inside me. Don’t offer to collect it.”
“I am offering you a seat and water.”
He stared at her for a long moment. Then sighed.
They went to the sitting area across from her table. He took the seat at the centre of the long sofa, and she sat on the lone armchair, a distance ripe between them.
“Water?”
“I’m good.”
They sat in silence then. Minutes passed. She had work to do. She had a long night. He had to go do whatever he had come here to do. But it didn’t matter right now. They were sharing the same air after seven months, after that miserable day when he had told her what he had done. Her first instinct had been to run away from him. All she had seen in him that moment was a monster who had given a woman knowingly into another monster’s hand. All aspects of the Samar she had known had vanished in a split second. And then he had pressed his car key into her hand and walked himself.
It had still taken her a long time to reconcile those two facets. To trust that the one she had known was real, too. His rant just now had… shockingly reiterated that the man she had known had not been an illusion.
“Do you regret it?”
“What?”
“What you did to Iram?”
“Every day,” he deadpanned, eyes on the glass of the coffee table. A second ticked, and he said — “I did not do it because I did not like her.”
Her jaw clicked. Samar’s eyes rose to her, and she held his gaze.
“It was on the night of the blast of Leh rally. Atharva was losing it in front of my eyes and I thought… I now see in hindsight how selective my mind became that I believed Sufiyaan Sheikh’s rant about Iram being his sister, belonging to their fathers’ party. But in that moment, I was blinded with anger and helpless seeing Atharva brawl with the Police. He was on a mission to destroy himself and our party for her. When I got to know that Atharva was leaving her alone in Leh, I passed on that information, thinking it might work for us. I wanted to show him that Aamir Haider’s daughter would turn in a minute if she got to go back to her father’s party.”
“That is sick,” she said, and his eyelids dropped. A bitter smile crunched on his mouth — “It’s not even the beginning.”
Her throat tightened.
“While Sufiyaan had her kidnapped from the train, Atharva rescued her and ran away. He sent me his coordinates and…”
“You sent it to Sufiyaan Sheikh.” Amaal completed, not even appalled anymore. But Samar’s raging eyes snapped up to her. “I had to let her go to save Atharva!”
Her mouth dropped open.
“I was desperate and lost and without any solution in that storm, and again in hindsight it seems like I did it out of spite but I did it to keep Atharva alive!” He raged. “Atharva always lives!” He pulled off his specs and dropped his eyes into his fingers.
Silence.
“It is true I gave her to Sufiyaan Sheikh,” his voice softened. “But it is also true that after that I did everything in my power to protect her, to ensure Sufiyaan Sheikh stays out of her circuit, I made sure that Sayyid Butt got involved and held Sufiyaan’s reins where Iram was concerned. When Atharva was arrested, I still did my best to keep her safe in whatever way I could.” He shook his head, and pinched the bridge of his nose. “And I haven’t been able to sleep easy for whatever little time I do ever since.”
His thumb and forefinger turned red on the bridge of his nose, and he pulled back up with a resigned exhale. Their eyes met again.
“Want to know more?”
She laughed bitterly. “What can be worse?”
