KaSak OS: We Were Always Meant To Be

We Were Always Meant To Be

I didn't know it was meant to be her. I never realised.

She was like a dream come true, a dream that I never had.  Despite everything I had done to stop what I claimed was something I wasn't ready for, it had still happened and I guess now that it has I am nothing less than thankful and grateful for without her I don't know not only what, but whether I'd be.  

What makes her so beautiful is that she doesn't realise how beautiful she really is. She isn't a try-hard wannabe; she's just herself and that too irrespective of who she is with and what she is doing. She feels our family deserves much better than her, that I deserve much better than her, but in fact that is the last thing that is true. The truth is that she is the one who deserves so much better, so much better than me.

I cannot believe I was denying her for so long. I was looking in Earth's deepest corners to find the one that belonged to me when in fact she was right in front of my eyes. I was being one of those ridiculous people who only wanted what they could not have. It never occurred to me that something that was not forbidden could be right as well... because she was right, she is right and she always will be.

'Karan,' her voice was so soothing, like honey melting in the sun.

'I'm sorry, Sakshi. I can't,' I stammered, my voice grave and furtive.

My heart skipped a beat when I heard her sigh, 'But you can. You just don't want to.'

'No, Sakshi. I want to, but I can't,' and it was as simple as that. She probably hated me for the way I treated her despite everything she'd tried to do to convince me that we were meant to be.

'The day we married I promised you I'd always be with you, in good times and the sad. I also promised you that I'd sacrifice my happiness for yours, always put your preferences, your needs and desires before mine. I swore it, Karan. And here I am standing at a pinnacle because of those promises. I'm at the place where right meets right and it's nothing but wrong.'

I turned to look her in those enchanting, endearing eyes. The eyes that could see right through me, comprehend how I was feeling inside out. 'I... I don't understand. Two wrongs don't make a right, so how can two rights make a wrong?'

'Don't you understand, Karan?' she asked, desperate. 'My promises are clashing. On one side I promised that I'd always stand by you and on the other I promised that I'd put your happiness before mine.'

She was right, I didn't understand.

'I am supposed to stay with you,' she continued, 'but your happiness doesn't lie in it. Your life, your path, your journey are what you want to be separate to mine. So how can I fulfil both promises?! How can I stand by you if your happiness lies in my leaving?! Karan I just don't-'

I was heart-broken but it didn't matter because she was more broken than me. 'Sakshi, no, no. I never meant that. I never meant I wanted you to leave. This is your family... this is your home. I can't ask you to leave for something which was never your fault.'

'But it is my fault!' she cried. There was a strange edge to her voice; it was a mixture of devastation and plea, plea for me to understand. 'I've obviously over stayed my welcome! Despite trying so hard I could never be the partner you deserved, you wanted! I was never good enough!'

'Sakshi, so help me God, you don't understand! You were always good enough! I was the one who wasn't!' My hands fisted just before I had her by the shoulders and pushed her into the door.

Her eyes were swollen with tears. She had no idea what she meant to me, no idea what I'd done to her.

'I locked you up in that room before we married. I invited Tasha to make you jealous. I threatened you with the knife so you'd refused to marry me. I was the one who kept on pushing you away regardless of the fact that you were trying to pull me closer! You were always the one!' 

She opened her mouth to say something, but I could tell was completely lost for words. I let her go.

'Don't,' I whispered. 'There's nothing to say.'  

I helplessly turned, my feat leading me to the window to put some distance between us.

'But there is!' she screamed, as if right on cue. 'There is so much to say!' She didn't even wait for me to turn around or respond before she began. 'None of that means anything!'

I turned around. Frozen.

'You did everything you could to stop the marriage but that was before Karan, before the two of us became one. You thought you weren't ready and to be honest I thought the same but I just didn't try to stop marrying you because-'

'And that's what changes everything! You didn't do anything to stop our marriage but I did!' I roared.

'It changes nothing!' her voice was frantic.

'Then why?! Why didn't you do what I did and try to stop our wedding?!' I yelled desperately.

'Because I fell in love with you!'

The silence was piercing, disconcertingly penetrating.

My heart skipped a beat every time I thought of what she had told me and the way she'd said it - not like it was a favour, not like it was a possibility, but like it was a fact.

A fact that I'd always refused to understand.

Minutes felt like hours as we stared right into each other's soul, burning each other with a known but not yet accepted emotion. She closed her eyes, as if giving in. A crystal tear slipped down her cheek.

'I love you, Karan.'

'Sakshi. Don't.'

'I know you don't love me. It's okay, you don't have to.'

With somewhere between a sigh of desperation and a growl of need I leaped off the pinnacle I had been standing on for so long. 'But I do! I would give my life for you; spend an eternity in torment just to have one moment with you as mine. Wanting you consumes me, but that doesn't change the fact that you are an angel from heaven and I am a seed growing from hell!'

'Karan we belong together! Denying that means denying our love! Stop running away from me because no matter where you go you'll always end up with me!'

I turned away. I couldn't look at her.

'Oh no you won't. Look at me, Karan!' she screamed.  

But before anything else could happen she was somehow in my arms, my lips on hers.

It was wrong, completely.

But it was right, totally.

Our bodies moulded together as if made for that exact purpose. Moments went by, ones that I would never forget. We kissed until the sunlight drained out of the room.      

'Thank you,' I whispered, eventually.

'For what?' she asked. I could feel her smile against my lips as she kissed me.

'For breathing life into me.' I kissed her eyes and she held on to me as if for dear life. 'I love you, Sakshi.'

I closed my eyes. Bliss.

'I love you too.'