Contract with Soulmate

1 years ago

oh nakhrewaali

@oh_nakhrewaali

Contract with Soulmate

“Ishaana! Ishaana!” 

Omkara’s voice echoed towards Ishaana. Ishaana was so out of it, she couldn’t understand where Omkara was.

She mustered up all her energy and called out to him, and curled up, hoping to decrease the pain in her abdomen, where the thug had hit her. Someone held her waist, stopped her from curling and comforted her pain.

“Don’t close your eyes, Ishaana! Can you hear me?” Omkara said.

She nodded. She could hear him, but her body was too tired to respond.

“Baba? Choti?” she whispered instead.

“They are with the police. You need to get up,” Omkara said as he pulled her up.

She sat and leaned across the wall and looked around. Through her swollen left eye, she could hazily identify that her house was a mess. The men who had come to ask for the debt money had ruined it. Ishaana had stepped in to protect her younger sibling and father, but they had beaten her up so bad that her head was spinning and a numbing pain shot through her left eye. Her body ached as if someone was still torturing her.

“You shouldn’t have called the cops. They will kill us now!” Ishaana hiccupped through her tears. 

“No, they won’t. You trust me, right?” Omkara asked, but Ishaana looked at him in a daze.

“Do you?” he asked again.

Despite being in pain, the shame of almost conning such a nice man reared its ugly head inside her soul.

“Why are you here? I have hurt you enough. Please go away.”

“I need your help. I know this isn’t the right place or time, but I need you to help me.” 

It suddenly became dark, but then, she blinked at him in confusion and then his next words convinced her that the thug had hit her so bad that she was out of her mind.

“Marry me,” he said.

Ishaana woke up panting. She gasped, trying to calm herself down as anxiety made it difficult for her to breathe. Then she looked around at her huge, luxurious room that was almost reminiscent of a royal palace. Eight months ago, had someone told her she would be sleeping in a room like this, she would have laughed in their face. But, after her unusual marriage, this became her reality. It was still dark outside, and the bedside clock read 4.45 AM. She threw one last glance around her room, longingly, her fingers playing with the soft nightgown. She was leaving all this behind. She didn't really care about leaving the riches, she didn't want to leave him. She looked at the couch near the bed, hoping to find her husband sleeping but seeing it empty made her heart sink. Her heart sank further when she realized that he was no more her husband, he hadn't  been her husband, legally, for the last two months, no matter what her heart wanted to believe. Ishaana pushed herself out of the bed and went to freshen up. 

Pulling her trolley bags behind her, Ishaana walked towards the room where she knew she would find Omkara, lost in his world of sculpting and painting. She knew how art was more real to him than the actual world around him because, unlike the world, his art had never lied to or betrayed him. She knocked on the door and was confused when she heard a rustling inside. After a long time, Omkara opened the door and looked at her in confusion.

“Why did you wake up so early? Couldn’t sleep?” he asked.

Dark circles peeked from under his eyes, but eight months with Omkara had made Ishaana used to his unhealthy sleep schedule and obsession with his art. Art and dance were one of the few things they had bonded over during their marriage. She would admire his art, and he would support her dreams of becoming a dancer and using dance to find her way in her life.

“Nightmare... a dream, more like,” she shrugged and walked inside his sculpture room. The lights were dim, as always. Complete and incomplete sculptures looked at her, but she glanced at a canvas which was secretly guarded against her view.

“What were you working on?” she asked, pointing to the canvas. 

“What was the dream about?” he asked instead.

Ishaana knew that he was changing the topic, but she let him be. What she had to say was more important than Omkara’s latest muse to paint.

“The day you asked me to marry you,” she chuckled.

“Then it was a nightmare,” Omkara said off-handedly, and Ishaana felt tears brim in her eyes.

“Is that what our marriage is to you? A nightmare? Am I a nightmare for you?”

Omkara opened and closed his mouth, “That’s not what I meant. I just meant that the situation wasn’t right.” He looked at her trolley bags and then looked at her, sadness in his eyes.

“And that we aren’t right for each other,” she bitterly continued for him.

“Is that what you think?” Pain laced his voice and Ishaana felt conflicted. What did he mean by that? He didn't seem affected by her leaving, so why was he making it difficult for her by even hinting that he cared about her or their relationship.

He stepped closer to her, and Ishaan’s heartbeat quickened like it did every time she looked into the brown of his eyes. It was like his eyes could read through her soul.

“I don’t know what to think anymore. And it doesn’t matter. We are divorced now, remember?” she said and stepped away. As she took a step back, her body yelled at her to not, but hug him, instead. She wished her body wouldn't forget the truth, that they weren't married anymore. That their marriage had been nothing but a lie.

"My father has fixed my marriage with his business partner’s daughter, and it’s some scheme to stop Shivaay from being CEO. So I need to find myself a bride before they do."

“Why don’t you ask your girlfriend Riddhima?”

“I think my dad is using her to manipulate me." He looked down at his hands, ashamed of what he was going to say next. "Plus, I don't love her."

“You don’t love me too,”

Omkara gazed into her eyes, “Isn’t the feeling mutual?”

Tears brimmed into her eyes, she tried to hide them from him. He didn’t deserve the hurt Ishaana gave him, yet he came to her rescue.

“Good, we are on the same page. So, what can I do to help?” Ishaana put up a brave face, but there was a small part of her that was stung by the fact that he still didn't care for her, after seeing the mess that her life was. But she knew that maybe this was her redemption. Even if he didn't care for her, even if he hated her, if she could help him, it would give her a chance to fix up her mistake.

"I don't hate you but I am angry with you. It will be difficult to forgive you because I trusted you." Omkara said, as if he had read her thoughts. "I know you are the best for this job because conning someone won't be that difficult for you, you do have some first-hand experience at that." he continued, mirthlessly. 

Ishaana winced, but nodded at him to continue. 

"We cannot tell anyone that we aren’t marrying for love. If Shivaay finds out I am doing this for him, he’ll flip! I will help you financially with all your problems till we are together or even after that. I promise I will take care of you, and our marriage will be only on the papers. I won’t ever touch you without your permission. We’ll have to stay married for six months, take a divorce, and then there’ll be a waiting period of another six months."

She blinked at him in confusion. She wanted to ask him to speak clearly and explain what marriage he was going on about, but his next words convinced her that, three days ago, the thug had hit her so bad that she was out of her mind. 

“Marry me,” he struggled to say the words, as if those were the most toxic words he could ever say. 

“My bus is in a few hours. I thought it was best I leave before the... your family members wake up.”

“So you are running away from them?” Omkara asked, disappointed in her.

“I can’t bring myself to face them. I have deceived them, as it is. Maybe me running away will help them hate me more.”

Ishaana was moving back to Gujarat. Her father and her sister, Inaya, moved there after they had paid her father’s gambling debts using Omkara’s money. She had then started working and saving money to finance Inaya’s education while completing her own education so that she didn’t have to rely on Omkara financially. She couldn’t stay with him after signing the divorce papers because it killed her almost everyday knowing that their marriage was now dead. 

“I don’t have much time, but I just wanted to say something to you,” Ishaana said and unintentionally stepped a bit closer to him. He looked at her in surprise.

“I wanted to thank you. You gave me this family. No matter how messed up, but because of you, I know what it is like to have a mother, a grandmother, sisters-in-law, and brothers. Though Shivaay probably hates my guts for hurting you, he and Rudra were still like brothers to me.”

Omkara nodded, but it looked like he was expecting something else.

“I don’t deserve the life you gave me,” she whispered. 

“You do,” he said and held her hands, surprising her. They had moments when their hands brushed without them realizing or had to pretend to be in love in front of the Oberios. But behind the closed doors, they were still strangers.

“Ishaana, I thought I was punishing you when I suggested we get married. I thought I would see your shallowness and hate you, making our divorce much easier to heal through. But I was wrong. You are much more than what I could possibly imagine. I care for you, and in these past months, you have been my friend and I really cannot imagine my life without you, anymore. Signing the divorce papers was the toughest thing I have ever done, and I don’t know why it felt that way.”

“Yet you signed them.” she said accusingly. If he hadn’t, they wouldn’t be here. They could have had a happy marriage like Shivaay and Anika or maybe even fallen in love like Rudra and Saumya, who were just engaged.

“So did you,” he whispered, "I wish you would stay, I wish that things would be better and I could just figure out why and how we reached at this point?"

“It doesn’t matter. We are no longer husband and wife, you don't have to carry on the charade for my sake. All I wanted to say was that you made me a better person, and even though I didn’t deserve any of this, you did help me, so thank you for that, and I promise I will be this person. I will be the person that you will never hate...that you will think you can fall in love with.”

Omkara tried to say some comforting words, but Ishaana stopped him.

“You are too kind to say anything hurtful, but you know it’s the truth. I can never be worthy of you. But that is ok. You made me feel safe, Omkara, and I have never felt safe since Maa passed away. But that feeling of being held by someone, even if not physically, of being protected by someone, you cannot imagine how much it means to someone like me.” 

She looked up to meet his eyes and was surprised to see him in tears. Why did he have to be so kind and empathetic? He made it more difficult for her to leave. But she had to. This wasn’t her world, and Omkara wasn’t supposed to be in her world. He deserved a person with a good moral compass and someone who would fit into his elite family.

“So yeah, that’s all I got to say. I should leave now, or else someone will wake up. Bye, Omkara.” She stepped closer to him and pressed her lips against his cheeks. Even though her brain knew she shouldn’t, she wanted to leave with something that would remind her of him. But even she knew that there was nothing in this world that could make her forget him. Omkara turned away when she stepped away and avoided her eyes. 

“And Omkara?”

He turned to look at her.

“I love you. I have since a long time now, probably since the day you saved me and my family. I couldn’t go away with this truth holding me back. And I am sorry for telling this to you now.”

Ishaana was out of the room before he knew it. But had she stopped and taken a peek at the painting he had taken time to hide, his new muse, she would have seen a beautiful charcoal painting of herself. 

________________________

“What is going on? Where is she?” Anika shrieked at her husband Shivaay, who had a hard time adjusting to the fact that he was standing on a bus stand and being stared at, even though it was barely 7 o'clock and there wasn't a huge crowd. 

“Why did Bhabhi leave?” Saumya asked, and Rudra shrugged, but Omkara wasn’t listening to either of them. He was just looking around, searching for her, like a madman. He dashed through the gap between two buses before the four of them could understand where he ran off to.

“Ishaana!” He called out.

His heart beat more wildly than it had when he had walked through Ishaana’s trashed house about eight months ago. This time, if he had lost her, he would not just lose Ishaana. He would lose his wife, the woman he was in love with. He saw a woman almost like Ishaana and said her name, but it wasn’t her. 

He was an idiot! How had he not realized his feelings all this while? How had only Ishaana’s simple yet painful confession been the thing that had snapped him out of his denial? How had he not realized his own feelings after the divorce, when Ishaana seemed to have become the new muse for his paintings and sculptures and he had tried to lie to himself  that she was his new muse because she was his friend.

Their marriage was anything but perfect. For their family, they were in love, but behind the closed doors, they were like two strangers sharing a train compartment, cordial to each other, friends even, yet curious about each other. He had learnt to let go of his anger for her over the first three months, even though it stung to think of how she had just thought of him as a means to earn money. He had never known heartbreak till the moment he had discovered Ishaana's truth, but he had always thought that he was angry at her for betraying him. But now that he thought about it, he realized that it was more. It hurt because he had developed a soft spot for the shy, tortured Bela. And that soft spot only grew into love and respect for Ishaana throughout their marriage. Her bravery, her unabashedness, yet her vulnerability made had a place for itself in Omkara's heart, without him realizing it. It was this love that made him feel their marriage was a nightmare. He was in love with someone who was with him out of guilt. If only he had realized his own feelings, and Ishaana's feelings. If only he had held her and stopped her from leaving when she had kissed him and told her how much he would miss her. If only he hadn't fallen to the ground with tears falling down his cheeks the second she had left. If only he had ran behind her instead and begged her to not leave.  

“Come on man, you can’t leave me! You promised not to hurt me,” He whispered to himself.

“Bhabhi!” Rudra’s voice made its way through Omkara’s clouded thoughts, and he turned to look at Ishaana, who was looking at him in shock. She then looked at the entourage he had brought with him. In his defense, when he had dashed out of the house like a crazed man, Shivaay had stopped him and the other three had joined him.

“You cannot leave!” He ran to her, held her shoulders, and shouted.

“What?” she blinked at him, confused.

“Please don’t!” he whispered and burst into tears.

“Omkara, I have to. This was a lie, a sham. I cannot pretend to not be hurt when you look away from me and I realize that you can never love me.”

“But I do, I really do! I never wanted you leave, I thought I was only being fair by staying true to my end of bargain by signing those divorce papers, but I should have just been a bit more brave, like you, and confront my feelings. I love you, and I am sorry for realizing this so late.” he almost yelled at her. Couldn’t she see what she had done to him? She had driven him crazy, she had made him a man who was running to the bus stand like some stupid male lead of a Bollywood movie. She had made him fall in love.

“I... Omkara...” She struggled to find words, when Omkara placed his lips on hers melting away all her words. It wasn’t a kiss, it was a sort of reality check for him, that she was standing here, and to express how he felt about her. He pulled away when she stiffened.

“I am sorry. I promised not to touch you without your consent...” But he never got to complete his sentence. Ishaana threw his arms around his shoulder and stood on her tiptoes and kissed him.

“I still want to know what is going on?” Shivaay spoke as the shock of his brother kissing his wife in the streets started wearing off.

“Who cares, Omi is gonna get some!” Rudra said obnoxiously, earning a smack on his chest from his fiance.

But their brother wasn’t listening to them. He had broken the kiss and was wiping away Ishaana’s tears, one hand still on her waist. It had been long eight months, and finally, they had ended. The anguish, the pain, the wait had ended. He was with the woman he had never imagined himself with, and there was no other person he would have wanted to be with.