"Trouble in a marriage," he later wrote, "is like monsoon water accumulating on a flat roof. You don't realize it's up there, but it gets heavier and heavier, until one day, with a great crash, the whole roof falls in on your head."

― Salman Rushdie, Joseph Anton: A Memoir

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"Are you okay?" Neil asked, noticing how pale she was getting as she stared at the door with eyes wide open.

Suman had no idea how long she had stood there, panicking from within, but that question snapped her out of her mind. Taking in a shuddering breath, she tried to respond, attempting to appear calm.

"Neil, listen, you will do great. Just say what you have in your heart and she will definitely say yes," she said hurriedly as she moved towards the door.

She took a few steps, then gave up on composing herself and began to run toward the exit. Despite her efforts to run faster, her leg continued to shake, and everything around her appeared to be moving too slowly. Breathless, she continued praying to God to guide her to Shravan. And her prayers were heard. Despite the darkness, she quickly recognized him in the deserted parking lot and rushed over to him.

"Shravan," she whispered, panting after getting a tight grip on his hand before he could get in his car.

"Let me go," he muttered, pulling away.

"No, no, you are not going to walk away like that. I refuse to let you walk away from me," she cried out, pushing him from his car and towards the wall nearby so she could corner him. She wouldn't let him run away this time around.

"Listen to me, Shravan, please," she begged as she forcefully dragged him along with her.

"You should have at least not done that while being married to me, or at least waited long enough to ask me for divorce before this," Shravan hissed, suppressing the tsunami of emotions that were overwhelming him.

He knew it was coming, so why? Why was it hurting so much? Why only when it was happening that he realized maybe he never actually had believed it would happen? He should have known better than to continue foolishly hoping that it wouldn't. Didn't the repeated cycle teach him the third party would always win? That she would allow whoever it was to come between them? So why? Why was the pain in his chest so unbearable? How could his damned heart have possibly dared to hope for a different outcome from their marriage?

The timing was perfect too. Just when the shield of numbness that had been surrounding him was shattering, just when he had started to come back to life, a new pain was welcoming him. The betrayal and disbelief intensified everything he felt now. It was getting difficult to breathe. There was not enough air, or better, not enough oxygen in the air he was breathing in, because he felt like he could collapse.

"He is getting engaged, and that was his proposal speech to his girlfriend who is coming to India tonight. There is nothing between us," Suman said hurriedly, trying to hold his arms tightly so he couldn't walk away till everything was clear between them.

"I don't care. It doesn't matter whether he is or he isn't. You should have known that you are still married to me," he yelled as he freed his arms from her hold with a sharp tug and stepped back.

"Shravan," she whispered, taking in how he was gasping for air. "No, you aren't going to misunderstand me even this time, Shravan. I will not tolerate this."

"Misunderstand? There was no misunderstanding. Suman Tiwari, you have been loud and clear. Every time you talked with him around me, every time you laughed with him, I have seen it in your eyes, you didn't care that I was there, you wanted me to see," he pointed out, face flushed with anger and the veins on his forehead bulging.

"That's because I wanted you to know. I wanted you to be jealous," Suman cried out, throwing her hands in the air. She could see her words had the opposite effects that she had desired, because suddenly, with a growl, he stepped close to her just to grip her arms tightly and pushed her back till she collided with the wall behind her.

"Jealous?" he spat, towering over her, trembling with rage as he continued: "You wanted to make me jealous?" He asked with his eyes narrowed.

"You don't make people like me jealous, Suman Tiwari. You don't make someone insecure and struggling with each breath jealous. You don't make someone who is trying so hard to trust you and forces himself to hope again jealous. You shouldn't have dared to make someone like that jealous," he growled as he glared down at her.

"What did you want to accomplish by playing games with me? What is it that you wanted me to see? To know? Did you want me to see that you are desired? I have always known that ever since Rohan. Or that you can move on? I have known that since Aditya. Or that you can discard me whenever you feel compelled to do so? I have known that since I got to know you deal with my father. I KNOW. You could befriend anyone, but I had only you. You could be with anyone and, like anyone, I only ever loved you. I have felt and lived with the fear of losing you to someone else ever since I met you," he yelled out.

"So, what did you want me to know? That you have more options? I knew that too. That you would not wait forever? I knew that. I knew all of that very well. Too well. So why? Why?" He cried out as he panted for air.

Standing there with her eyes wide and misty, Suman could only stare at him in disbelief. Was that the message he had gotten? Did her plan to make her realize his feelings for her instead make him feel unloved and unworthy of wait? How could she be so wrong? Why was he being taken away from her by something that was meant to bring him back to her? Why?

"There is something wrong with you, Suman Tiwari, you are messed up. And I am done with you," he whispered, shaking with emotions.

"There you go again, giving me ultimatums that we both know you won't follow through," she whispered with a tiring sigh as she forced herself to not panic.

It felt like they were stuck in an unbreakable loop. What was the need to say something he would never follow through just to hurt her and get even? She miscalculated and thought he would react differently. But why did anything that went wrong between them make it feel like their relationship was hanging on the edge and one light breeze of wind could tip it off? They loved each other. Was that not enough? They were married to each other. Was that not enough? What type of security did he require more of? If not marriage, what type of commitment had value to him? What else must she do for him to realize her devotion to him? And if he had felt threatened, why didn't he react sooner? Why did he let it drag so long? What did it mean on his part if he would let her go without fighting for them?

"No, I will follow this one through. I tried so hard to believe this could work, that we could work, but we don't," Shravan firmly assured her as he stepped away.

"What? No, Shravan, what are you saying?" She muttered with a frown, her heart gripped with a sudden fear.

"Just accept it already, Suman Tiwari. Let's not drag this out further. I don't want to hate you," he whispered, resigned. "I couldn't before. I thought I never could. It wasn't possible for me to. But if we stay together any longer, we will end up hating each other. It's better to part away now. You will get the divorce papers soon," he said, clenching his jaw as he tried to appear in control.

"Divorce papers?" She asked, her voice shaking, unable to believe in the firmness of his decision.

'Why was it so easy for him to utter those words? How could he even entertain the thought that separation between them may happen?' She thought in disbelief.

With a determined nod, Shravan turned back to walk away from her, and when she saw his back to her, she did what she had always done. What always worked...

"That's it?" She provoked him. "Six months? Is that how long our marriage is going to last? You are going to accept failure and just walk away?"

And when Shravan turned back to glare at her, she looked at him with a challenge in her eyes, daring him to fight her, with her, for her, for them.

"I can see what you are doing, and it's not going to work this time around," he called her out.

"Why not? Why NOT? I am always the only one who fights for us. You never do. You just give in or give up," she said with a glare.

"Are you serious?" He asked in disbelief.

"Indeed. While you did nothing, I am the one who has been trying to keep this marriage together. So what if I wanted you to feel jealous? I did it to find out whether you genuinely wanted me and this marriage. So what if I wanted to get a reaction out of you? What's the issue with that? Can you see how desperate you make me to get a reaction out of you? Even though we have been married for six months and have been in love for years, we are still stuck in the same spot and cannot end the cycle. I want to move past that, Shravan. I want to be happy with you and I want you to love me. Can't you see we are wasting time?" Suman said, pulling her hair out in frustration.

"I fought for us whenever you had given up on us, Suman Tiwari, even a glimmer of hope from you had been enough for me to fight back my demons. Again and again, and again, I trusted you and fought back. But you never saw that because you always put a time limit for me to react within, and whenever you feel it's too much of a risk or whenever you feel I am late, you give up and retreat," Shravan growled at her.

"You give up and push me away, and then when you realize that you can't let go, you come back. If you had found any happiness anywhere else, you wouldn't have. I am just convenient, just there anyway," he yelled.

"That's not true, Shravan. I never tried to search for happiness anywhere else. I never could, never would. For God's sake, I married you. Can't you trust me?" She cried out.

"Yeah, sure, because you smiling at him, laughing with him, and trying to make plans with him really made me feel secure in this marriage and about your feelings for me. You did that to make me feel jealous? To get a reaction? To show me you had options? But did it ever occur to you to ask yourself why would you want to do that?" He asked with a strange glint in his eyes.

"Because I am tired of waiting," she whispered helplessly.

"Good, then you know. So don't wait for me, Suman Tiwari. Don't wait for me to heal, don't wait for me to get over the betrayal of my parents. You say six months in a long time to not get over it? I have spent my entire childhood trying to make their marriage not fall apart because of me and then when it did, I spent every second until six months ago trying to overcompensate for my mother's betrayal. I have longed for my mother for years and have hated myself for that just to know that she wasn't my mother, just my father's wife. Because she left me when their relationship ended and moved on. She has a family, and she is an amazing mother to someone else. I can't no longer excuse her that maybe she didn't know how to be a mother because she does. Just not for me," Shravan muttered bitterly.

"And then there is you. Your ego fights with my father made it so clear how little I mean to you both. So, yes, excuse me if I took six months to get over the trauma of a lifetime. But you, please, don't feel obligated to wait for me. Don't give me hope by staying by my side. Don't pretend that you won't leave me if you feel I am taking too much time in healing. Go ahead and just give up because you are bored or tired, or feel you are wasting your time with me or have found a better option," Shravan advised mockingly.

"You don't know how much it pains me to be someone whose actions hurt you, but you can't accuse me of never waiting for you, Shravan. All I have ever done was wait for you. I waited for you for more than ten years to come back. I waited for you to become my Shravan once again. I waited for you to trust me once again. I waited for you to confess your love. I waited for you to overcome your pain. For the past six months, I have been waiting for you to heal, and I will keep waiting till you come back to me," she cried out.

"Sometimes I wish I could do something else, but you have your walls so high, I can't even find a crack in it for me to be with you. You have isolated yourself and you have deprived me of you. You don't talk to me. I have to pick fights with you just to hear your voice, but you don't even fight with me. You asked me why I wanted to make you jealous. Because that's the only time when your attention was on me. You looked at me, not just in my direction. You noticed me. For those few moments, I was visible to you. It was you I was cashing," she said as tears slipped from her eyes.

"Sometimes when it gets too much, I wish I could look at someone else the way I look at you, desire someone else the way I desire you, love someone else the way I love you. But I can't. I never could. I am not bored, Shravan, I am really, really tired. I am tired of your ultimatums when we both know you always come back, I am tired of you testing me and pushing me as if there is a time limit to us when we both know that I am not going anywhere," she whispered with her lips trembling as she suppressed the sobs.

"I don't know that," he objected, shaking his head.

"You do know that. Why don't you know that when you yourself said that we are stuck in a cycle? There is a pattern we keep repeating. It's just that you don't trust me, Shravan. You don't trust me to stay," she muttered, tears finally slipping from her eyes. "Maybe I am being dramatic, maybe it's immature of me, but I have dreamed a life with you so desperately, and now we are married, but this isn't what I wanted for us. Yet no matter how miserable it is, I don't regret it. I will choose you again and again. I would have chosen you if I had been given a choice even back then, but I wasn't given the choice. I wouldn't have found happiness even if I had married someone else," she confessed, exhausted.

"Do you know why I married you despite knowing you didn't want to and why I overlooked that you weren't ready?" Suman asked her before responding with a shuddering sigh.

"Because I was afraid I was going to lose you. I was afraid you might flee and never return if I didn't have a firm hold on you. I was petrified with the thought that if I didn't try to cash in on your father's sudden benevolence, I would never be allowed to marry you. For once, I wanted to be selfish and not care about anything other than what I wanted because I am done being a people pleaser," she said as she harshly wiped her tears away.

"Growing up, I realized how I didn't belong anywhere. I had to be grateful and give in. Everything I needed depended on whether people around me were pleased with me or not. I did everything that pleased the family that generously let me live with them after my parents died. I listened to Mami's taunts and ignored other's pity. I felt like a burden, so I tried to compensate for it by reducing myself and suppressing my desire to please them. Since everyone at school thought I should like Rohan, I did. I agreed to marry Aditya because Nanu wanted me to. But I knew I wouldn't be happy with either of them. It wasn't my happiness I was pursuing, but others' expectations. Because I knew since the day you left that my happiness belonged to you and with you. You are the only happy memory of my teenage, Shravan Malhotra." she confessed, her voice quivering between sobs.

"I did everything to please others. The only thing I ever did for myself was marry you. I thought it would be enough. But I am miserable, Shravan," she said as she wept. "Why am I not happy even though I am married to the only man I ever loved? A man who I know loves me back. I married you so you could be mine, so why do I still have to fight with you for our happiness? Why don't I still have you?" She demanded, her body shaking with the force of her cries.

"I feel you slipping away from me, even though you are here. I feel your absence, even though you are right in front of me. Even though we share a room, I feel as though there are miles between us. I am tired of fighting with you for you, for us. If we both aren't going anywhere, shouldn't we try to improve our relationship now, Shravan? Can't you, for once, really work with me on us?" She asked, wiping her tears so he wouldn't disappear from her sight.

"Please, I beg you, Shravan," she murmured repeatedly between sobs as she held the front of his coat in a tight grip, looking up at him with red teary eyes.

As Shravan stood there seeing her cry her heart out, he closed his eyes and let out a sigh, drained. 'Would the day ever come when Suman Tiwari's suffering wouldn't affect him?' Shravan thought, helplessly.

Of course not. She was right. Her anguish and how it affected him always made his ultimatums meaningless. No matter how many mistakes they made, they were bound to come back to each other as they always did. She was his person, as he was hers. Every time they broke each other, it was they who put each other back by coming back and mending their mistakes.

But there was no denying that it was draining to keep repeating the same cycle. Something had to be done for that. They couldn't go back and forth, causing each other so much misery and damaging their already wounded bond.

"Get in the car," he told her as he tried to loosen her grip on his coat.

"I am not moving from here until you forgive me for hurting you," she mumbled stubbornly, tightening her hold on him with a frown.

"Forgive you?" He asked with a snort. "You didn't even apologize."

"You are right," she muttered before looking up at him. "Forgive me, Shravan. Hurting you was never my intention. That was stupid and immature of me. I'll wait for you for as long as it takes, even if that means our entire lives. I will be patient and wait for you. Please believe me. I am not going anywhere. Where will I even go when all I ever wanted and all I want is you? Don't you know that already?" She asked with a bitter smile as she brushed away her tears with the back of hers without losing her grip on his coat.

"What do I have to do for you to believe me?" She asked with teary eyes.

"Stay," he whispered, unable to stop his heart from softening for her.

"I will, forever, I will," she repeated, wrapping her arms around him and holding on to him tightly.

It was impossible to not melt under the warmth of her touch and her promise. Shravan warped his arms around her with a sigh and rested his head on hers. Closing his eyes, he allowed himself to breathe in relief. The stiffness in the back of his neck and shoulder relaxed as her arms tightened around him. It felt like a lifetime had gone since he had felt the warmth of her embrace. They stood there in silence for a long time, yet not enough before she called out for his attention by moving a bit away from him.

"Promise me you will never think of divorce ever again," she whispered, resting her chin on his chest as she looked up at him.

"Let's go home," he said without responding to her pleas.

For a second she seemed as if she was going to protest, but probably reminded of the promise she made a few seconds ago. With a nod, she gave in and let him step away from her. She silently got in the car when he opened the door of the passenger seat for her. While driving, every time Shravan glanced at her, she seemed to be lost in her thoughts. The frown on her forehead kept deepening, but she was no longer crying.

She followed him quietly to their room before disappearing into the bathroom. The uninterrupted running water was to cover her cries, he knew. It wasn't the first time he had heard it. He was making her miserable in the same way he was. She was right. If they knew they would never be able to leave each other, would always belong to each other, would always come back to each other, why was there so much distance between them? If it was a matter of time before they gravitated towards each other again, why was he putting so many barriers between them? And if all of that was true, then why were they breaking each other's hearts by denying the truth and working against each other?

"If not divorce, what do you suggest we do then?" He asked as soon as she stepped into the room.

"We need to learn to communicate better, to trust each other and our promises to each other. Maybe couple counseling will help. I will do anything you ask, Shravan," she pleaded, getting a hold of his hand.

"Counseling won't solve everything," he muttered.

"Honesty will," she insisted.

Shravan hummed without remark, his eyes softening ever so slightly.

"So, be honest with me. What do you want from me? What do you want me to do so you will trust me?" She asked earnestly.

As he looked at her red eager eyes, and felt her tight grip on his hand, he didn't find it in himself to push her away. The woman holding on to him wasn't just anyone. She was Suman Tiwari, his Sumo. She will always matter. Her tears would always melt him and her pain would always be unbearable to him. Who he was kidding? There was no escape from what he felt for her. The decade of separation hadn't made a difference. The pain they caused to each other didn't lessen their longing for each other.

"I want you to stop making me jealous. And stop coming up with other dramatic plans and stupid fights just to get a reaction," he muttered before he could stop himself.

"I am sorry. I will do none of that ever again," she promised readily, nodding at him and slowly wrapping her arms around him and resting her head on his chest.

Was it because he believed he was about to lose her that he now found himself giving up on control of himself, or was it because the warmth of her embrace was melting everything frozen and tensed inside him? Shravan didn't know. Once again, his hand moved before he even realized and his arms were holding her back.

"I want you to stay. Please don't leave me, just stay," he whispered, closing his tired eyes.

"I can't lose you. I can't. I never could love someone else. I don't think I am capable of loving anyone else. I don't want to. You, too, are the happiest memory of my teenage years. My happiness has always belonged to you, Suman Tiwari, so please stay," he confessed with a sigh.

"There is nowhere else I rather be than with you, Shravan," she promised, tightening her arms around him.

And for now, it was enough...

Her promise of staying was enough...

The warmth of her unpredictable love was enough...

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A/N:- So I did say I would update sooner and most of the chapter was ready, but something was missing. I kept feeling it wasn't complete, not enough. So I went back to their confrontations several times, yet nothing. Everything has a timing. With that thought, I let it be and was waiting for it to come to me and was searching for it in everything, everywhere. I sound dramatic, but writers are dramatic by nature. We can't help it... ;D

I hope the wait was worth the update. So yes, their confrontation happened and finally, they communicated. A bit. They both needed to realize that they both were in this for life and assurance of their love and will to work on their relationship were needed and given in the end.

Did you use the tissues I promised you would use while reading this chapter? Let me know if you are satisfied or not with how it played out... :)

I am forever grateful to you all for your support, kindness, love, and encouragement. Thank you for sticking by and for waiting and everything... *hugs*

Thank you! <3

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