Page 70 of Cruise in Love

She shook her head. “I shouldn’t have made you choose between your dream and me.”

“You were my dream too, Tara,” he said.

Her eyes stung and she bit her lip as tears ran down her eyes. Her heart broke all over again.

“We are not meant to be, Aarav,” she whispered.

He didn’t say anything. He wrapped his arms around her. His mouth brushed gently against her forehead, soothing her hurt and heartbreak.

Warmth filled her and she felt safe. But the ache inside her heart remained about the past, and also knowing that she and the only man she had ever loved weren’t meant to be.

Fate made them cross paths once again unexpectedly. But the current circumstances made it impossible for them to be together.

She still loved him. She had never stopped loving him. But he might feel differently. And even if by some miracle he felt the same way about her as before, it was still impossible to be together. She didn’t want to risk his life because of her.

The threat to her was now proven to be real. Which meant that by being with her, even he was at risk. She knew he wouldn’t agree to leave right away because his protective instincts wouldn’t allow him to. Which meant she had three more days remaining to spend with him.

Sucking in a deep breath and ignoring the ache inside her heart, she looked up at him. “We have three days remaining in our deal,” she said. “I want to spend them without any fear or regrets.”

She placed her hand on his chest, feeling the strong beat of his heart. “Help me forget everything else, Aarav,” she said. “Let’s make the most of our deal before we part again.”

His eyes flashed with a burning emotion. He watched her face for a long moment, and then his fingers tangled into her hair before capturing her mouth with his.

The mind-numbing passion that followed drove away her fears and worries.

CHAPTER 18

Aarav lay awake as Tara slept in his arms. His fingers stroked her bare back watching her beautiful face. There was sadness evident on her face even as she slept.

“We are not meant to be, Aarav,” she whispered.

It wasn’t the first time Tara had said those words to him. She believed in fate and she felt they weren’t fated to be together.

But he didn’t believe in fate. In fact, he hated the word with passion.

He recalled the first time he had heard that word. It was when his parents and his little sister got killed by a bomb blast in a movie theater. Nearly two hundred people had died that day due to a terror attack. He had only been ten years old at that time. He was supposed to join his family, but he had chosen to stay back home because he wanted to play with his new toy plane.

But he remembered very clearly how his neighbors and relatives had used the word ‘fate’ to describe the sudden deaths of his family and the others who had died in that movie theater.

They told him that it was written in his parents and little sister’s fates along with the rest of the innocent moviegoers to die. They meant in a kindhearted way to console a grieving ten-year-old boy. But he didn’t agree with them.

It was a senseless terror attack and no one deserved to die because it was written in their fate. So, he grew up with a resolve to get rid of such terror and also never to let fate decide his life.

Even when life knocked him over several times, he rose again determined to win and prove those losses weren’t his fate.

He believed in luck instead.

Luck saved his life many times in the past seven years. And luck had brought Tara into his life.

His mind drifted to the past and he recalled the first time he saw her.

Although it was too cliché, he had felt as though a bolt of lightning had struck him. He had lost his heart to the beautiful, fiery girl right on their first meeting. And much to his greatest joy and luck, after he annoyed her, pursued her and did everything to gain her attention, even Tara had begun falling in love with him.

They were only nineteen years old, but he thought he was the luckiest guy on earth to have someone like her to share the rest of his life with. He had vowed to do anything to make her happy and gain her love.

It was only after they fell in love, they realized the path to happiness wasn’t going to be easy.

“W-what do you mean you are going to join the Air Force? I thought you are pursuing aeronautical engineering!”

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