It's been 5 days since that car incident. And since that day, they've been jogging partners as planned by Nandini herself while they were on their way to drop her back.

In all these days, their bond has grown much more strong. She would blabber continuously about all that happened the whole day, and also force him to share his.. which was mostly office-related incidents, but still, he felt happy, blessed to have someone to share your day with.

Anyways, just like the last 4 days, Manik had been waiting for her in front of the Sports Complex. He checked his watch again, just to see it's already been 15 minutes since he had been standing there. Yes, he was indeed the one to wait for her always, but it never exceeded 5 minutes or so.

She used to call him on the landline, just to inform him to be there within 15 minutes and she herself would end up being late, or maybe, he was the one to come before the decided time.

What clicked him all on a sudden was, she actually never called him today.

Was she not gonna come today? He asked to himself.

Waiting for a few more minutes, staring at the direction she was supposed to come through, he sighed as a bout of white fog came out of his mouth and turned to start his jogging session for the day...

Covering a few meters, he heard someone calling his name. It didn't take him long to recognize it as a huge smile lightened up his face.

He turned back to see the face he was awaiting. In a red crop hoodie and black joggers pant, she looked sexy.

His unhappy, dejected face now turned into a red tomato and eyes shone as he saw her. Her face reflected his reactions too.

"I thought you had left..", she said catching breathe.

"Where were you? You know I had been waiting for you for the last 20 minutes? I thought you wouldn't come.", he complained cutely.

"Why did you even wait, Malhotra? I don't remember calling you today..", she said with a smirk.

"I thought we-", his reactions turned straight and he didn't continue further as he caught her smirking.

"You thought? What?", she asked as if she understood nothing making him roll his eyes. "I know what you thought. You thought it was now our routine to jog together, right?"

He turned his gaze from her and replied nothing, giving her yet another reason to laugh at him. Laughing out loud, she said, "Why don't you ever reply back?" And burst out into fists of laughter again.

"Maybe because..", he started ever so slowly, softly in his husky tone, eyes too much intense to pierce through her soul threatening her to stop laughing.

"Because?", she whispered.

"Maybe because I love to see you laughing even if it's at my cost? Maybe because I just want you to stay happy?", he whispered back, making her shiver visibly.

~•~
A/N: I'm really very very sorry for being this late and again coming back with such a small update. But as they say, 'Something is better than nothing.', so here's the part I had written 4/5 days back.

I myself am not in a right state of mind.. idk why I'm feeling wierdly low all the time. The feeling of hopelessness & worthlessness is killing my peace of mind. I don't know what's wrong.. I don't know why is it overpowering my happiness, my peace..

Reading, writing and the 2 people I'm writing my story on is my ultimate escape.

I'll try making the next chapter a bigger one, I promise. For now, please compensate with this.

And also, thanks to each one of you who read, liked and supported my story. And make a whole of 30K readers! Can't thank each one of you enough.