Sitting at the edge of his table, Wei held Jia Li firmly in his arms while she emptied her grief out. Sam had intended to go past Wei"s room without glancing inside but she couldn"t refrain herself from peeping in there, at the last second. The intimacy and ease with which the woman stood in his embrace, it didn"t leave Sam in any doubt about the kind of relation which existed between them. Choking on a sob, she ran past the cabin.
After Jia Li had exhausted herself, Wei touched his forehead to hers for a second and then tipped her chin up. Wiping the stain of tears from her cheeks, he brushed the tendrils of her hair back from her face.
"Feeling better?" he asked her with a tender smile.
Once his initial shock of seeing her had worn off, Wei realised that the grief which Jia Li was carrying inside, was too profound to be linked to anyone else except one person. To his surprise, he hadn"t felt too much pain upon that realisation. It was as if his heart had somehow accepted the truth during this period of being away from her.
At her nod, he said, "now may I ask why did you choose to fix an appointment with my father instead of me? I had thought that if nothing else, I was your soulfriend for this life, the one who understands everything you say and not say."
Jia Li burst into another round of tears upon hearing these lines. She couldn"t explain what she was experiencing at this moment. The fact that she had hurt him so badly had been as painful to her as Tang"s absence. Now standing with him and listening to his words which held no censure no admonishment, she felt an acute sense of relief.
Finally raising her head, she gave him a tremulous smile and said, "I have missed you."
Wei shook his head and said sarcastically, "that"s why you came to meet my father and not me. You didn"t even bother telling me that you were coming to Shanghai. Is this all that our friends.h.i.+p was worth? One fight and we would be strangers for life, for real?"
Jia li hung her head in shame and said, "I had no guts to come see you. Even now, it feels unreal that I am standing next to you, talking to you. I know how much pain have I caused you. After doing this, how could I have come and shown my face to you?"
Wei cupped her cheek and said, "the pain happened due to the difference in expectations from each other. I wanted your heart while you wanted my friends.h.i.+p. Even though I knew it somewhere inside me that you wouldn"t belong to me in this lifetime, I was probably unwilling to believe that because the alternate was too bleak. As a result, I kept pus.h.i.+ng my aspirations towards you. I think it was a tiny bit unfair. Of course, that doesn"t excuse the horrid way in which you broke my heart. But then, I guess I wouldn"t have gone away with anything lesser than that level of shock."
Jia Li moved away from him and sat down on the chair limply. She was feeling completely drained out with the outpour of her angst, guilt and more.
Though she wasn"t in love with Wei, she did love him!!
He was as precious to her as Li Jie or maybe even more than him. Wei had termed it right – he was her "soulfriend".
"So tell me what has brought you back to the land you swore never to come back to?" he asked her after ordering two cups of strong coffee for the both of them.
Without hesitating or holding back, she told him everything from the time Tang"s mails had started to come to her, right up till he disappeared without a trace.
"That crafty b.a.s.t.a.r.d. He was wooing you secretly without anyone even catching a whiff of it. And here I thought I was the sly one who had stumbled upon your whereabouts. I never stood a chance with him in the same, did I?" he shook his head in rueful amazement.
Then turning serious, he said , "there is something definitely amiss. In fact, at the time I got to know about the Xie family doing this, I even entertained the thought that you were aware of it and had chosen to be on that side instead of mine and hence that cruel rejection."
Jia Li"s distressed gaze rose towards him but he placated her.
"Don"t fret. I was just angry with you at the time. I figured out later that you couldn"t have known about something like this and not told me. Having said that, till date, Dad and I have only been interacting with their lawyers. Not once has either Tang or Uncle Xie communicated with us personally," he said, as if just realising the fact.