Something About Us- MG || (Part 68|Page 66) - Page 66

What kind of parents are these? They care nothing that the daughter is hurt and injured. They just want her money. Even then, there is no appreciation of the fact that she sends them money. Only insults. She caused them all the pain. The good for nothing son is right.

Geet does not hate Maan for what he did. He didn't hurt anyone, he just provided the right environment for things to break down on their own. Every bit was deserved.

Part 68

The first week of real boredom, Geet tried to pretend she was fine.

She'd sleep late. Watch television. Scroll through her phone. Stare at the city through the floor-to-ceiling windows. The two casts—leg and hand—kept her tethered to the penthouse, but it was the stillness that was suffocating her.

She couldn't cook. Couldn't walk. Couldn't do any of the physical things that used to anchor her days.

But more than that—she couldn't work.

And she was starting to realize how much of her identity had been wrapped up in doing something. Anything.

The cook came twice a day. The apartment was spotless. Her medication was managed. Every physical need was met.

But she was going quietly insane.

+++

The second week, she started watching Maan.

Not intentionally at first. Just... noticing.

He'd emerge from his office around 10 AM for coffee, dark circles under his eyes that hadn't been there before. He'd take calls while pacing the living room, his voice that particular brand of clipped that meant someone was underdelivering. He'd work through lunch, through dinner, disappearing back into his office until past midnight.

One evening, she heard him on a video call—something about investor projections for a Chennai acquisition. His voice was strained, frustrated.

"No, I need the presentation deck by tomorrow morning. The format we discussed. Yes, I know it's short notice—"

A pause.

"Fine. I'll do it myself."

He hung up. She heard something hit the desk—not thrown, just set down hard.

Geet sat on the sofa, her casted hand resting uselessly in her lap, and felt something shift in her chest.

She knew that frustration. That particular exhaustion of doing everything yourself because it was faster than explaining it to someone else.

She used to be the person who removed that burden. The Associate who'd take the raw data and turn it into clean, client-facing presentations. Who'd format the decks, write the correspondence, compile the reports so the executives could focus on actual strategy.

That had been her job. Her purpose at Khurana Enterprises.

And she was just... sitting here. Watching him drown in work she used to do.

+++

The third week, she couldn't take it anymore.

It was late afternoon. Maan had been on calls for four hours straight, and she could hear the fatigue in his voice even from the living room.

When he finally emerged for coffee, she spoke before she could second-guess herself.

"What presentation were you talking about yesterday?"

He paused, coffee cup halfway to his lips. "What?"

"On the call. You said you needed a presentation deck for Chennai. For investors."

Maan's eyes narrowed slightly—not suspicious, just... assessing. "It's handled."

"You're doing it yourself."

"Yes."

"At midnight. After working a fourteen-hour day."

He didn't respond. Just took a sip of coffee.

Geet adjusted her position on the sofa, the casts making her movements awkward. "I used to make those decks. At the office. Client presentations, investor materials, data summaries. That was literally my job."

"I remember."

"So let me do it," she said, keeping her voice steady. "I can't walk. I can't cook. I type slow with one hand. But I can still format a presentation deck. I can still take your raw data and make it look professional."

Maan set his cup down. "You're recovering."

"From broken bones, not brain damage," Geet countered. "I'm not offering to run the deal. I'm offering to do the work I was hired to do. The work you're staying up until 2 AM to do yourself because everyone else is busy."

She leaned forward slightly.

"Let me help, Maan. Even if it's just the mundane stuff. Even if it takes me twice as long because I'm one-handed. Let me do something."

He was quiet for a long moment, studying her face.

"It's not exciting work," he said finally. "Just formatting. Making sure the data displays properly. Client-facing language."

"I know what it is," Geet said. "That's what I'm offering."

Another pause. Then: "The Chennai deck. Investor presentation for Friday. I'll send you the raw data and the format template."

"I'll have it ready by Thursday night."

"If it's too much—"

"It won't be," Geet said firmly. "Send me the files."

+++

Maan set her up at the dining table with her tablet, a wireless keyboard, and access to the shared templates folder.

The work was exactly what she remembered: taking dense financial data and translating it into clean, visual slides. Charts. Graphs. Bullet points that actual humans could understand.

With one hand, it was slow. Painfully slow.

She'd tap out a heading. Wait. Adjust the font. Wait. Import a chart. Wait.

What used to take her forty-five minutes took three hours.

But when she finally sent the completed deck to Maan at 11 PM Thursday night, it was good. Professional. Clean. Exactly what he'd needed.

His response came five minutes later: Perfect. Using this tomorrow.

No praise. No excessive gratitude.

Just acknowledgement that she'd done the job.

And somehow, that felt better than anything else.

+++

By the fourth week, they'd fallen into a rhythm.

Geet would wake up and check her tablet for the day's assignments—usually small things. Format this presentation. Clean up this client memo. Compile this data summary.

The work was mundane. Basic. The kind of support tasks that any competent Associate could handle.

But it was work. Real output. Something that mattered.

She'd set up at the dining table, tablet and keyboard arranged within comfortable reach of her good hand. Maan would work from his office, but around mid-afternoon he'd migrate to the sofa, spreading his laptop and papers across the coffee table.

Sometimes he'd ask for something—"Send me the Q3 hospitality file"—and she'd already have it pulled, ready to route over.

Sometimes she'd notice something—"The chart on slide six is showing the wrong quarter"—and he'd pause, check, fix it without comment.

They worked in parallel. Separate but synchronized.

One evening, Maan looked up from his laptop. "The server's different."

"I reorganized it," Geet said, still typing one-handed. "Your filing system was chaos. I couldn't find anything."

"I had a system."

"You had seventeen subfolders labeled 'Final' and 'FINAL_v2' and 'ACTUAL_FINAL_USE_THIS,'" Geet said flatly. "That's not a system. That's archaeological strata."

She kept typing.

"Now it's chronological, alphabetical by sector, and I've created a master index. You're welcome."

A pause. Then that low sound that might have been a laugh.

"How long did that take you?"

"Three days. With one hand." She finally looked up. "I was bored."

His lips curved slightly—not quite a smile, but close.

+++

One night, Geet was finishing a client correspondence summary when Maan's voice cut through the silence.

"The legal team asked if you're available for consulting work."

She looked up. "What?"

"From the Ahmedabad pharma deal. They were impressed with how you cleaned up their compliance brief." He paused. "I told them you weren't available."

"Good," Geet said. Then: "Wait. I did a compliance brief?"

"You reformatted their disaster of a presentation and fixed about forty typos. They think you're a genius."

"I'm not a genius. I just know how to use spell-check."

"Apparently that's a rare skill."

Geet smiled—small, satisfied. "How much were they offering?"

"More than you were making as an Associate."

"Definitely not available then. I'm too expensive now."

Maan's smile widened slightly. Then he went back to his work.

So did she.

+++

Late one night—too late, really—Geet was still working. Not because she had to. Because she wanted to.

Because this felt like reclaiming something. Not her old life. Something new. Something that was hers.

Maan had fallen asleep on the sofa, laptop still open.

She saved her work, grabbed her crutches, moved quietly across the room. Lifted his laptop, set it aside, draped the blanket over him.

His hand caught her wrist—the good one.

"Sleep," he murmured.

"You first."

"Already asleep."

"You're talking."

His thumb brushed her pulse. "You finished the presentation?"

"Hours ago."

"Then why are you still up?"

"Making it better," Geet said. "The formatting was fine but the data visualization was boring. So I fixed it."

"At midnight."

"I missed this," she admitted quietly. "Not the office. Not the chaos. But... making things work. Being useful."

Maan's eyes opened fully—sharp, present. "You've always been useful."

"I've been broken bones being repaired," Geet said. "This is different. This is me doing something that matters. Even if it's just making your presentations look less like tax forms."

He tugged her down to sit on the edge of the sofa.

"Two weeks," he said, glancing at her hand cast.

"Thirteen days," Geet corrected.

"And then?"

"And then I can type at normal speed. And cook. And be even more insufferably efficient."

Maan smiled—real, unguarded. "I'm looking forward to it."

"Come to bed, Maan."

"Only if you promise to stop working."

"Deal."

They stood together—her with crutches and casts, him half-asleep—and left the work behind.

Not because it was finished.

But because they trusted each other to carry it.

+++

By the time the fifth week settled over the penthouse, Geet had become a new kind of fixture in Maan’s daily workflow—one he had never expected, but one he adapted to with unnerving speed.

Not the fragile girl he carried out of the hospital.

Not the silent woman in casts.

Not the ghost in oversized sweaters.

This was a Geet with output.

A Geet with purpose.

A Geet who now began occupying his world in ways more dangerous than her presence in his home.

And Maan—who had always lived by ruthless efficiency—realized something unsettling:

He worked better when she was involved.

He denied it, of course. Even to himself.

But some truths become architecture.

+++

Every morning now, it happened without discussion:

Geet would drag her crutches to the dining table, tablet open, sleeves rolled, hair tied up.

Maan would make coffee—black for him, lightly sweetened for her—placing hers on the table without looking up, as if it were muscle memory.

Their devices would sync: her notifications pinging with the files he routed over.

They would work in silence, side by side, like two minds tuning into the same frequency.

There was no declaration of “partnership.”

It simply was.

Equal.

Parallel.

Seamless.

Sometimes he would glance up mid-call and find her frowning at a spreadsheet, lips pursed in concentration. He would feel his pulse shift—an involuntary tightening in his chest that had nothing to do with attraction and everything to do with a visceral sense of rightness.

She belonged in this space.

Not as his employee.

Not as his patient.

But as a force.

+++

On Wednesday afternoon, he walked into the living room with an expression that normally meant someone in Singapore had failed him.

“Who touched the Chennai folder?” he asked.

“I did,” Geet said, without looking up.

He froze.

“…You?”

“Yes.”

“What did you touch?”

“Everything,” she said calmly, switching tabs. “Your analyst mislabeled half the pivot tables. The CAGR formula was broken. And the valuation slide was using last year’s EBITDA.”

“That deal is due tomorrow.”

“Yes.”

“And you changed the numbers?”

“No,” she said innocently. “I fixed them.”

Maan stared.

“You fixed the EBITDA?”

“And the year-on-year growth, and the market entry assumptions, and the filing dates. Your team isn’t incompetent, Maan. They’re just—”

She made a gesture in the air.

“—tiny bit sloppy.”

He blinked once.

Then twice.

Then exhaled a long, slow breath.

“…What would I have done weeks ago if you weren’t here?”

She smirked.

“Suffered.”

His lips twitched—reluctant affection tugging at the corners.

“Yes,” he admitted, “quite likely.”

+++

By the sixth week, Maan had developed an inconvenient habit.

Whenever he finished a draft, a memo, a pitch—before sending it to his team—his eyes would automatically drift toward the dining table.

Toward her.

Toward the woman typing slowly with one hand, dismantling chaotic data like she was born for it.

He commented once—too casually to be accidental—

“You should have been on the deals team.”

Geet paused.

“Instead of?”

“Instead of… where you were placed.”

She raised a brow. “You mean the politely named support staff for executives who don’t like doing their own work?”

The corner of his mouth lifted.

“Yes.”

“And whose fault was that?” she asked sweetly.

Maan stared at her for a long moment.

Then gave a tiny shrug—the kind of admission only Geet ever got from him.

“…Mine.”

She laughed softly.

He pretended he hadn’t heard it.

+++

One evening, they both looked up at the same moment.

He from his seat on the sofa, laptop open.

She from the dining table, tablet glowing in the dim light.

Their eyes met.

Nothing dramatic.

Nothing staged.

But something in the quiet tightened—pulled—

A feeling that spread gently across the space like warm light:

This is us.

This is the shape of us.

This is what it feels like to rebuild a life without losing yourself.

For a long moment, neither looked away.

Then—

Maan cleared his throat.

Geet blinked.

The spell broke—but not entirely.

+++

Later that night, he forwarded her the new Mumbai hospitality pitch.

No instructions.

No notes.

Just trust.

An hour later, he received her revision.

He opened the file.

Paused.

Scrolled.

Paused again.

Then murmured—too softly for her to hear, too real for him to deny—

“…unbelievable.”

Because this wasn’t the neat, careful work of an entry-level Associate.

This was the work of someone whose mind was built to structure chaos. Someone who had learned to read his preferences, match his tone, anticipate his conclusions—intuitively.

Geet had become dangerous.

Not because she was recovering.

But because she was finally stepping into what she was capable of.