Arnav finally turned towards Khushi, who was standing there looking at Karan's retreating back with a thoughtful expression on her face. He slowly stepped towards her & as she sensed him moving, she drew her eyes back on him & considered him warily.
To Khushi's credit, she didn't feel decidedly panicked or traumatized, that she had every right to feel. In fact Khushi was sure that was the reaction that Arnav expected her to impart as he stopped a good couple feet away from her & kept his searching eyes trained on her features. Then he asked in a strained, quite voice, "Are you alright? Did he hurt you? Khushi, are you hurt? Anywhere? Please tell me?" Arnav felt the panic in him rise with each passing second that she decided to remain silence. Did anything more happen before he came on the scene? He took half a step towards Khushi, about to take her arms in his grip, when she looked up straight into his eyes & then she shook her head as if to clear it & said in a shaky voice, "No. I am fine. Not hurt. Not physically." Then she again looked in the direction where Karan had run off to & Arnav saw that same expression of annoyance, thoughtfulness, & reluctant panic etched over her face.
This time Arnav couldn't just let it go & snapped the fingers of his right hand in front of her pinched face. & Khushi looked at him with a start & seeing the unspoken question in his eyes, started to speak while shaking her head in negative motions. Sensing she was about to deny anything was wrong, Arnav snapped despite himself, "Come on, Khushi. Don't tell me 'it's nothing'. He's gone! I got rid of him. Why are you looking so quiet & worried still? If you can't be relived you're alright, then at least cry or freak out, so that I know that you're actually alright!" Shouting it all out Arnav stopped & took in some labored breath.
Khushi looked at him a little incredulously, as if surprised by his level of concern for her, then she said grudgingly, "I am still looking worried, because I have just discovered the reason for which I'll have to break off my sister's very public engagement. The break up is gonna hurt her emotionally & effect her future socially. & you might have got rid of him, but judging by what he was trying to tell you, I am sure, by tomorrow, his story's gonna be how I tried to seduce him. So, it's essentially gonna be his word against mine. & while I don't doubt for a moment, that my family will believe only me, I can't say that for the whole society." Then she threw Arnav another weary look & said very tiredly, "Yes, you got rid of him, but not for good. & just so you're not in any kind of delusions, I'll have you know, I was managing fine & I would have got rid of him myself, quite comfortably." She finished with an almost childish pout on her lips.
Arnav looked at the tiny person standing in front of him as if he was seeing her for the first time, trying to brave the storm that was about come over her family & sister, & brushing aside the ordeal she had just been through as diminutive in comparison. The pampered, bratty Princess Gupta that he remembered, seemed to have to grown up in other departments too other than the obviously transformed physical attributes he had been focusing on till now. He said slowly, matter-of-factly, as if explaining basic manners to a petulant child, "You don't always have to manage on your own. You can't do everything by yourself."
Then he slowly, without moving any closer towards her, placed his right hand over the bloody scar on her left shoulder, & traced the scar with feathery light fingers & he immediately felt Khushi's entire being shiver uncontrollably under his touch. Arnav stilled his fingers as his eyes looked up to search her face as he felt her breath getting shallow, but Khushi's down casted eyes averted his penetrating gaze. Arnav contemplated her bent head for a few seconds, trying to fathom her reaction to his touch & then his hand, as if on its own volition, started sliding down her arms to her fingers, tracing each injury in its path & touching them soothingly, as if trying to cast the pain away. Soon his left hand too joined the right one & trailed a similar feathery path over the scars of her right hand.
It was quite ironical that each of them was at that precise moment asking questions to themselves that actually should have come from the other party. But it was also a sign of intelligence on both their parts that they didn't try to voice the questions to the other, because as it was, the answers they were coming up with in response to their self-searching questions, weren't quite self-satisfactory. As Arnav trailed the rough pads of his fingers over her gloriously silky skin, he asked himself, 'What the f**k am I doing?' Immediately the answer came, 'What I have wanted to do for so long. Feeling how the finest of silks should feel like.' But his inner voice wasn't silenced by this self-indulgent answer, 'Oh, & if she asks what you're doing, that's your best excuse?' As Arnav appreciated how unadorned her arms were, so that his fingers got to feel maximum exposure, the cocky voice from inside him answered, 'I'll tell her, I'm just checking for injuries.' & as his hands reached her hands, he bent his fingers to gently hold her palms in his own.
Khushi on the other hand was literally battling with the voices
in her head. One voice was constantly screaming at her, 'Khushi, why don't
you ask him, what the hell is he trying to do?' & as was the case with
Krazzy Kumari Gupta, voices were always very vocal inside her head & one
immediately answered, 'Whatever he's doing, he's not trying to feel you up,
like the other leech did.' Then the same voice immediately asked, 'Waise,
Khushi ki bachchi, why are you hyperventilating like a schoolgirl?' &
then another promptly answered, 'Because of what happened with Karan. The
shivering is just the body's late reaction to the shock.' & judging by
the way every voice suddenly went silent in Khushi's head, she knew, even her
crazy brain didn't believe that last excuse of some shock causing the shivering
& heavy breathing. Just then she felt his palms closing around hers &
she felt herself being pulled towards him. & although Khushi later felt
horrified about what she was doing right then, but she went towards him quite willingly, clutching onto the pulling hands.
As she got so close to him that their joined hands got trapped by their bodies & touched their chests, she looked up at him. The place was quite shadowy & they were so close, that actually deducing the minute details of each other's expressions was a task impossible. & for Arnav, it was doubly so, because, he suddenly felt his whole senses being engulfed by a sweet vanilla scent. So sweet that he actually had an overwhelming urge to just lean over & start sniffing her form to find out from where the scent was coming out, her hair or her body. But as he started to bend his head towards her shoulder, he saw the angry, red marks on her arms again & suddenly stopped mid-action, a bit horrified with himself as he thought, probably the little girl wouldn't appreciate being molested twice in the matter of 30 minutes, Arnav? He suddenly pulled back & dropped her hands & before she could display the shock she felt on her face, he was shrugging out of his Armani dinner jacket & as Khushi was about to step back after getting what he was about to do, he held her in her place by draping the jacket around her shoulders gently & then pulled the lapels close to snuggle her intimately inside the warmth of the jacket.
Then he moved back one step & bending down swiftly, picked Khushi up in his arms with seemingly no effort at all. & as he immediately started walking off in the direction of the guest house with long, steady strides, Khushi clutched onto his shoulders with both her hands in fear of getting dropped. No one has carried her like this since she had been 10 & certainly no one, whose arms were like hot steels over her body, making their presence felt wherever they touched. Khushi stuttered hastily, "Bu.. but I can walk.." Arnav looked down at her briefly & then said looking ahead, "Of course, you can walk. Otherwise, how would you have managed till now? But right now you're missing a shoe & walking barefoot around the farm, especially at night, can be foolish." & although Arnav said that to her, he knew the real fool here was himself, because having Khushi's whole body huddled up against his own wasn't helping some of his organs at all.
Khushi stole glances at his face for the whole seven minutes walk back to the guesthouse, & as she saw the guesthouse, she let out a sigh of relief. Arnav carried her up all the way to the front door & let go of her knees to let her down over the top landing of the front stairs. As her knees suddenly dangled in the air, Khushi, in a panic, hugged Arnav's shoulder with her arms, & Arnav's arm that was still around her mid-shoulder seemed to hug her body into his too. But as soon as Khushi's feet touched the ground, she understood Arnav was just letting her down on her feet, & she instantly moved away from him, tearing her arms from around his shoulder. & as Arnav's reluctant arm fell away from her body too, she spluttered with a contrite face, "Sorry..I thought when you'd put me down... you'd put my feet down... you know, I'd know, that you're letting me down.. When you let go of my legs, I thought I was falling.. I didn't know.. I didn't mean to hu-" She stopped unsurely. & as she was about to start again, he spoke softly, "Go on. Take rest." As Khushi just looked him, he jerked with his head towards the door leading inside the Guesthouse, "Go. Which room are you staying?" Khushi looked at him with worried eyes, everything coming back to her. So now he would leave, & she'd be left to think, about this mess & how she'd have to tell everything to everyone in the morning, all alone. Khushi absently answered his question as she turned towards the door, "The room with the yellow decor." But as she was about to slip in through the door, she heard his steady whisper, "This mess will still be here tomorrow, Khushi. You can take a break from it for tonight. Relax. Get some sleep." & then he reached & pulled the main door closed shut with her inside the house.
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The first thing Khushi did as she reached her room was take off his jacket & neatly folding it up, she placed it over her still unpacked over-night luggage. Then she stripped off the dress & threw it off into a corner. Then she went inside the bathroom, pulled her hair free of the pins while the bathtub filled with warm water, & then submerged her semi-violated body in the welcoming, cleansing water. & she didn't even know how long she laid in the tub, until she heard two sharp knocks on the door & Payal's hushed voice telling her to come out, so that Payal could get ready for bed too. As Khushi hurriedly got up & pulled the full-sleeved nightshirt over her head, she realized she was dreading meeting her own sister. But as she stepped onto the room, she saw Payal busily removing her earrings & then she went inside the bathroom, patting Khushi's cheek when she passed her. Just inside the bathroom door, Payal asked, "Khushi, did you see Karan? He suddenly left the party. Sid & I looked for him everywhere. Then when Sid called him, he said he suddenly had a headache & left for their resort early." Then she looked at Khushi who was sitting at the edge of the bed not looking at her at all & wondered aloud before she closed the bathroom door, "I am thinking how he didn't tell me before leaving, or how I didn't see him going or missed him sooner!"
Khushi laid down on the bed tiredly, not even bothering to dry her damp hair. The last thought that crossed her mind before sleep took her over from sheer exhaustion was, Payal was gonna ask a lot more uncomfortable questions tomorrow, & the task might fall on her to answer all those questions, because Karan might not be entirely truthful about them.
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As Arnav saw the lights finally going out in what he knew to be the Yellow room of the guest house after he had seen Rohan & Payal go in some half an hour ago, he stood up from the foot of the large Coconut tree standing ten feet away from the Guesthouse. All he could think about all this time that he was sitting there was, if he hadn't said those meaningless horrible things to hurt Khushi, she would've left the party with her siblings & then what happened later might not have happened.
The main house was nearby, but when he started walking, he walked to the opposite direction from the main house. When he reached the spot where he had earlier found Khushi, he started searching around holding out his I-phone for illumination, slowly walking over the patches, observing the surrounding carefully. He finally found what he was looking for after more than twenty minutes of searching. He bent down & picked up the nude-colored stiletto. Its strap was torn. Then he turned & started walking towards the main house, as a recollection suddenly hit him.
All the way to the main house, he kept trying to remember the fairytales Di used to try to engage him with. Wasn't there one, where the poor girl departs the party early & leaves her glass shoe behind? Just like Khushi. He couldn't remember the names of the girl or the story, thanks to his zero attention to it when it was being told. But suddenly as he stepped inside the house, he remembered the hero's name, no thanks to his membrane cells, but thanks to the name being widely used in urban cultures too. Prince Charming. Then as he entered his own room he smirked self-deprecatingly, well, then he was definitely not part of that story, as he was certainly neither any prince, nor someone charming. As he placed the shoe carefully on a shoe box in his own shoe cabinet, he let out a harsh laugh as he thought, if he had the qualifications of being part of any fairy tale, then it would definitely be that one. The one with the beast as the hero, & as his smile softened considerably, he remembered the heroine's name in this particular story. Belle, the Beauty. He closed the cabinet door with a loud thud as he thought woodenly, well, as it was, Khushi fit that bill perfectly too.
& for precap??..Well, I once wrote an OS on what happens after Arnav gift's Khushi all those things after Rakhi..Before Khushi wakes up in the morning & finds Arnav staring at her...Those who read it, will know what's coming next!😉
Don't forget to leave your comments & press 'like' if you do like!😃
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