Two shot : Emotional one (Complete)

THE minute she decided to abide by the contract, Khushi peeled away from Arnav and headed for the stairs. "I'm sleeping on my own tonight in the guest bedroom."

"What the?"

She paused in her headlong flight up the stairs and turned her head so she could glare at him. "You heard me. I don't want to sleep with you in the same room."

"What is the matter with you? Don't shout."

That perfectly gorgeous face was set in lines of genuine puzzlement and that made her even angrier. How could he not know what was wrong? Was he that insensitive?

"I'm not sleeping with a man who thought I was good enough to screw her life for six months, but not good enough to marry!"

He gasped. "Do not speak like that of yourself!"

"You're allowed to think it, but I'm not allowed to say it? Get real, Arnavji."

He looked completely taken aback by her words. "I do not think this thing."

"Yes, you do, and don't you bother denying it." The tears were burning her throat and eyes, but she would have her say and get to the privacy of the guest room before she let them fall. "You were about to get engaged to Lavanyaji while you were busy flirting with me and seducing me, and why did you do that?"

"Because'"

She didn't let him finish. "You thought I was a small class gold digger who was trying to trap you into marriage so you had no intention of having any sort of future with me."

"Perhaps I tried to convince myself of that, but'"

"But nothing! I can't believe you ever thought I would have an affair with a married man. You're only making me stay out of misplaced guilt. If you hadn't had the bad luck to see me hugging Shyamji, you would be married to some other girl belonging to your class and stature by now."

A sort of dawning horror was reflected in his eyes. He was probably appalled she knew the truth. "You cannot believe this."

"Don't insult my intelligence by trying to tell me otherwise. I may have acted like one with you, Arnavji, but I'm not a fool."

Did he think she couldn't put two and two together? With that she spun on her heel and rushed up the stairs.

He shouted her name, cursed in English and then yelled at her to be careful. She ignored all of it and slammed into the guest room, locking the door and then falling against it as she let the burning tears track down her cheeks.

Seconds later he pounded on the door, making it reverberate against her. "Khushi, let me in."

"N-no."

"Be reasonable. Open up."

"I'I w-won't."

The pounding stopped. "Are you crying?"

"Wh-what d-do you c-care?" she choked out between deep, gasping sobs.

It hurt so much.

She felt used.

She felt betrayed.

And she felt scared.

Because she was sure she was in love with the man who could think so little of her. She knew now that he only cared for his Di and did not care even if he hurt anybody else in the process of making her happy.

"I care. Please, open the door."

The unaccustomed pleading had no effect on her. She was in too much emotional pain.

"G-go away!"

"I cannot do that."

"Then I w-will." She pushed herself away from the door and trudged across the floor to the en suite.

Her body shook with crying, her stomach hurt and she couldn't breathe through her nose, much less see a clear path through her tears. Disoriented, she bumped into the doorjamb on her way into the bathroom. Stumbling back, she cried harder.

She finally made it into the bathroom and shut that door as well. She also locked it. The extra layer of wood between them muffled Arnav's voice, but it did not obliterate it. She turned on the shower, climbed in the stall fully clothed and sat on the floor, letting the hot water cover her while she cried out her grief.

She hadn't cried for a long time. She'd had no one to share her grief and somehow that had made it impossible for her to express it, but now the tears came. She let the pain of its loss wash over her right along with the agony of this fresh betrayal by Arnav.

He was a cold-hearted snake. How could she have forgotten that fact? He didn't want her.

The physical ache inside her grew until she turned onto her side on the floor of the shower stall, curled up like an infant. She tried to hold it in, this pain that splintered through her, shredding her heart, her very soul, but it would not be contained.

Once released, she could not contain her grief. It was all mixed up inside her, tonight's revelations and her marriage. Feelings she had been denying for a year washed over her drowning her in their sorrow. Tears poured out of her while her muscles cramped in physical response to her mental agony.

"Oh my God!" Strong hands curved around her shoulders, pulling her toward a big male body. "Khushi, do not do this to yourself."

"I hate you, Arnavji. You hurt me." She said more muddled things, few of which even she understood. Most of which had nothing to do with his revelations tonight.

He didn't respond with words, but picked her up, taking her from the shower, and turned off the water. She tried to fight him, but her grief drained her and she ended up lying against him like a soggy, acquiescent child.

He stripped her and dried her off, all the while remonstrating with her for getting into such a state. She ignored him, crying silently, but still crying.

He groaned when he touched her face and brushed away tears, only to watch as her cheeks became drenched again. "Please, you will make yourself sick."

She shook her head, trying to shut out his presence.

He wrapped a fluffy bath sheet around her and then set her on the closed toilet seat. "What can I say to make it better?"

"Nothing. I want to go to bed. To sleep. Alone." She glared at him with wet eyes. "Without you," she said for emphasis in case he didn't get it.

He sighed and pulled off his wet clothes. He toweled his hair and she realized he'd gotten pretty soaked taking her from the shower. "I cannot leave you like this."

"Because my feelings don't matter to you."

"This is not true." He tightened his jaw like a man trying to hold in his temper.

"It is true. I want to be alone and you won't let me. Wh-what d-do you c-call that?" She'd started crying harder again.

He jerked around and marched out of the bathroom, through a door she now saw was hanging in a broken doorframe. So that was how he'd gotten in. Brute force. At least he had left. She could wallow in her pain in peace now.

It was too much of an effort to get up and go into the bedroom, so she sat on the toilet seat and let the tears fall.

That was how he found her when he returned a few minutes later. He swept her into his arms and carried her through to the bedroom. He laid her on the bed as if she were some kind of fragile porcelain doll. Then he tucked the covers around her, but he made no move to join her.

And that was what she wanted. It was.

She needed to be away from him to think.

He sat beside her and she shied away from him. She couldn't help it, but he scowled.

"I won't hurt you, damn it."

"You already have." She said it in such a defeated tone, she shocked herself.

His complexion went from olive darkness to paste white in a breath. "It was not my intention."

"That doesn't make it better." She wasn't even sure if she was talking about now or few months ago, but it didn't really matter. The pain was now. The grief was now.

She went to turn away from him, but he lifted her into a sitting position and pressed glass to her lips.

She refused to drink. "What is it?"

"Just water. You need something to settle you."

She'd stopped crying. Arnav had handed her a tissue to mop up and now they both sat in silence. Her under the covers, him on top, the distance between them as good as a mile.

"I want to sleep alone."

He nodded. "If that is your wish."

And he left.

And she wondered if it really had been. Her emotions were careening all over the place and she hated this seesaw they seemed to be on.

She turned on her side, away from the mental image of Arnav sitting beside her on the bed, and tried to sleep. In sleep, the pain would go away.

Arnav went downstairs his room. He wanted more than anything to go back up to that bedroom and convince Khushi that she was wrong about his feelings for her, wrong about his motives. He wouldn't. He couldn't. He'd left in the first place because she looked so fragile, so ready to go over the edge of her emotional control once again. He slumped into the armchair closest to the bed, feeling as if the very heart had been ripped from his chest. The pain he had known upon discovering Shyam's betrayal was like a pinprick compared to the slashing knife wound to his soul inflicted by Khushi's rejection.

It had only been as he sat there, forced to witness an emotional pain so profound it pounded his heart like a sledgehammer that he had realized the true extent of his feelings for her. He loved her.

Why did that come as such a shock?

No other emotion could explain how completely necessary she was to him. He had lived, not existed, the past year while she was with him.

And, like an idiot he had denied the emotion, preferring to believe he was righting a wrong done. Admitting he had been prompted by love would have given her too much power over him. So he had protected his vulnerability, only to destroy his chance at happiness with the one woman that mattered.

She believed he had thought she was not as good as Lavanya. She could believe he still felt that way, for all he knew.Arnav had never once attempted to court Lavanya, but he doubted that would make any difference to Khushi. Not in her current state, definitely. She had reacted like a woman betrayed and he did not blame her.His own stupidity had led to such a pass.She hated him when he had finally come to the realization that he loved her and needed her more than he needed life-giving sustenance.

Khushi tossed in the bed, the covers twisting around her legs, and fought the memory of Arnav's face when she had sent him away. He had looked devastated.

Why?

OK, so he had mentioned once he loved her but that was because of kidnapping and just to let her know he was n trouble.At last she fell in an uneasy sleep because she was tired of crying.

She woke from a gentle brushing on the top curve of her breast. Her eyes fluttered open and she looked up. Arnav sat beside her on the bed, freshly showered, looking much better than he had the night before. He'd donned a robe, but nothing else.

She looked down where the backs of his knuckles continued to brush back and forth against her soft flesh. The sheet was around her waist and her breasts were bare to his sight, a fact he had definitely noticed.

She reached for the sheet, feeling vulnerable all of a sudden.

He stayed her hand. "No. You are so beautiful; it is a crime to cover such perfection."

The words were said so reverently that she could not take issue with them, but she curled her fingers around his wrist to stop the tantalizing movement of his hand. "We need to talk."

"yes." His dark brown gaze caught and held her own. "You said you hate me, is this the truth?"

"No."

"You were very angry last night. My thoughtlessness hurt you and for this I do not know how to make amends."

"You wanted to marry somebody else but you are stuck with me."

"I am not."

He sounded so sure that she had to believe him.

"I don't understand."

"You scared me. The way I felt when I was around you scared me."

She shook her head back and forth on the pillow. "No. Nothing frightens you."

Not even gunmen. She would never forget how he had fought the kidnappers.

"Yes. Scared. You evoked strong emotions I did not want."

"Because of Lavanyaj."

"My first reaction to you eclipsed any feelings I ever had for her. You did not only threaten my self-control, you threatened my heart."

Her breath paused and then came out in a big whoosh. "That sounds as if you cared."

"I fell in love with you before even Lavanya even entered RM, but I refused to admit it. Did not need to admit it. Then we were free, me from Lavanya and you from Shyam. I was happy."

"And then you saw us on the terrace hugging."

"And I destroyed what we had because of fear, old wounds and a stupid misunderstanding."

"You forced me into marriage."

"I could not let you go. You are the other half of myself. Without you I am not half-alive, I am dead."

She shivered at the finality and sincerity of his words. He'd said he had fallen in love with her. "Do you still love me?"

"More than you can know. More than I can ever say."

"But Lavanyaji'"

"Was a thought, an attempt at a smoke screen of my feelings."

"But I didn't know what you felt!"

"Not for you, for myself. I lied to myself and convinced myself what we had was merely physical, but I paid a price."

"Di's happiness."

"And yours. I lost my Di and my woman in one fell swoop of my pride, in doing things in the wrong way."

She struggled into a sitting position, needing to touch him. He allowed her to put her arms around him, but he remained distant.. "I care about you. I need you."

"How can you after all I have done?" His voice was hoarse with emotion. "Last night, you cried so much." The torment in his voice tore at her heart.

"Last night'" She paused, unsure how to go on.

"Yes?"

"It was more than just what you thought about me during Jiji's marriage. It was as if a dam had burst and all the hurt I'd tried to ignore after losing my parents came out." She drew on the strength of having his warmth surrounding her and spoke a truth that had devastated her. "I haven't cried for a long time. There was no one to grieve with."

"I would have grieved with you."

Finally, she believed that was true and it healed wounds that had been gouged by his supposed indifference.

"I couldn't forgive you. Not yesterday." She sighed, wishing he would put his arms around her, and nuzzled his chest some more. "And last night everything got all jumbled together."

His big body shuddered and then two strong arms locked around her in a hold that said he would never let her go. "I am glad you finally grieved, but I pray God you never know such pain again. It unmans me."

She giggled a little. "You don't feel unmanned."

"Do not tease. We have serious things to discuss."

"Like what?" she asked, all innocence.

He pulled back and glowered at her. "Like whether my love is returned, you little torment."

"I could never stop loving you, Arnavji."

"You tried."

"We had it all backwards."

"Yes, the marriage before the courtship."

She nodded.

"We have to fix this, to put it right."

She didn't know what he meant, but she soon learned. Arnav spent the next week courting her in every way a man could court a woman. He escorted her to the restaurants, treating her like a date, leaving the work to Akash and Aman.

There were no problems with Di later. Once she was taken to psychologist, she soon became her normal self and was looking forward to her rajkumari. Once she came to know all the truth from Khushi's parents she divorced Shyam without looking back even once. She was looking forward to spend time with her newborn and was planning to raise her child with values and tradition. Nani, Mami and NK supported Anjali in every way to make her strong.

In the meantime, Arnav brought her flowers, bought her beautiful jewellery, wrote her poetry that was terrible, but she would never tell him so, and refused to share their bed until after the wedding. She'd complained, saying he already considered her his wife, but he had remained firm.

She deserved a courtship and she would get it.

Their wedding was as big and loud as any Indian family could make it. It wasn't until they boarded his private jet to take off for their real honeymoon to Bali that they were alone.

She snuggled into his lap once they reached hotel in Bali. "You belong to me now."

"As you belong to me." And he meant it. The acceptance she had craved her whole life, the legitimate place in the life of another, were hers with Arnav. He adored her and wanted to be with her all the time. He needed her and had shown her in so many ways how real that need was.

"I love you." She kissed his throat right above the shirt points of his tux.

His arms tightened around her and his lips sought hers for a kiss that left her smiling and loopy with joy. "I love you, always and forever. Never doubt it."

"How can I? I can feel it with every breath you take, every glance, and every touch. Our love is like a living bond between us."

"Yes." He pressed his hand over her waist. "Very alive."