Beautiful Girl

Part Twenty five

Her feet move unbidden towards Sam, and a part of Arnav looks on with abject apathy while the other is screaming inside to grab her hand and hold on to it. To stop her from taking another step in the direction of the boy who has come to collect what he so carelessly left behind.

"What are you doing in this neighborhood, Sam?"

Arnav forces himself to stand his ground when the boy reaches and pulls Khushi in a hug.

She freezes, and it does nothing to mollify the beast slithering beneath his skin.

His hands on her body...he closes his eyes to gain a semblance of control he doesn't feel. When he opens them again, Khushi has stepped out of Sam's embrace.

"Is there somewhere we can talk?" the boy asks pointedly, glaring at him as if he is the interloper.

Arnav returns that stare with one of his own, a look so frigid that it makes the boy turn his gaze away.

"You could come up with us. We're just coming back from the movies," she offers and Arnav wants to howl. He doesn't want this boy stealing into the space he shares with Khushi, the place where she is all his.

"You won't introduce me to-"

"Oh!" She walks back to him and lopes her arm around his waist, and his hand pulls her automatically snug to his side.

"My husband Arnav," she says lightly as if she's happy introducing him to her first love. "We eloped."

The lie passes easily from her lips and Arnav wonders if she really believes in what she's saying, or if she's putting on a show for her first love.

The boy walks to where they're standing, and the rage in his eyes when they keep lingering on his arm around her...it's satisfying.

"Sam," he says as he offers his hand for Arnav to shake.

"Pleasure," Arnav returns in the same vein, shaking the proffered limb.

"Come on. Let me show you my home," Khushi says from by his side as they walk towards the elevator with the boy following them.

Why has he come?

Why now when everything was falling in place?

Is Sam the divine retribution for all the people Arnav has wronged in his life?

Khushi is nervous. He can tell as much.

It's there in her eyes, in the way she keeps leaning against him as if to draw strength. He squeezes her arm in support and she looks up.

Doesn't she know that he can do anything for her?

Even let her go if that's what she wants... 

*

The chime of elevator does nothing to dispel the silence that hangs over them. Quietly, their party of three treks through the corridor to the door of the flat.

The thud of the door being pushed back into it's frame rings in the grand, cavernous space of their living room.

She is still holding on to him even as the by tries to bore holes into his skull from behind.

"Khushi?" the boy pipes and she takes a deep breath before stepping out of his embrace to face him.

"I'll be in my study, darling," he tells her and is about to walk off when she grabs hold of his hand.

"Don't leave me," she says earnestly and the wildness in him, the beast beneath his skin, it settles down.

"Never," he replies as he brings their joined hands to his lips to place a kiss against the back of her palm.