This is a Short Story related to Arnav and Khushi's contract/hate marriage track.
On their wedding night what if Arnav couldn't bear to let Khushi sleep outside in cold Delhi air? Can there be a different end to the torturous night? Can he really ha...
Note: Please read slowly..let the words sink in...
Try to be in the moment and let me know if you feel what they feel..?
***
Khushi turned and slapped him.
All her accumulated suffering from months buried within erupted in that one slap.
A storm of feelings pass through his irises ... shock, anger ... horror, as his face stay turned to the side on the impact.
He looks at her, and a gut-wrenching sensation consumes him, a crash echoes in his being when the realization dawned..."What have I done."...
His eyes lose focus and he drops to his knees, tears flow through his eyes unbridled.
He had died within when he saw them on the terrace, tonight he finds himself in hell, his own personal hell where he has become the demon.
How can she forgive him, how can he even ask? No amount of apology could redeem him now, he has hurt her beyond forgiveness...
When the layer of anger and the curtain of deception is lifted from his mind, her voice resounds in his being "Arnav ji iss duniya k sabse achhe pati hain [Arnav ji is the bestest husband in the world]" . Now he can hear her expectations, her hope, the mellifluous purity with which she had declared him so...
Voice broken beyond repair he whispers,"Khushi, why can't I be the man you want me to be? Why can't "I" be the man you want..." ... reflecting, a rhetorical statement from within - he is so sure that she doesn't want him he dared not ask.
Child-like he reached for her legs for support lest the flames of his hellish fire within pull him in. He puts his head on her knees, surrendering, ready for any punishment she may deem appropriate.
Khushi felt stuck on her feet, paralyzed to act, confounded, beyond all thoughts.
She had never ever imagined something like this would happen between them, that Arnav is capable of hurting her so...
He was rough, rude, even wrong... he dragged her, tore her dori, insulted her at the drop of a hat, threatened her, married her forcefully. Yet something in him seemed to reach her. She couldn't stay away, something in her wanted to go near. Was it just a fascination of the moth for the flame, or was it something else? Was there a sense of coming home... at last someone to call entirely and absolutely her own, howmuchever tattered, unyielding and broken it might be? haq hai tumhara... mujh pe..[you have a right on me..]
And now..
Shouldn't she hate him for doing what he had done? It was horrendous really if you think of it...
But looking at him like this, on his knees, shattered, repenting, why does her heart goes to him still... why does the heart seek the things that her conscious mind forbids...
"No, no Khushi! Today you won't give in...Why does he have so much hatred and anger towards you.."
Wiping her tears and steeling her heart she pushed him away.
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