An Inconvenient Flame (Completed)

Chapter 27

~Abhiraj's pov~

My eyelids lift open. The yellow hue of morning moves across the ceiling in slow panels through the glazed wall.

I'm in the chair. My neck aches from it.

I sit forward, rolling the stiffness from my shoulders, and look at the bed. She's on her stomach, hair loose around her face, one arm hanging off the edge. Still fully dressed. The blanket has slid half off her.

I watch her for a moment longer than necessary.

Last night was... I don't have a clean word for it. I settled her debt with one call and spent the remainder of the evening sitting in a chair watching city lights while she slept. Nothing happened. And still something did, in the way that words said quietly in a locked room have a way of not going away.

You don't mean that. She had said it to my face. Called my bluff without flinching, her eyes wet and her voice steady. I had not expected that from her.

I hadn't expected a lot of things about her.

I get up, set my phone face-down on the sideboard, and move to the window. The city is already loud below. I have three meetings before noon and a call with the board at two. I focus on that instead.

Behind me I hear the soft shift of the blanket.

"...Morning."

Her voice is rough with sleep. I turn around. She's sitting up, hair pushed back from her face with both hands, blinking at the light. She looks at the chair. Then at me standing by the window. A beat passes where she's clearly reassembling last evening in sequence.

"You slept there all night?" she asks.

"I've slept in worse places."

She doesn't push it. Just nods, pulling the blanket around her shoulders and looking out at the city with an expression I can't quite read. Not uncomfortable, exactly. More like careful.

"Thank you," she says, without looking at me. "For yesterday. All of it."

"Don't mention it." I mean that practically. I don't want her building architecture around one evening of... whatever it was. Civility. I was civil. That's a low bar.

"I won't bring it up again," she says quietly, as if she read the thought. "I know what it was and what it wasn't."

I look at her.

She meets my eyes, and there's no accusation in hers. No demand for more than was offered. Just a steady acknowledgment that she understood exactly where the walls are, and she isn't going to throw herself against them.

Something about that sits uncomfortably in my chest.

"I'll have the driver bring the car around," I say. "You can freshen up here, there are spare toiletries in the bathroom cabinet. I'll arrange breakfast."

She nods. "Okay."

I move toward the door.

"Abhiraj."

I pause without turning.

"I'm not going to be a problem," she says. "I know that's what you're thinking. I won't be."

I don't respond. I open the door and go.

She doesn't say much in the car. Neither do I. The city passes outside her window and she watches it with her hands in her lap, fingers loose, nothing held tightly. That in itself is new... she usually clutches things, bags, her own hands, whatever is nearest.

When we reach the mansion gates she unbuckles and gathers her bag before the car has fully stopped.

"I'll be fine from here," she says.

"I know."

She opens the door, then hesitates just long enough that I think she's going to say something else. She doesn't. She just gets out, closes the door with both hands so it doesn't slam, and walks through the gate without looking back.

I watch until she's inside.

Then I tell the driver to go.

Ishika's POV

Nikhil gives me a look when I walk in that I don't address.

Ivaan is still asleep... it's barely seven... and the house is quiet in that particular way it gets before the day has committed to being anything. I set my bag down by the entrance and stand in the kitchen for a long moment, doing nothing.

Last night he said not yet.

It was the smallest thing. Two words, offhand, almost swallowed. But I heard it. I am a person who has spent her whole life listening for the parts people don't mean to say out loud, and I heard it.

Not yet.

I fill a glass of water and drink it standing at the sink, looking out at the garden.

I'm not going to build anything on two words from a man who slept in a chair to keep a distance he didn't have to keep. I'm not an idiot. I know the difference between a door cracking open and a door opening.

But I'm also not going to pretend I didn't hear it.

I set the glass down.

Ivaan will be up in an hour and he'll want his breakfast and his morning story and to tell me whatever he dreamed about with the seriousness of a person delivering important news. I have laundry to sort and a call with Dhriti about next week's schedule and somewhere in the afternoon I need to sit with the PhD application and figure out what is actually possible and what I have been using as a comfort object rather than a plan.

There is enough to do. There always is.

I go to check on Ivaan, and I let that be enough for now.

              To be continued...

Hiiii Reader's....

So how was the chapter??

Basically I gave here kind of an Insight of what's going on in Abhiraj's Mind.

Ummm...so now what do you think...this guy is literally going bonkers. At one point you'll feel he is melting and the other he is nuts. 😁

Next update soon...

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