The Elite Bride ( I was enchanted to meet you, princess )

《 47. Tease 》

है  तुझे  भी  इजाज़त
कर  ले  तू  भी  मोहब्बत
है  तुझे  भी  इजाज़त
कर  ले  तू  भी  मोहब्बत|

(In Dino by Pritam and Soham)

R A G H A V

"Let me go, Raghav. I want to be alone for sometime." Her words like bullets pierced through my body. 

These 11 words were ringing in my head like a haunting malady. 

I wanted to stop her, but how?

How can I stop her when she wants me to do something I can't do? So I let her go, for today. The keyword there being for today. I will give her space, even when I absolutely hate the said concept. Why? If I separate myself from her, there are high chances that her defences may build up. There are high chances that she may build walls against me, not consciously but subconsciously. No matter how much I need her, want her and love her, I can't let that happen. If she starts seeing me as a source of pain to herself, then I am doomed. 

So I temporarily let her go. I let her believe that she is free from me. Away from me. When in reality, the tracker installed in her phone and the tracker in her payal  that I had gifted her for her crowning ceremony said that she was checking in the hotel : The Monarch.

Very well, Janaki. My wife is too smart for her own good. She deliberately chose my business rival's hotel. She knows that she can't stay in any one of my hotels or in some cheap motel because one, its too risky taking into consideration her number of enemies, two, I would not let her stay there so she chose such a place where I can't bother her. My goddamn rival's hotel. I can't locate her floor or room no. without alerting that jerk Jaisingh Chauhan.

I let out a breath. A headache was forming in the back of my head. Of course, it would. My body was acting up as I had not slept properly this past week. I couldn't stop thinking of that broken and wretched expression on her face when she held that legal notice in her hand. That goddamn notice. I wanted to burn it or put it in my mouth and gulp that stupid paper down my throat. Its not that I never wished to tell her. Its that I wasn't sure if she would even trust me. Or if she would be willing to touch me, hold me, kiss me or sleep by my side without ever thinking that she is sleeping beside a criminal? A man who is blamed for brutalising a woman? If she thinks that, then I swear I will take the gun from my drawer out and shoot myself in my mouth.

It was difficult. It was gruesome. It was torturous. To be away from her, it felt like plunging a dagger in my guts. Only I knew how I have maintained distance from her these three days after she found out. To be away from someone whom you were impressed from the very first time you met them, whom you were curious about, whom you constantly kept thinking about, whom you wished to make the epicentre of your world, whom you wanted to love even after being brutally hurt by the same thing called love, how is it possible? How do people stay way from the ones they love? Because here, four hours, thirty seven minutes and twelve seconds after begrudgingly leaving her near the court, I am going berserk.

The ticking of the ancient clock in my room is annoying me, reminding me that by each passing second Janaki is going away from me. It is ringing in my head that she is slipping from my fingers like sand. And I can't do anything because she forbade me from going after her. Only if I could shake off the paranoid feeling that something is going to happen then I wouldn't be pacing in my room back and forth.