Dhaagey: The Ties that Bind Us

49. back to normal

Author's Note: Thank you for all the love for the last chapter, so glad that so many of you liked it! It was a long time in the making, so thank you all for sticking around. We now shift focus a bit and get back to the fluff and stuff, hehe. See you on the other side!

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The car rolled forward in steady silence, tires humming against the village road that had seen too much. The panchayat was behind them now. The noise, the fury, the verdict, all swallowed by distance and dust. But none of it settled inside him until he glanced sideways.

Meerab.

She was still wrapped in his shawl, a contrast to the bright, unyielding yellow of her suit – sunlit and defiant, like her. The shawl and her dupatta had slipped though, the edge barely clinging to her shoulder, forgotten in the stillness that followed the storm. She sat composed, poised, as though untouched by the weight of what they'd just undone.

His hand remained locked with hers, resting in that familiar space between the gear shift and his thigh, a tether he had no intention of letting go. Gentle, firm, constant.

He brought her hand to his lips.

Deliberate. Unhurried.

The kiss he pressed to her knuckles was soft. Her skin was warm beneath his mouth, and he let his lips linger for a heartbeat longer than necessary before drawing back, his thumb brushing slow circles over the delicate bones of her hand.

Mapping what he already knew, again.

Touching her was a way to calm himself too.

She didn't speak.

She hadn't, really, since they left the courtyard behind them. And he didn't ask why. Meerab carried things differently. Her silences weren't voids but vessels, places where thoughts lived and changed shape before they emerged. He had learned to wait. To let her unfold on her own terms.

But then he heard it.

A sound so small it almost didn't register.

A sniffle.

Not theatrical, not sharp, just soft. Raw. Real. The kind of sound someone makes when they're not trying to be heard at all. A breach in the calm.

His eyes flicked to her instantly, his foot easing off the accelerator in the same breath. She was turned toward the window, her face half-shadowed by sunlight. One hand rose, brushing quickly beneath her eye, the gesture too casual to fool him.

A tear. Then another.

His chest tightened.

"Meerab, yaar." His voice was soft, confused and aching with tenderness. A soft ache that threaded through the syllables, like he couldn't quite understand how, after everything they'd faced and won, she would weep now. Not at the height of the storm, not in the thick of it, but in its quiet, triumphant afterglow.

Without another word, he veered the car gently off the main road, wheels crunching over gravel with a sound that was almost tender, as if even the earth knew to tread lightly now. He guided them into a narrow, shaded lane that cut through a grove he knew well, a pocket of quiet the world had forgotten. Shafts of light streamed through the trees in fractured gold, dancing across the windshield.

He eased the car to a stop beneath an old tree, its branches arching overhead like a canopy. The engine ticked as it cooled, the world outside pausing with them.

He turned towards her. "Come here."

He didn't need to ask twice.

She moved as if drawn by instinct, with a fluid, practiced ease that said everything about how often they'd done this before. She climbed into his lap, her knees bracketing his hips, his arms opening automatically to receive her, the way they always did.