"Happy Married Life, Shivya Pathak" I weakly smiled seeing my condition, mangalsutra dangling in my neck, vermilion in hair and both hands filled with gold bangles.
"Come out quickly or do you want me to break the gate," my husband knocked again...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
For a second, Vedant simply stared at her
His eyes widened in pure surprise before amusement flickered through them, and though he tried to suppress it, the corners of his mouth betrayed him by lifting into a smile.
He would never understand how she managed to do this to him-how she could say the very things she would never normally dare to admit, as if her guarded nature forgot itself for a few careless seconds and let her truth spill out between them.
Most of the time, her sudden honesty left him awkwardly silent. But God, he loved it, those were the moments he cherished the most.
Then the meaning of her own words struck Shivya with brutal clarity. The color rushed to her cheeks so fast that she felt as though her skin had caught fire.
Mortification seized her so completely that for one wild second she wished the earth would open beneath her feet and spare her from standing there another moment. Snatching her hand away from his, she pushed lightly against his chest and tried to move past him in a desperate attempt to escape.
This time, however, Vedant refused to let her flee. He had watched her retreat too many times, had seen her hide behind distance whenever something real came too close, and somewhere deep inside he knew that if he stepped aside now, she would keep running from him-and perhaps from them-for far too long.
"Vedant kya kar rahe hain?" she asked, struggling to slip around him. He did not move even slightly instead, he stood firmly in front of her, calm and composed, his gaze fixed on the flustered woman trying so hard not to meet his eyes.
[Vedant, what are you doing?]
"Pahle aap bataiye," he said in a way that only made her pulse race harder, "aap kya rahi hai, Sona."
[First, you tell me\ What exactly you are doing, Sona]
Shivya's eyes darted everywhere except toward him. She looked at the floor, at the wall behind him-anywhere that would save her from the unbearable intimacy of his gaze. She was so embarrassed that she felt she could not even face herself, let alone him.
"What am I doing?" she repeated, lifting one shoulder in a careless shrug that convinced neither of them. "I don't know what you mean."
Vedant slowly removed the hand that had been resting around her waist. The absence of his touch was immediate and startling, leaving behind an emptiness she felt far more than she should have.
His expression softened as he watched her. "Do I make you uncomfortable?" he asked gently. Her head rose at once, and she shook it without hesitation.
He studied her for another moment before asking the next question with even more care, "Dar lagta hain aapko humse?" As he spoke, he took a measured step backward and clasped his hands behind him, giving her the space she had been trying so desperately to claim.
