Loving Khushi felt like a betrayal of both his sister and his mother. Arnav's conflicting feelings almost drove him to madness, and things were never as complicated as they were now, with him facing the choice of taking Khushi at her word or never trusting her again.
The lead-up to Aakash and Payal's wedding had been one magical moment after another. His cousin and hers, bound together forever. He would never forget the precious time he'd spent with Khushi, even though what he'd witnessed on the terrace tainted his memories. He couldn't escape the feeling that those days had been momentous for both of them, even as his mind screamed that Khushi had only been pretending to distract him from the terrible truth.
That she'd always been pretending.
He hadn't imagined his attraction to her, nor his concern for her. He'd stopped breathing when he thought she was in that ambulance, his heart had only restarted when he heard her arguing with a vendor. His relief at finding her unharmed had quickly morphed into anger, and everything had gotten mixed up inside his head.
Instead of asking her if she was alright, he'd yelled at her for forgetting her phone, even admitting that he'd thought he'd lost her. "What if I lost you damn it!" he'd shouted at her, before she'd unfrozen from shock and yelled right back. Their heated exchange had only ended when, in admitting that he cared about what happened to her, he'd almost blurted out the truth he'd tried so hard to avoid – that he was falling in love with her. That he'd fallen in love with her.
Although he refused to admit it afterwards, he also remembered every moment of Holi. He remembered how beautiful she'd looked, how they'd danced together, how she'd asked him why her heart reacts to him the way it does. Her questions and tenderness had brought tears to his eyes, and he'd been compelled to answer truthfully – that his heart also beat faster around her, and that maybe their heartbeats had become one.
Her words at the airport had astounded him. Her desperate admission that proving herself innocent only seemed important because it was him, and that if he left thinking she was guilty then she might ... stop ... breathing.
An echo of his sister's words, that one day he'd meet a woman he couldn't live without, couldn't breathe without.
He'd waited months for her to admit that she cared, for her to admit that he mattered, and it'd felt like the universe was playing some cruel joke on him that she chose that moment to tell him.
She'd claimed she would stop breathing, but since he'd stepped away from her, he felt like his soul had been ripped from him.
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Forgive Her Anything (IPKKND AU) #Wattys2016
Fanfiction(IPKKND AU) In love with his brother-in-law's mistress, Arnav Singh Raizada is torn between his duties as a brother and his feelings for a woman who could destroy everything he loves. After giving his wife a final chance to explain herself at the ai...
