Chapter 26 The Emotional Whiplash of Crying One Moment and Being Horny the Next #2
And right then, another broken part of me slowly starts to heal.
After we’ve had some minutes to get ourselves together and touch up our makeup, we step out fully dressed and ready. Rudra
is waiting for us on the couch, playing something mutedly on his guitar.
He sets it aside and gets to his feet when we walk out, his eyes widening. He’s coincidentally wearing all black like us—black
tee, black leather jacket, and baggy black jeans, a silver chain looped around his neck and his hair down and waving around
his face. His feet are snug in black loafers and there are oxidized rings on his fingers, one even shaped like a guitar. Now,
that outfit? Definitely branded and expensive. Stuff that’s bought in three-floored luxury stores in air-conditioned malls.
It’s the sexiest I’ve ever seen him look, and that’s saying something.
“Look at us all, matching in black,” Priti comments, walking over to him and ruffling his hair. “Society would be a hundred
percent more evolved if everyone wore black all the time. It shows.”
“Okay, but could you stop messing with my hair?”
Priti feigns a hurt look. “Can’t even show my bestie some affection these days without being rudely rejected.”
Rudra sighs, and I feel slightly sorry for him because he has to put up with Priti’s dramatics. But I’m relieved to see he’s
not looking as tired anymore.
Priti shuts off the lights in the living room. “Baga Beach, here we come!”
It’s a quick drive to the beach, just like Priti said, and Rudra navigates the difficult roads of Goa with expertise (nothing
short of what I expected of him). I sit in the front this time, map open on my phone, knowing I owe Priti for having slept
the whole journey from Pune to Goa.
What I love about Goa is that it doesn’t look like any other city in India. Most of the roads snake through thick forests
with greenery all around, palm leaves scraping a moonlit sky. There’s a sprinkling of wine shops, thatched huts, and a variety
of markets. There are so many tourists walking the roads here it doesn’t feel like India.
Calangute has an active nightlife, even past one a.m. Every few meters, there are clubs and pubs and restaurants blasting
music, both DJ and karaoke, letting out waves of smoke and featuring crowds of people in shimmering outfits, jubilation painted
over their faces.
Everyone’s wearing such short clothes that no one really stands out. In India, I’m used to people turning around to leer when
I wear anything that shows a little more skin than I normally would. This is new. I don’t feel out of place in my halter-neck and skirt anymore. Instead, I feel quite the opposite. I feel like I fit right
in. Safe.
The excitement pools into every corner of me, making my veins buzz. I look out the window the entire time, soaking up the
glorious sights, itching to get to our destination.
When we get there, Rudra stops in front of the path leading to the beach. “Priti, why don’t you book us a table while Krishna and I find a parking spot?”
Priti’s too revved up to make a comment about why he’s specifically asking me to stay or why I can’t accompany her instead.
She nods, opens the car door, and jumps out, yelling, “We’re here, baby!” before sprinting down the path.
And then it’s just Rudra and me inside the car. We’re restlessly quiet while he looks for a parking spot. I don’t dare turn
to him, my mind racing with a hundred different possibilities of why he might’ve asked me to stay, ninety-nine of them being
that he’s going to confront me about whatever’s going on between us.
So I focus on looking for a vacant spot instead. I find one a minute later, tucked away into a dark corner of the lot. This
time, I can’t help but shamelessly watch as he does that hot steering-the-wheel thing again, with just one hand, his palm
pressing into the curve of the wheel and directing it to the right. The BMW smoothly slips into the parking space, perfectly
parallel to the cars on either side of us.
I gulp as the car hums to a stop. Rudra’s face is dark, barely lit by the green and blue lights from the digits on the dashboard.
The only streetlight is five parking spaces away, and it silhouettes him, casting most of his face in shadow. I grab the door
handle, pulling, needing to get away—
“Wait.”
Rudra unbuckles himself from the seat and leans toward me, his hand touching my shoulder. A tiny current zips out from the
point where the skin of his palm and my skin come in contact, and I shiver, loving and loathing how his hand feels on my bare
skin.
“What?” I whisper, turning to look at him. He’s so close our shaky breaths cloud together in the space between our faces.
“I didn’t get a chance to tell you,” Rudra says, his voice so hoarse it’s like he’s struggling to dislodge it from his throat. His calloused fingers brush my shoulder, just briefly, and a million unholy thoughts fog my head.
“Chance to tell me what?” Now it feels like my voice is stuck in my throat. I can barely speak. I tilt my head, moving my shoulder up, nudging him, begging him to do it
again, to brush his fingers against my skin.
Granted the permission, he skims his knuckles up to my ear, that same spot he touched last night, when we were standing under
a hundred fireflies. My eyes flutter shut, and I can’t breathe, can’t think, can’t move. It’s like he read my mind. It’s like
he knows exactly what makes my knees weak and my veins catch fire.
He brushes a lock of my hair behind my ear, and I can feel him looking at me with that dark gaze of his, and god, if I look
at him again, I’ll disintegrate to dust. There’ll be nothing left but the essence of me. And just the essence of me isn’t
enough to become a doctor, so something must be done about it.
He draws closer, his inexplicably feverish form oozing warmth into my side, and his lips touch my ear, grazing it so lightly
I don’t even feel his lips on my skin, just on the tiny hair now standing to attention all over my body. The part of me that
shouts This is wrong is overpowered, conquered by the part of me that’s on my knees, longing for him to kiss me.
“Just that you look really fucking hot right now,” he finally responds, right into my ear. His voice is deep and rough, and
the blood pulsing in my throat turns to steam. His fingers knot into my hair from the back, tilting my head up, and his lips
move from my ears to my cheekbone, my cheekbone to the corner of my lips. I give in, mouth parting to kiss him—
And he pulls away.
I nearly scream as he draws his hand back to grab the door handle and wrenches it open. My eyes snap open and stare at him,
flushed and hot and embarrassed, my body an absolute mess of nerves. I can’t believe he had the audacity to come that close, to almost kiss me, and then . . . and then pull away.
“Why would you do that?” I gasp, wanting to bring my hands up to my cheeks to siphon some of the heat from them but finding
myself unable to move. My lips are tingling, and I can’t wrap my head around the fact that he almost kissed me.
Almost.
“Because I want you to make up your mind about what you want, Krishna,” he says. The distant chaos of the outside leaks in
through the open door. “And as much as I want nothing more than to kiss you so hard you see stars right now”—he locks gazes
with me one more time before stepping out onto the pavement, and the fierceness of the desire I see in his eyes nearly bowls
me over—“it’s just going to have to wait.”