Chapter 14 #2
Divya finally turned, glasses catching the harsh overhead light. “It’s not practical. For either of us. You’re a star. Your career is built on being the most wanted man in the country. Marrying your assistant? It’s professional suicide.”
“Let them,” Vikram snapped, voice low and dangerous.
“Don’t be a hero. This isn’t a script. You have brands, contracts, a legacy. You shouldn’t have to break your life to fix mine.”
Vikram took a step forward. He didn’t use the polished tone of a leading man. His voice was raw, stripped. “You think I’m doing this out of charity? Look at me, Divya.”
He waited until her eyes met his.
“I am the reason your name is being dragged through the mud. I am the reason your father is hiding in his own home. Every headline they write about you is a debt I can’t pay back with a check or a publicist’s apology.
I don’t give a damn about the ‘Khanna Brand’ if it’s built on the wreckage of your dignity. ”
He stepped closer, shadow falling over her.
“The world is hungry, Divya. They want to tear you apart because you’re ‘just an assistant.’ But as my wife?
You’re untouchable. I’m not asking you to love me.
I’m asking you to let me be the wall between you and the people who think they can touch what is mine.
If I have to burn my career to give you your life back, I’ll strike the match myself. ”
He paused, voice dropping. “Tell me you can find a better shield than that, and I’ll leave.”
Divya stared at him, breath hitching.
She began to think. Not as a girl in trouble, but as the assistant who had spent months managing his crises. Her mind shifted into professional gear, calculating fallout, timelines, optics.
“If we do this. The marriage.” She paused, fingers twisting the hem of her kurta. “I don’t want you tied to me for the rest of your life because of a mistake.”
He inhaled sharply.
Mistake.
The word burned.
He opened his mouth to respond, to tell her the sindoor wasn’t a mistake, that what he’d felt that day had been real, but she raised her hand slightly. A small, weary gesture asking for silence.
He gave it to her.
“Two years,” she said, words coming faster now. “A contract marriage for two years. Long enough to be convincing. Long enough for the story to die. Long enough for my father to walk in peace again.”
Her glasses slipped. She pushed them back up with that familiar knuckle.
The small, practical gesture almost undid him.
“After two years, we file for divorce. Quietly. Amicably. You’ll be free. Back to your life. Back to...” she swallowed hard, eyes finally meeting his, “whoever you actually want to be with. Without the scandal.”
Vikram felt the words hit like a physical blow.
His hands curled into fists at his sides, knuckles going white. His jaw clenched so hard a muscle jumped in his cheek. He exhaled slowly through his nose, one controlled breath to keep from saying what he wanted to say.
Two years. She’s giving me two years before she walks away.
The air left his lungs like he’d been punched.
She wasn’t protecting herself. She was protecting him.
He looked at her properly then. The dark circles. The exhaustion. The way she stood, like bracing for impact.
If he refused this condition, she might refuse the marriage entirely. She would think he was sacrificing out of guilt. She would step back to save him.
And he would lose her before it even began.
“Okay,” he said.
The word cost him everything.
His voice came out rougher than he intended, scraped raw.
Surprise flickered across her face. “Okay?”
He nodded, jaw still tight, hands still fisted. “Two years. Contract marriage. Then freedom.”
He paused, the next words feeling like gravel in his throat.
“If that’s what you want.”
She searched his face, looking for the performance, the charm, the Bollywood hero who could talk his way through anything.
She found only Vikram, serious and raw in the dim light of her parents’ room.
“Okay, Boss,” she whispered.
The word struck differently now. Not professional. Defensive. A wall she was rebuilding even as she agreed to marry him.
He almost asked her not to call him that. Almost closed the distance between them and told her without words that this wasn’t damage control, wasn’t obligation, wasn’t temporary no matter what contract they signed.
But she was too raw. Too breakable. Adding his own intensity to her burden would be selfish.
“Two years,” he repeated softly, the words tasting like ash. “Then you’re free.”
She wrapped her arms around herself, a habit when she felt exposed. A strand of hair fell across her cheek. She didn’t fix it.
Through the thin walls, the murmur of their parents’ voices continued, his father’s deep tone, her father's measured responses, already planning a future that had just been capped with an expiration date.
Vikram wanted to reach out, to draw her close, to tell her this wasn’t what he wanted at all.
But she was already moving past him toward the door, careful not to let even the fabric of her sleeve brush against him in the tight space.
Her hand paused on the doorknob.
“Thank you,” she said without turning around. “For doing this.”
The gratitude felt like acid on his skin.
She was thanking him for agreeing to leave her life in two years. Thanking him for treating her like an obligation with an end date.
Before he could respond, she opened the door and stepped out.
Vikram remained alone in the bedroom for a moment, staring at the space where she’d stood.
His hands were still fisted. His jaw still tight. The phantom pain of those two words, two years, echoing in his chest like a countdown clock he couldn’t stop.
Two years, he thought. Two years to earn what she’s too afraid to believe. Two years to make sure she never asks for an exit again.
He unclenched his fists slowly, feeling the half-moon marks his nails had left in his palms.
Then he followed her out, composing his face into something acceptable for her parents to see.
But inside, the war had already begun.
Two years.
He’d make every single day count.