Chapter 15
It was Siya’s turn to assign her challenge and she planned to make it count.
Kashvi leaned in and said in a hushed voice, ‘Since he loves giving grand love speeches, let’s see how he survives without pretty words.’
‘That’s evil,’ Meera whispered back. ‘Poor Abhay has to deal with not just one, but both Kashyap sisters. I should start praying for his soul.’
Loving the suggestion, Siya sat up straighter and calmly declared, ‘Abhay isn’t allowed to talk. You have to make a gesture of love, but only in actions, not in words.’
From across her, Abhay stopped mid-sip, then lowered his drink. For a moment, Siya thought she’d caught him off guard, but then a corner of his mouth arched up, accepting her challenge. Mischief bloomed on his face, and that infuriating dimple in his cheek deepened.
It had felt smart at the time. He truly was a man who wielded romantic words like a whip, so stripping him of that would render him harmless. But now, as he moved toward her in confident, measured strides, Siya realised how foolish her belief had been.
Abhay dropped to his knees before her, right there in front of everyone, and picked up the extra cone of henna from the decorated tray that had been set up for touch-ups. He glanced at her and his gaze burned with a kind of molten heat that made her throat tighten up.
He gripped her wrist gently, making sure to not smudge the wet henna, and turned her hand over to find her bare palm. The heat of his touch seared through her veins. And then, in messy and scrawled strokes, he wrote three words and drew a heart at the end.
Abhay ki jaan.
The people erupted in applause, as laughter and whistles rang around them, but she barely heard any of it. All she saw was his name on her palm. It was a simple inscription, but to Siya, it felt like a brand.
His gaze blazed with something infinitely more dangerous.
Love or the illusion of it, she couldn’t figure out.
What she saw in them was passion, wild and molten, and it made her feel like she was standing too close to a fire.
Abhay looked at her as if she were the centre of gravity in the entire damn room.
But her mind, wounded and still bleeding from too many betrayals, clamped down hard around the truth she clung to: he’d broken her heart with his lies. The grand gestures, the performative romance, the illusion of intimacy was for the room full of witnesses. That’s what this had to be.
A spark of anger was lit up in her gut. He had no right to look at her like that, not after what he’d done, yet here he was unravelling her with his whiskey eyes. He was making a mockery of the word that was as sacred as a prayer for Siya, and for what? What the hell was his endgame?
Abhay placed a soft kiss right next to his name on her palm, and spoke with a roguish smile. ‘I believe that means I win.’
The game ended, and he stepped back. In the chaos of the room and the flutter of the cameras swarming closer to take a closeup picture of his name on her hand, Abhay quietly slipped away before the others noticed. All she caught was the fading edge of his silhouette as he disappeared up the stairs.
Her feet moved before her mind could catch up.
Siya excused herself and followed after him.
The low hum of conversation and music faded as Siya rushed up the stairs.
She went straight to his room but found it empty.
She was about to go look elsewhere when a soft clink of glass against the railing gave him away.
Siya walked toward the balcony and saw him standing in the corner, out of sight, watching the sprawl of Marine Drive beneath them. The breeze lifted the edges of his kurta, and the sleeves were neatly rolled until just above his elbows.
He stood with his back to her, one hand resting on the metal railing, the other holding a drink, ice cubes sparkling in the evening sun. The evening breeze pulled at his hair in soft, uneven ways.
She pushed the glass balcony doors open with a force that rattled their hinges and walked straight out into the humid, sea-salted air.
He jerked around when he heard her, the amber liquid sloshing slightly in his glass as he did. She was expecting a gloating expression, but his eyes shimmered with pain, and the heart-wrenching sight of it sent a surge of anger through her chest.
‘How dare you!’ Siya snapped, and her voice shattered the silence he’d wrapped around himself. ‘Is all of this some sort of joke to you? Do you think writing your name in my mehendi will make me forget our past?’
She took two steps forward and jabbed a finger right at his chest with the pressure of all her overwhelming emotions. ‘You don’t get to act like some tragic, lovesick fiancé when all you’ve ever done is lie and—’
‘You gave me a task, Siya,’ Abhay interjected calmly.
The way he said it—as if it justified his words, his actions, the way he made it difficult to breathe—only made her pulse flare hotter. She curled her hands into fists, the dry mehendi crumbling into pieces in her grip as her nails dug into the flesh.
‘That was before I realised you’d turn it into some kind of twisted game in a bid to find new ways to hurt me.’ Her words were coated in more bitterness than rage.
A muscle in his jaw twitched as he asked in a low voice, ‘Is that what you think I’m doing?’
‘Yes! You’re trying to remind me of a night that should’ve died a long time ago. Stop torturing me!’ Siya said, stepping closer, eyes locked onto him.
She didn’t realise how close they’d gotten. Her face hovered inches away from his, close enough to see how his eyes appeared black even in sunlight. For a moment, Siya couldn’t remember what they were fighting over.
Abhay stared at her for a long beat, the dark clouds casting shadows across his face. His jaw twitched, and even in the light, his eyes appeared all black, with no trace of any brown warmth. He set the glass down on the marbled table beside him.
‘Siya, you don’t know what torture is,’ he said, and she barely had time to gasp before he pinned her to the pillar behind her. Her back hit the cool stone and she was trapped in his arms, nowhere to go.
Despite the anger in his eyes, his fingers cradled the side of her face with a tenderness that made her stomach twist. His thumb brushed the curve of her cheekbone, and she knew that for some reason she should pull away, but she didn’t move.
‘Torture is to be in a room with you and pretend like you’re not the only one I see.
Torture is hearing your laugh and not being able to taste it.
I don’t even let myself imagine kissing you anymore, because I know the second I do, I’ll never be able to stop.
That’s torture, Siya, and I’m living in it. ’
‘Then stop!’ she shouted, each syllable cutting sharp. ‘Stop acting like this marriage, this entire circus of it, means something to you. Stop making these gestures that make people think we’re in love. Just fucking stop!’
‘You don’t mean that.’
‘I do! I’m not yours,’ she declared.
‘You were, once,’ he reminded her in a strangled voice full of anguish.
She still was but she’d be damned if she gave him more ammunition to use against her. This was one fight she vowed to win.
Fury knotted in her throat. ‘What do you want? Why do you insist on stretching this charade until it bleeds us both dry. I don’t want the broken version of love you’re trying to sell me now,’ Siya held on desperately to the fleeting embers of anger.
It would be far too easy to lean onto him otherwise. ‘None of it was real.’
He went rigid against her and he asked, ‘What did you just say?’
‘None of it mattered,’ she spat back. ‘I’ve had four years to realise I made it all bigger in my head. We were nothing more than a passing fling, that’s all.’
‘Don’t,’ he warned, his voice edged with fury so tightly wounded it gave her goosebumps. ‘Don’t you dare trivialise what we had as a meaningless encounter.’
He leaned closer, the space between them so narrow that she could smell the faint trace of his sandalwood cologne.
He pulled her against him until her chest collided with his.
A sudden sliver of heat curled up her spine.
She hated how the words she wanted to throw at him were stuck in her throat like thorns.
When Abhay looked at her with possessive madness whirling in his stormy gaze, the truth she had been running from for days clawed its way back up through her flesh. Her body hadn’t gotten the memo that she was supposed to hate him.
‘When I kissed you that night, you melted for me,’ he said, drawing out the word, and the way his arms wrapped around her waist made her eyes flutter close for a second.
‘You held onto me like you’d never let me go.
I won’t let you stand here and call what we had a fling just because it hurts too much to admit that it mattered. ’
‘I hate you,’ Siya hissed, the venomous words scraping her throat like shards of glass.
He didn’t retreat. Instead, his eyes darkened and his jaw clenched. He leaned so close that her breath tangled with his. ‘Then, my dear wife-to-be, let me show you just how much you hate me,’ he whispered.
Before she could suck in a breath to respond, Abhay crashed his lips onto hers. He pushed her back until she felt the cold stone bite into her spine. His other arm curled around her waist, dragging her against him, and her moan slipped into his mouth.
It was a fierce and bruising kiss, full of things they hadn’t said, couldn’t say, because words would never be enough to describe the bond between them. His palm splayed possessively across her hip and the intoxicating taste of his whiskey-laced lips made her toes curl inside her heels.
Siya gripped the collar of his kurta, crushing it in her fist as she pulled him closer. Her lips parted when he traced her lower lip with the tip of his tongue, and he deepened the kiss with a deep groan that rumbled through his chest. He kissed her like he was reclaiming life itself.