#arshi

For a few seconds, his mind didn't catch up with the sensation. Sleep still held him in that dense, misted state between awareness and oblivion, where the body remembered before thought had the discipline to organise itself. His palm moved across the sheet, expecting warmth, expecting the soft resistance of her body beneath the covers, expecting the now familiar curve of her waist where his arm had rested through the last shallow hours of dawn.

He found emptiness.

His eyes opened.

The bed beside him was vacant. The pillow retained the faintest impression of her head, a small hollow in white linen, now losing shape. The space where she had lain had cooled, enough for him to know she had not just slipped away. She had been gone for some time. Long enough to bathe. Long enough to dress. Long enough to think.

That thought roused him out of his stupor.

A faint sound came from beyond the bedroom door. Ceramic against wood. The low murmur of a hotel attendant. The careful politeness of her voice. Breakfast had arrived, then. He heard her quiet response.

Arnav remained still, his hand spread over the empty sheet.

Memory returned in broken pieces, then with a force that left no room for denial. Rain striking the glass. Crimson gossamer creasing beneath his palms. Her face turned towards his, eyes wide with apprehension, want, and a courage that moved through him with devastating ease. Her fingers in his hair. Her breath breaking against his mouth. She had chosen him with a trembling honesty that made something in him rise, possessive and exultant, even as another part of him recoiled from it.

His gaze moved to what remained of the night. His shirt lay near the foot of the bed, wrinkled beyond saving. The saree had slipped towards the glass and lay there in a quiet heap against the pale morning light. The sight pulled at his body before shame came after it, quick and unpleasant.

He looked away and flipped the duvet off him.

His gaze fell to the sheets, no longer an uninterrupted stretch of beige.

The evidence marked in scarlet there should not have mattered. In every reasonable part of him, it did not. He had never held chastity as a measure of a woman's worth. That belief belonged to insecure men who called possession honour and expected women to carry the proof of it in their bodies.

He had known desire, had treated the body as something biological, private, sometimes necessary but rarely sacred. He had never required purity from anyone. He despised the thought of himself belonging to the breed of people who did.

And yet, it was not the evidence on the sheets that revealed Khushi's inexperience. He had known before that, from the first startled tightening of her mouth beneath his, from the way she had hesitated, from the trust with which she had waited for his voice before allowing sensation to carry her further. He had known in every pause. He had known in the way she had given consent with more courage than comprehension, and then grown into the night with an earnestness that had made taking anything from her feel impossible unless he first received it.

She had never given herself to Shyam.

The knowledge moved through him with a savagery he was ashamed to recognise. Somewhere beneath the shame, a part of him exhaled as if it had been deprived of air for weeks. He had lived in the dark with the image of Shyam touching her, and now, faced with the possibility that the image had been a lie, it collapsed into relief before decency could correct it.

He despised the relief almost at once. Khushi did not owe him proof through her body. She did not owe him innocence, or an explanation shaped to comfort his pride. Yet the night had given him something he had not asked for and could not ignore: a contradiction to the filth he had nursed inside himself. It did not absolve her of silence. It did not absolve him of cruelty. It only made the accusation he had used most intimately against her begin to rot in his own hands.

The thought gave him no peace.

Instead, relief came contaminated. Gratification rose first, dark and possessive, an ugly satisfaction that Shyam had not reached the places Arnav had imagined him claiming. Still, the fact remained, brutal in its implication. The story Arnav had built around the terrace had begun to crack through its most intimate seam.

If he had been wrong about that, what else had rage taught him to misread?

A sound came again from the living room. Her voice, softer this time, polite and distant. Alive beyond the door and already unreachable in some new way.

He rose.

The movement pulled at the scratches across his back. He stopped with one hand on the mattress, remembering the moment her fingers had lost their gentleness and found him with helpless urgency. For one perfidious instant, the marks pleased him. She had left evidence on him too. Khushi, who lowered her eyes at the word desire, who flushed like the colour she had worn when wanting became too much to hide, had marked him in the dark.

He hated how much that pleased him. He hated that pleasure had become an archive of last night when the morning was already preparing to turn it into ammunition.

He went to the bathroom before he could indulge the memory further.

The shower was brief. He stood beneath the hot water long enough to rid his skin of sleep, though nothing touched the deeper residue of the night. He saw himself in the mirror afterwards and found very little he trusted. The faint

bruising of fatigue beneath his eyes. The mouth that had told her to speak, to stop him, to choose, and had still failed to tell her the only truth capable of explaining himself.

"Tell me I misunderstood. Tell me I was wrong about you."

His jaw clenched at that momentary lapse into weakness. Too cowardly to confront her while her eyes had been open, he had whispered the words against her heart after sleep had claimed her. They had escaped from some exhausted, undignified place in him where hatred had disintegrated and vulnerability had become audible. He had never meant to speak them. Least of all to ask for mercy from the very woman he had condemned.

He dressed in the first clothes his hand found. The informality irritated him. The haste irritated him more. He buttoned the shirt with unnecessary force, ran a towel through his hair once, and left the bathroom while it was still damp.

He wanted to see her.

The want arrived simply without defence. He wanted her eyes on him. He wanted her to turn and remember. He wanted some sign, however small, that the night had remained visible in her too.

He opened the bedroom door.

Khushi stood near the dining table in her own clothes.

For a moment, the sight struck him harder than the sight of her in crimson had. Her hair was damp and braided. Her bangles were back on her wrists. Her salwar suit returned her to the girl from Lucknow, from Delhi, from Shantivan's corridors, from the ordinary days before Nainital had altered the ground between them. She looked familiar. Carefully put together. The woman who had trembled under his hands had folded herself back into daylight.

She glanced up.

Colour rose in her cheeks at once, soft and helpless, and his chest tightened. Then she lowered her gaze to the plate she had been arranging. Her hands resumed their useless task. The blush vanished under effort.

Something in him recoiled at how quickly she managed it.

He moved into the living room.

"Khushi... tum theek ho?"

The question came out softer than he intended. It was familiar in his mouth, weighted by old memories. He meant her body. He meant the night. He meant the quiet. He meant, absurdly and without dignity: Do you regret me?

Her shoulders drew in by a fraction.

"Yes," she replied too quickly. "Perfectly fine."

The phrase told him nothing except that she had been busy building a wall while he slept.

He stopped near the chair. The distance between them felt nearly indecent after the hours in which no distance had existed at all.

"About last night," he began.

She set the plate down.

The sound was small and controlled. So was she. When she turned, he saw that she had prepared herself. There was a quiet bravery in it, the kind that came from expecting hurt and deciding in advance not to plead.

"Last night happened," she said, and the steadiness of her voice entered him like a blade with a polished handle. "Before you say anything, I want you to know I understand. We were away from home. The evening was unusual. We were both... affected by it. It does not have to become anything more than what it was. I have no regrets, and I do not expect anything from you."

He stared at her.

Had she already decided what the night was allowed to mean? Had she placed it inside duty, inside marriage, inside one of those heavy words women like Khushi were taught to carry until their backs bent without complaint? She believed in vows. In rituals. In family. In all the structures he had mocked until it suited him to use them. Had last night been, for her, the fulfilment of a wife's obligation? A surrender made because the mangalsutra at her throat had finally demanded its due?

"We will return to Shantivan after lunch," she continued. "Once we are there, everything can go back to the way it was. You are free to forget this ever happened."

Forget.

For several seconds, the word curdled in his mind and, dangerously, within the confines of his heart. It existed as sensation first: a hollowing beneath his ribs, a pressure behind his throat, a brief, humiliating failure he felt cross his face before he could stop it. The hurt reached him faster than a blade point.

He had imagined many forms of aftermath in the brief, foolish minutes after waking. Shyness. Awkwardness. Perhaps anger. Perhaps a refusal to look at him, which he could have endured, because even refusal acknowledged the force of what had happened. He had not imagined this generosity, this careful little mercy in which she offered to pretend nothing had been asked of her heart, simply because she believed he would prefer last night left unsaid.

"In a hurry to leave, I see."

She flinched. It was a small movement, but it punished him more than an accusation would have.

"We are leaving according to schedule," she said, guarded now. "Shantivan will be expecting us."

Shantivan.

The name restored the house in full, all its sanctuary and all its cruelty. It entered the space between them like poison disguised as sugar, something sweet only until the body began to suffer for it.

"Is Shantivan truly what you are in such a hurry to return to?" he asked.

She turned fully then. Her face, already pale from the morning, tightened with confusion.

"Or is it Shyam?"

The room emptied of sound.

Outside, the rain had stopped. Water still travelled from the eaves in slow, intermittent drops, and somewhere below the suite a vehicle rolled over the wet driveway before fading into the distance. The breakfast between them had gone untouched for long enough that a skin had formed over the tea. A thin line of steam no longer rose from the silver dishes.

Khushi stood with one hand gripping the back of a chair.

Arnav watched the name register.

It did not happen at once. Confusion came first, plain on her face. Then disbelief. Her fingers tightened around the carved wood and the colour altered beneath her skin. By the time comprehension began to take shape, she looked at him as though she had been trying to solve a question for weeks only to discover that the answer was far worse than anything she had imagined.

"What did you say?" Her voice was so quiet that he heard the soft tick of the wall clock after it.

"You heard me."

She shifted her weight. For one perfidious second he noticed that she looked unsteady, and some part of him almost moved. The anger in him stopped it. It had been there too long, fed too diligently, given too many nights in which to grow its own logic. Even now his hands felt hot with it.

"No," she said after a moment. "What do you mean?"

His jaw set. "Don't pretend you don't know."

"I don't know." Her eyes remained fixed on him. "That has been the problem from the beginning. You threatened me. You insulted me. You stopped speaking whenever I asked you a question. You did everything except tell me why." Her breath caught, but she continued. "So tell me now."

Her voice had risen near the end, and some treacherous, thoroughly selfish part of him welcomed the anger. The quiet indifference she had offered him that morning had been infinitely worse. Now fury had returned to her eyes, and however perverse the relief, she was within reach again.

"Fine," he said. "You want the reason? I saw you with him."

The effect was instantaneous. Her anger faltered; the colour receded from her cheeks and her lips parted, though no sound followed.

Arnav watched every minute alteration with the terrible attentiveness he had always reserved for her. He had learnt her face without consent from either of them: the particular crease between her brows when confusion overtook indignation, the slight widening of her eyes before fear had the opportunity to disguise itself, the way her mouth became very still when something had struck too deeply for immediate speech.

Recognition, he thought, and the conclusion turned his stomach.

"Who?" she asked, so quietly that his jaw hardened.

"Shyam."

Even her bangles fell silent.

Khushi looked at him, and he felt the old nausea return. He had lived with it since the terrace. Sometimes it came as anger. Sometimes it appeared in the middle of a meeting when a harmless phrase dragged the memory back. Sometimes he woke with his teeth clenched and could still see Shyam's arms around her.

Then she whispered, "You know?"

Something inside him went cold. There it was. Clear enough to resemble confession. After last night, after she had slept beneath his hands and trusted him with a vulnerability he had been foolish enough to hold sacred, the words felt almost obscene.

He chuckled darkly, without humour. "So we can finally stop pretending."

Her brows drew together. "Pretending?"

She was still looking at him with such complete confusion that his certainty wavered, only slightly, but enough to aggravate him.

"I saw you on the terrace."

Her breath stopped.

"Payal and Akash's wedding night," he continued. Each word scraped at something old and inflamed. "I saw him holding you. I heard you telling him to leave Di."

Khushi's expression changed.

"You were there?"

"I was there."

"For how long?"

The question was so far from what he expected that his irritation flared. "What?"

"How long were you there?" she repeated. Her chin trembled once. She pressed her lips together. "How much did you hear?"

"Long enough."

She searched his face.

He could almost see her returning to that night, arranging pieces in her mind. Her lips parted and closed again. Slowly, horror began to replace the bewilderment. "You heard me ask him to leave Anjali-ji."

"Yes."

"And then?"

Arnav frowned. "Then what?"

"You left?"

He said nothing.

Her hand loosened from the chair. "You left," she said again, this time as though she had answered herself.

"What difference does that make?"

A sound escaped her. It might have been a laugh in another life, but there was nothing amused in it now. "All the difference."

His patience frayed. "Do not twist this, Khushi."

"Twist what? You said you saw me. You said you heard me. I am asking how much."

"I heard enough."

"Enough?" The word came quietly, and he should have recognised the warning in her tone. Khushi was often loud in trivial outrage. Her most intimate afflictions had always made her frighteningly quiet.

He looked at her and felt, with a sudden prescience, that the next sentence might rearrange everything. "I know there was something between you and Shyam."

Khushi blinked once, then again. Her face emptied so completely that Arnav's anger momentarily lost its footing. "I saw you in his arms," he said roughly.

"He forced that embrace."

The answer was immediate. Arnav's mouth hardened before thought could intervene. "Convenient."

He saw the word strike her.

There was no dramatic gasp. She did not stagger or raise a hand to her mouth. Pain simply crossed her face before she could stop it, bare and humiliating in its honesty. He knew, immediately, that she would rather he had not seen it.

Then she drew herself upright.

"Of course," she murmured. "Of course that is the first thing you would say."

"You expect me to believe I happened to misunderstand everything?"

"No." Her voice shook once. "I stopped expecting anything from you a long time ago."

The sentence entered him with humiliating ease. Khushi turned away and pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead. He watched her breathe. The fabric of her salwar shifted over her shoulders with each unsteady inhale, and the image of Shyam's hands returned with such vicious clarity that Arnav's own fingers curled.

When she faced him again, her eyes were bright.

"So this is why..." She stopped. "This is why you married me. You thought..." Her mouth pulled into a disbelieving grimace. "You thought I wanted Shyam-ji?"

"Don't call him that."

The command came out harsher than he meant it to.

Arnav heard the possession in his own voice after the fact and hated it. He looked away, furious with himself for giving her even that much. When he turned back, she was studying him differently.

"I was never involved with him," she said. "Not in the way you interpreted the exchange."

There was no plea in the statement. She did not rush to make it persuasive. She simply gave him the words with a steadiness that made him defensive.

Arnav felt the old conviction rise inside him. "I know what I saw."

"Yes."

The force of her answer startled them both.

"Yes," she repeated, breathing hard now. "I told him to leave Anjali-ji. I wanted him gone. I wanted him away from her. Away from me. Away from my family. I wanted him out of our lives."

Arnav stared at her. "And you expect that to make sense?"

"I expect you to listen long enough for it to make sense." Khushi swallowed. "You saw him holding me. Did you see me push him away?"

Arnav did not answer. Her hands had begun to shake. She noticed at the same instant he did and folded her arms across herself, pressing her palms against her sides.

"Did you hear me tell him there could never be anything between us?"

The terrace shifted uneasily in his memory.

"Did you stay long enough to hear me ask what sort of man deceives his own wife and then comes to another woman speaking of love?"

His pulse struck heavily against his throat. "Khushi..."

"No. You wanted the truth. You will hear it now, however inconvenient it is."

The affront rose automatically. "Watch how you speak to me."

"And you watched half a conversation before deciding you had seen enough to destroy my life!"

Her voice cracked across the room. The sudden volume appeared to shock even her. Her lips trembled afterwards, but she remained where she was, breathing hard, her gaze refusing to leave his. Arnav had no answer ready. She looked at him with such profound grief that, for one terrible second, his pulse twinged.

"Is that why?" she asked. "That night, when Ji-ji was getting married. Is that why you looked at me as though I disgusted you?"

He said nothing.

Her eyes closed. "You married me to punish me." The words were quieter now. "To protect Anjali-ji. To keep me close because you thought I was some danger you had to watch."

His mouth opened, but no words came as the truth sat between them. His fingers curled into his palms.

Khushi's face crumpled for the briefest instant. "And all this time, you let me ask what I had done."

The accusation was almost whispered. That was what undid him. Memory came without mercy: the desperate questions; the anger she had summoned after tears failed; the absurdities she had used when nothing else reached him. Why are you doing this? What have I done? Tell me. Please, Arnav-ji. Tell me. Her confusion had threatened his certainty, so he had called it manipulation and punished her more for it.

Khushi turned her face away. Several seconds passed before she spoke again. "You are owed the truth."

Arnav's gaze lifted.

A painful distortion touched her mouth, too weary to become a smile. "You are not owed it because you married me. You certainly did not earn it by threatening Ji-ji's wedding. But Anjali-ji is your sister. We should have told your family what Shyam had done."

The admission tightened his chest. "So you admit it."

"I admit we remained silent."

"You concealed the truth about him."

"Yes."

"My sister slept beside that man every night while your family knew what he was."

Khushi flinched. "Yes."

His voice sharpened. "Then tell me what I misunderstood."

"Our silence."

She held his gaze.

"Judge me for that. I will not stop you. I have done it often enough myself." Her fingers tightened against her sleeves. "We were wrong. Amma was wrong. Bua-ji was wrong. I was wrong. We were frightened, and we let that fear decide something it had no right to decide."

Her eyes filled, but she continued.

"Ji-ji's marriage was finally happening. Amma and Babuji had already endured enough because of me. Your family had accepted Ji-ji after so much difficulty. I thought if Shyam disappeared from our lives, perhaps telling Anjali-ji would only destroy hers."

She had to stop for breath.

"I told myself silence would protect more people than the truth would hurt."

She shook her head faintly.

"I was wrong. I know that now. Perhaps I knew it even then and was too afraid to admit it. You may condemn me for that. Anjali-ji has every right to." Her arms tightened around herself. "But my cowardice does not make me his lover."

The word made his stomach revolt.

Khushi saw it.

"That is what you believed, isn't it?" she asked. "You believed I wanted him."

Arnav could not deny it.

The accusation seemed to reach her fully only then. Colour rose beneath her skin. Moisture gathered in her eyes, and she blinked hard against it.

"I was engaged to him," she said. "Is that what made it easier for you to believe?"

Arnav's head lifted sharply. "What?"

For the first time, disbelief almost overwhelmed her anger. "Devi Mayya." She pressed her lips together. "You married me over a story you did not even know from the beginning."

"Then tell me." His voice came out rougher than intended.

Khushi looked at him. He did not soften the demand, though something in him had already moved beyond accusation. He needed the chronology with an urgency he could barely conceal. His mind had begun searching backwards, finding loose threads everywhere. "Tell me everything."

She studied him for a long moment. Suspicion remained in her face, along with a fatigue that made her look older than she was. Then she wiped beneath one eye with an impatient movement.

"Fine," she said. "You will hear it from the beginning."

She drew a breath.

"It began with you. In Lucknow. The day you decided humiliating me was an acceptable price for your anger."

Something must have altered in his expression because Khushi paused.

"You remember those recordings."

Of course he remembered. He had simply never remembered them from her side.

"When you released them, my face was everywhere. People who had never spoken to me decided they knew what kind of girl I was. Men stared at me in the street. Neighbours whispered when Amma left the house. Babuji had to walk past people discussing his daughter as though I had ceased to belong to him and become public property."

Arnav felt his stomach tighten. The fashion show returned with nauseating clarity: Khushi falling into his arms, her fear, his fury at being challenged, the footage he had authorised for release with the indifference of a man signing off on an unpleasant business decision. At the time, his attention had ended with punishment. He had never bothered to trace its consequences.

"We left Lucknow because staying became unbearable," continued Khushi. Her voice had lost some of its anger. Weariness had taken its place. "I came to Delhi and tried to find work. I wanted to help Babuji. I wanted people to forget my face. I wanted our life to become ordinary again."

Arnav could not move.

"Because of what happened in Lucknow, because a few men recognised me."

His pulse slowed dangerously. "What men?"

Khushi folded her arms more tightly. "Some thugs in the street. They had seen the news."

The space seemed to contract around him. "What did they do?" His voice was very quiet.

Khushi looked at him, perhaps warned by something in his face, because her next words came cautiously. "They followed me. They said things. When I tried to leave, they stopped me."

The anger arrived with an almost narcotic purity. He saw faceless men surrounding her and could think of nothing else. "Did they touch you?"

Khushi didn't answer.

"Did they touch you?" His voice had altered.

Khushi inhaled. "One of them caught my dupatta."

The image was enough. Arnav turned away because remaining still had become physically difficult. His hand closed over the back of a chair, the tendons tightening until wood pressed painfully into his palm. He had not stood in that street. Yet he had placed the weapon in strangers' hands and never bothered to ask where they pointed it.

"What happened?" he asked. The words barely crossed his throat.

"Shyam appeared."

Arnav's eyes closed. For one instant, the entire chronology revealed itself with such exquisite cruelty that breathing became difficult.

"He helped me," Khushi continued. "He made those men leave. I was frightened and grateful, and he was kind."

Kind. The word struck him. Shyam had played the knight in a crisis Arnav himself had set in motion.

"He found me again in Delhi. Or perhaps I should say he made certain our paths crossed? At the time, I did not question it. Why would I? He had helped me in Lucknow. He spoke respectfully. He knew how to make Bua-ji laugh."

Arnav's grip remained around the chair.

"He told us he was unmarried."

The words dragged his attention back to her. "What?"

Khushi gave a dry, exhausted smile.

"Why would we ask a man to produce stamped papers proving he was a bachelor? We are ordinary people, Arnav-ji. When someone enters our home, eats at our table and bends to touch an elder's feet, we do not immediately hire investigators."

The remark landed where it was intended. He accepted it without response.

"Bua-ji trusted him. Eventually, she began to speak of marriage."

Arnav's jaw locked. "With you."

"Yes."

The admission still hurt, and he despised that it hurt after everything she had already told him. "You agreed."

Khushi looked tired. "Eventually."

"Why?"

She stared at him.

The arrogance of the question became obvious to him too late. She had been unmarried. Shyam had appeared respectable. Her family had trusted him. There was no reasonable explanation for why she should have refused.

Arnav needed one anyway.

Khushi lowered her eyes. "Because there was someone else I had wanted."

He stopped breathing.

A faint smile touched her mouth, empty of happiness. "But he had made it very clear there was no place for me in his life."

Diwali entered the space between them.

The poolside. Her face beneath the lights. The moment he had bent towards her and then recoiled from his own desire as though she had caused it. Lavanya. The engagement announcement. Every cruel thing he had said afterwards because he needed Khushi to stop looking at him with the bewildered hurt of a woman who had also felt something and did not understand why he was denying it.

His throat tightened. He knew. He asked anyway. "Who?"

Khushi looked at him. "It was you."

His fingers loosened from the chair.

"After Diwali, you stepped away from me as if what had happened between us was something shameful. Then you announced your engagement to Lavanya-ji." Her voice weakened. "I understood."

A tear slipped free this time. Khushi did not wipe it away. "I understood where I stood."

Arnav wanted to tell her she had understood nothing.

The protest rose at once. He had ended his engagement because of her. He had spent days refusing to name the reason. He had stood before his family and known that marrying Lavanya had become impossible because Khushi had occupied some central place in him long before he was prepared to admit she had one. Khushi had known none of it. He had made certain of that.

"So when Bua-ji asked again," she continued, "I agreed. I thought perhaps affection was unnecessary. I thought respect might be enough. Shyam appeared decent. My family trusted him. And the man I..." She stopped.

Arnav felt the unfinished word like a hand closing around his throat. "The man I wanted was going to marry someone else."

For weeks, he had returned obsessively to the terrace in his mind. Now other scenes crowded around it and demanded equal consideration: Khushi after Diwali, the withdrawn eyes, the engagement ring, his irrational fury when he learnt she was promised to another man, the relief when that engagement ended, a relief so profound he had never examined it honestly. He had accused her of deception without once recognising how thoroughly he had deceived himself.

Khushi drew another breath. “Then I found out the truth. There was a pooja at Shantivan. Anjali-ji’s husband was supposed to be there, and every time I tried to see him, something happened. He would leave the room. Someone would call me away. I kept thinking it was strange.” Her fingers tightened around her arms. “Then I followed him upstairs.”

Arnav remained very still.

“To say I was shocked would be an understatement. For several seconds, I genuinely thought there must be two men with the same face because the alternative was too absurd to comprehend. I asked him what he was doing in your house. He kept avoiding the question. I remember looking at him and knowing something was terribly wrong before I even understood what.” Her voice weakened. “And then he confessed.”

The horror of it returned to her face so plainly that something cold moved through Arnav.

“I left soon after. And then I ran into you." Khushi swallowed. "You saw me upset. You asked whether my fiance had hurt me.”

His chest tightened. The memory returned: her face that evening. The devastation in it. The way she had clutched his arm and wept while he stood there, impatient with questions he had not known how to ask. He had stood beside her only minutes after Shyam’s betrayal had torn through her life and, without knowing any of it, asked the one question that had come closest to the truth.

She took a ragged breath. “I went home and told them. Bua-ji could scarcely comprehend what I was saying. Amma was horrified. Babuji…” Khushi’s voice weakened. “Babuji could not speak then, but I remember his face.”

She looked at Arnav. “My engagement ended that day.”

"And you said nothing to us."

The accusation returned, but even Arnav heard that it no longer carried the same certainty.

Khushi nodded. "We said nothing."

"Why?"

"You know why."

"Tell me."

"Ji-ji."

Payal. Arnav's jaw tightened.

"Her wedding to Akash-ji had already survived enough opposition. My family was frightened that if your family discovered the man married to Anjali-ji had lived in our house and become engaged to me, you would blame us."

"We had a right to know."

"Yes."

The immediate agreement robbed some force from his anger. "You should have told Di."

"Yes."

"She is carrying his child."

"I KNOW!" Khushi's voice cracked. Tears filled her eyes now, and this time she seemed too tired to fight them. "I know, Arnav-ji. Do you think I have not asked myself that? Do you think I have slept peacefully because Ji-ji's marriage happened?" Her hand went to her chest. "I was afraid."

She pressed her fingers against her sternum as though the pressure there had become physical. "I was afraid for my sister. I was afraid for Anjali-ji. I was afraid of Bua-ji, Amma, the Raizadas, society, everyone. Every direction I looked, there was some woman's life waiting to be ruined by a man who had lied to all of us. So I made a terrible decision. We all did. We waited."

Arnav said nothing.

"I kept thinking Shyam would leave us alone. That perhaps losing the engagement would frighten him into sense. I thought he loved Anjali-ji enough to return to her properly." A bitter laugh escaped her. "I was a fool."

His mind supplied another image: Khushi in Shantivan, Shyam moving freely through the house, Arnav's own absences, business trips and long hours at AR, all the time she must have spent beneath the same roof as the man she had just described. Cold spread through him.

"What did he do after you married me?"

Khushi looked at him. Her arms folded across herself again. Arnav noticed. This time the gesture was unbearable.

"Khushi."

She glanced away. "Nothing I could not manage."

Rage entered him immediately. "That is not an answer."

Her mouth tightened. "He spoke to me."

"How?"

"You know how he speaks."

"No. I want the entire truth."

She stared at him. Arnav heard his own voice and knew the anger was frightening her. He forced the next question through clenched teeth. "Did he touch you?"

Khushi's eyes lowered.

The world inside Arnav became very quiet. "When?"

Her silence was answer enough.

His vision darkened. He could see it: Shyam's fingers around her wrist, Khushi looking towards doorways, terrified someone would enter and misunderstand. The irony nearly made him ill. She had feared being misunderstood, and Arnav had made misunderstanding the foundation of their marriage.

"He would find reasons to speak when there was no one around," Khushi continued. "Sometimes even when everyone was there. No one noticed because he was Anjali-ji's husband. He could smile and ask me to pass the water, and only I knew what he had whispered the minute before."

Arnav tasted blood where he had bitten the inside of his cheek.

"He would say I belonged with him. He said our marriages were mistakes. He said I would eventually understand."

Khushi's face tightened with remembered disgust.

"The terrace was the same madness. He found me there. He spoke about us as though there had ever been an us. I told him he was wrong. He said he loved me."

Arnav's chest ceased moving.

"I told him there was nothing between us," she said. "I told him I could never love him. I pushed him away."

Arnav could no longer look at her.

"You left before that."

The sentence was quiet. He stared towards the glass, where Nainital remained impossibly beautiful and indifferent.

Behind him, Khushi spoke again. "Judge me for keeping quiet. Be angry that we did not tell Anjali-ji. I will accept that because we were wrong."

Arnav turned.

Tears were drying unevenly on her face. She looked tired, and there was nothing submissive in the way she held his gaze.

"But do not accuse me of wanting him." Her voice broke despite her effort to steady it. "That shame is not mine."

Something in Arnav gave way. He had no defence left that did not sound contemptible even inside his own head.

She wiped her face with both hands, an almost childlike gesture made tragic by exhaustion. "Believe me or don't. I have spent too many weeks begging you for an answer. I will not spend the next five months begging you to believe mine."

She turned towards the bedroom.

"Khushi."

Her steps faltered.

Arnav's mind was filled with questions, fury, the names of men he wanted investigated and one man he wanted dead. None of it arranged itself into speech quickly enough. Khushi waited but he could not find a single sentence worthy of making her turn around.

After several seconds, she walked into the bedroom. The door closed with a soft click.

Arnav remained where he was.

For weeks, he had believed one half-heard conversation had revealed the truth of her. Now, faced with the whole of it, he understood that certainty had not protected him from devastation. And if Khushi was right, if she had been right all along, the reckoning would have to begin with him.

His phone was in his hand before he remembered reaching for it.

Aman answered on the second ring.