Chapter - 39
Vihaan -
My wife was upto something, I was sure.
"You are overthinking this Vihaan." Yash, who was sitting right opposite to me said.
I gave him a bored look because I had a feeling that this asshole knew what my wife was upto and I did not.
I leaned back in my chair slowly, folding my arms across my chest.
"You know something." I said.
He didn't even blink.
"I know many things."
"About Shivanya." I added and he scratched his jaw thoughtfully, pretending to consider the question. The performance was terrible.
"She is your wife. I assume I know less than you." he replied after some thinking.
I narrowed my eyes because this man had the acting skills of a brick.
"You are lying." I called him out.
"I am sitting." he shrugged.
"Yash."
"Vihaan."
I exhaled slowly.
God give me patience because if I strangled my best friend in my own office, the paperwork alone would be exhausting.
"You were talking to her yesterday." I said.
Yash lifted a brow. "I talk to her often."
"You were whispering." I raised a brow at him.
"We were in a crowded conference room." he said and leaned further in his chair.
"There were exactly two other people in that room except for us." I said, my eyes going to the file in front of me for the past three hours.
"Yaar itna shakki kyun ho raha hai tu? Shivanya dost hai meri toh baat toh karunga hi na usse." he said, finally standing up.
"Asshole, I will find out one way or the other." I told him as he left me, grinning.
Something was up.
Shivanya was already on a leave today and she did not give me a reason, just said that she just does not want to come and that was suspicious enough because she loves her work.
I leaned back in my chair, exhaling slowly, my fingers tapping once against the armrest before going still again. If I stayed here any longer, I would either end up overanalysing something that did not need it or imagining something that would irritate me more than necessary.
Neither was productive.
I stood up, picked up my keys, and walked out of my office without informing anyone and started driving back home.
Half an hour later, I pulled into the driveway and stepped out, shutting the car door with more force than necessary before making my way towards the house. The door was unlocked.
Mom and Dad were in Lucknow for a function and Shivanya would never leave the door unlocked like this and the thought made me rush inside.
"Shivanya." I called out her name a few times but there was no response.
"Shivanya." I called out again, louder this time.
"Vihaan, I am out here in the backyard." she responded this time and I did not waste another second to make my way to her.
Being at the office without her was bad enough, I had no intention to breathe any air she wasn't at home too.
"Sunshine, what are you doing out here in the dark? Why are the lights not turned on?" I asked her after seeing her silhouette and I could see that she was wearing something that had a bit of shine.
"The switchboard is close to you. Can you turn them on please?" she asked and I gave her a nod despite knowing that she will not be able to see it and the second I turned the switch on, the backyard came to life with a million fairy lights and peonies around and as I looked at the floor, there was a pathway of rose petals built for me to reach her, where she stood with the most beautiful smile I have ever seen.
For a moment, I just stood there and I think my brain stopped functioning because there was absolutely no logical explanation for why my wife, who usually forgot where she had kept her own hair ties and once spent twenty minutes looking for her phone while holding it in her hand, had somehow managed to turn our backyard into something that looked like it belonged in one of those romantic films she secretly watched when she thought nobody knew.
My wife had no business looking like every dangerous thing my heart had ever wanted standing in front of me like this and I did not realise that I had not blinked once after my eyes had found her.
Wearing an orange saree that caught every bit of golden light around her, making her shine every time she moved even slightly. Her hair was left open, falling over one shoulder and there was the smallest, most nervous smile on her lips while her fingers kept twisting the edge of her pallu restlessly.
She looked beautiful enough to make breathing feel like a conscious task.
Beautiful enough to make every thought in my head come to a complete stop.
She shifted awkwardly on her feet under my stare, clearly growing more self-conscious with every passing second.
"Why are you staring like that?" she asked softly.
I opened my mouth to answer her.
Closed it.
Opened it again.
"I am deciding whether I died in the office and this is heaven or if you have finally lost your mind, Shivanya."
She laughed.
A nervous laugh and that made me straighten because Shivanya did not laugh like that unless she was anxious.
My eyes moved over her face and her lips were trembling a little, her fingers were twisting the pallu of her saree so tightly that I was sure the poor fabric would file a complaint against her.
I started walking towards her on the rose petal path slowly, my eyes not leaving hers for even a second.
"What is all this?" I asked, my voice quieter now.
She inhaled, then exhaled and then inhaled again like she was preparing for battle.
"Can you just stand there for two minutes and not interrupt me?" she asked and I stopped right in front of her, folding my arms.
"I don't make promises I can't keep." I told her honestly.
She glared.
"Vihaan."
I raised both my hands in surrender.
"Fine. Not interrupting."
She narrowed her eyes like she trusted me as much as I trusted Yash with classified information, which was not at all but worst of all, why was I thinking of that fucker when my wife, my beautiful, beautiful wife was standing in front of me, looking the way she was.
She looked down once before looking up to meet my eyes again and when she did, there was something in her eyes that made my chest pull tight.
"I had a speech prepared." she finally said after taking a minute and I bit the inside of my cheek to stop myself from smiling.
"Of course you did."
She pointed a finger at me.
"That counts as interrupting."
"Sorry."
She huffed, unfolded the paper in her hand, looked at it for two seconds, frowned and then crushed it completely.
"I cannot do this with the paper. This is stupid."
"Sunshine....."
"No." she said quickly, shaking her head. "Let me do this before I lose courage and run away."
That made me shut my mouth immediately and she swallowed hard before looking at me again.
And God, those eyes.
Those same eyes that had somehow become the first thing I searched for after every exhausting day, every frustrating meeting, every pointless social gathering, every bad mood and every damn breath.
"When we got married..." she started, her voice low and uneven, "I did not know what this marriage would become."
I stayed still, listening.
"I knew you loved me." she continued. "You made sure I knew that every single day after you dropped me home when my car broke down the other day and you talked to me the first time ever. In the way you waited for me after work, in the way you still leave those little notes at my desk every single day. In the way you looked at me like I was..." she laughed shakily through her nervousness, "...like I was something precious."
My throat tightened so suddenly that swallowing became difficult.
She blinked rapidly before continuing.
"And I kept taking it."
Each word landed straight in my chest.
"I kept taking all your love, all your patience, all your care and all your stupid dramatic dialogues," she sniffed and I almost smiled despite the ache spreading inside me, "and I never gave you what you deserved in return."
Without thinking, I took one step closer and her eyes filled with tears immediately.
"No, stay there, Vihaan." she whispered. "Please let me say this."
I clenched my jaw and forced myself not to move.
She pressed a hand against her chest as if she was trying to physically steady the frantic beating of her own heart.
"I was scared, Vihaan."
Her voice broke on my name.
"I was so scared."
There it was.
The wound.
The truth.
The part of her she never let anyone touch.
"I think some part of me believed that if I loved you the way you loved me, then I would have too much to lose. And I have already lost enough in life to know exactly how much that kind of pain can destroy a person."
My fingers curled into fists at my side.
God.
She looked so small while saying that.
So vulnerable that it physically hurt to stand there and not pull her into my arms.
"But then you happened." she whispered.
I stared at her as she laughed through tears.
"You happened in the most annoying way possible. You happened in every cup of coffee I started making for two people instead of one. You happened in every meeting where I searched for you before sitting down. You happened in every night where I slept better because I knew you are right next to me. You happened in every stupid little thing until one day..."
Her lips trembled harder.
"One day I realised that you were no longer just my husband."
My heartbeat was roaring now, listening to her words as I gave my everything to not step closer to her and scoop her in my arms.
"You were my safest place."
I closed my eyes for one second, just one second because if I did not do that, I was going to lose control before she finished speaking.
When I opened them again, tears had already slipped down her cheeks, but she smiled at me through them.
"I realised that my day starts with you and ends with you, and every good thing in between somehow leads back to you."
My breathing turned uneven.
"And I realised that when you are not around, I feel irritated for no reason. The office feels dull. Food tastes bland. The house feels too quiet. Even my thoughts feel incomplete."
She wiped angrily at her cheek.
"I realised that I miss you even when you are in the bedroom and I am in the lawn, which is frankly embarrassing."
A broken laugh left me before I could stop it.
She smiled wider through tears.
"I realised that I wait for your texts, your calls, your footsteps, your voice, your stupidly handsome face."
"Stupidly handsome face?" I murmured automatically.
She gave me a watery glare.
"Still not done."
I nodded immediately.
She inhaled deeply, like gathering every ounce of courage left inside her.
And then she said the words that made everything in me come to a complete stop.
"I love you, Vihaan. I am so hopelessly, ridiculously, painfully in love with you that it scares me."
For one suspended second, the world around me ceased to exist. Everything faded into the background as those words settled inside me with a force so violent that I genuinely felt my chest tighten.
I love you, Vihaan.
She loved me, my wife loved me.
I had imagined this moment more times than I would ever admit to another living soul. I had thought about what she would sound like when she finally said those words to me, whether she would whisper them shyly, whether she would roll her eyes before saying them, whether I would tease her first or kiss her first or make her repeat them ten times before I believed her.
But none of those imagined versions had prepared me for this.
None of them had prepared me for the way her voice was shaking.
None of them had prepared me for the tears on her face.
None of them had prepared me for the fact that hearing those three words from Shivanya felt less like happiness and more like being hit directly in the ribs with every emotion I had buried for years.
She loved me and she was standing there looking like she was handing me her entire heart with trembling fingers.
I love you when you are being insufferable. I love you when you are possessive and impossible. I love you when you keep asking me where I am every thirty minutes as if I am going to disappear. I love you when you look at me like I am the centre of your world even when I do not deserve it. I love you when you tuck my hair behind my ear while I am half asleep. I love you when you call me sunshine as if that name belongs to me more than my own." she said, her voice wobbling because tears kept interrupting every sentence,
A tear slipped down my own cheek before I even realised my eyes had filled.
I did not wipe it because I could not move enough to wipe it.
I was too busy standing there like an absolute fool while my wife dismantled every wall inside me with the softness of her voice.
"I love you." she whispered again, and this time her voice cracked in the middle, "and I know I am late in saying it. Maybe very late. But I needed to tell you this properly because you deserve to hear it. You deserve to know that every part of me belongs to you now. Completely. Without fear. Without hesitation."
She took one shaky step towards me.
The rose petals shifted under her heel.
Her fingers were trembling but her eyes never left mine.
"I am yours, Vihaan. Not because I married you and not because everybody expected us to build a life together and not because fate decided it. I am yours because I love you enough to choose you every single day for the rest of my life, and I do not think there will ever be a day where I will not choose you."
That was it.
That was the exact point where every ounce of self-control left my body.
I do not even remember making the decision to move.
One second I was standing there trying to breathe around the hurricane in my chest, and the next second I was crossing the distance between us in two quick strides, my hands reaching for her face like I needed physical proof that this was happening.
My palms cupped her cheeks which were warm and wet with tears and before she could say another word, I kissed her hard enough to make her gasp and desperate enough to make my own chest ache.
It was not a gentle kiss because I did not have gentleness in me at that moment. I had too much. Too much love, too much relief and too much gratitude.
Too much pent up longing from every day I had loved her in silence while waiting for her to come to me on her own.
Every bit of it poured into that kiss.
She made a soft startled sound against my mouth before clutching fistfuls of my shirt in her hands, and the second I felt her hold onto me like that, whatever was left of my sanity disappeared and I kissed her again, and again.
Mouth, cheeks, forehead, the corner of her lips. Anywhere I could reach because suddenly one kiss felt painfully insufficient for what she had just done to me.
When I finally pulled back, both of us were breathing as if we had run miles and Shivanya looked dazed, her lips swollen, her cheeks flushed, tears still clinging to her lashes.
I rested my forehead against hers and shut my eyes because I needed one second to gather myself.
"You..." I started, but my voice came out rough.
I cleared my throat and tried again.
"You have absolutely no idea what you just did to me."
She let out a tiny laugh.
"I had a feeling you might react a little."
I opened my eyes and stared at her.
"A little?" I repeated in disbelief. "My wife just confessed her love for me after making me think she was plotting my murder with that moron all day, and you expected little?"
That made her laugh harder, though she was crying at the same time.
God, she looked beautiful.
I kissed the corner of her mouth once.
Then once more.
Then I whispered against her lips, because I had already become greedy and I knew it.
"Say it again."
Her fingers curled tighter around my collar.
"I love you."
My eyes closed instantly.
The words went through me like warmth.
"Again." I whispered.
A small smile touched her lips this time.
"I love you."
I exhaled shakily.
Again, because apparently hearing it twice had only made me need it more.
"Again."
She laughed softly now, tears still wet on her cheeks.
"I love you, Vihaan."
I kissed her.
"Again."
"I love you."
Another kiss.
"Again."
She actually smiled against my lips this time.
"I love you."
I think I would have stood there all night making her repeat those words if breathing had not become secondary.
Because now that I had heard it once, after months of pretending I was patient and mature and understanding, I realised something deeply embarrassing.
I was not patient at all. I was greedy. Greedy for her every word and greedy for her every touch. Greedy for every visible proof that this woman standing in front of me was mine.
I slid one hand from her cheek into her hair and stared at her for a long second.
"My wife loves me." I said, mostly to myself because the sentence still felt unreal, making her smile shyly.
"Your wife loves you."
I let out a disbelieving laugh, half broken and half breathless.
Then I looked at her again.
Really looked at her.
At the orange saree she had clearly worn because she knew it was my favourite, at the decorations she had clearly spent the whole day planning, at the trembling in her fingers because this had taken courage, at the redness in her eyes because she had cried before I even got here and something warm and unbearably soft expanded inside my chest.
"You did all this for me?" I asked her.
She nodded.
"I wanted it to be special."
That sentence almost finished me because the woman who once struggled to say anything to me without looking away had spent an entire day building me a confession.
I stared at her for another second.
Then without warning, I bent, slid one arm behind her knees and the other around her back, and lifted her straight into my arms.
She yelped, clutching my shoulders immediately.
"Vihaan!"
"Yes," I replied calmly, adjusting her in my arms and beginning to walk towards the house as if carrying my wife around after she had just turned my entire world upside down was the most natural thing in existence, "we are not standing in the backyard anymore because I have several reactions pending and none of them are appropriate for an open lawn."
She made a scandalised sound, instantly clutching my shoulders tighter.
"Vihaan!"
I looked down at her.
"What? You started this."
Her entire face turned red.
The sight was so ridiculously adorable that I almost lost my train of thought again.
Almost.
I pushed the back door open with my foot and walked inside, making my way straight to our bedroom without any intention of putting her down before that. She buried her face in my shoulder halfway through the walk, clearly too embarrassed to look at me, while I, on the other hand, had no embarrassment left in my body.
My wife loved me.
My wife had just looked me in the eye and confessed that she loved me.
I deserved to be insufferable about this for the rest of my life.
When we entered our room, I kicked the door shut behind me and finally lowered her onto the floor beside the bed, but my hands remained firmly around her waist as if some part of me still needed constant contact to believe this was real.
She looked up at me once and then immediately looked away.
I caught her chin between my fingers and turned her face back towards me.
"No." I said.
Her lashes fluttered.
"No what?"
"No looking away from me anymore Sunshine and I mean it."
She stared at me for a second, her cheeks still burning, her lips still swollen from my kisses, and then to my complete confusion, she bit back a smile.
That smile usually meant one thing.
She was hiding something and my eyes narrowed at her immediately.
"Why are you smiling like that?"
She shook her head far too innocently.
"I am not."
"You are."
"I am not."
"You absolutely are and I do not appreciate that my wife still has secrets after confessing that she loves me too."
That made her laugh softly.
Before I could interrogate her further, she slipped out from between my hands in one quick movement.
I blinked.
Then stared at the empty space in front of me.
Did she just evade me?
I looked at her in offence as she took two hurried steps backwards towards the door.
"Excuse me?"
She just shrugged before saying, "Come with me."
I folded my arms.
"I just brought you here with deeply dishonourable intentions."
Her face turned crimson again.
"Vihaan!"
"I am being honest."
She groaned, walked back to me, grabbed my wrist, and started tugging me towards the door.
"Come outside."
I let her pull me mostly because I was too entertained by the fact that she was suddenly acting bossy after spending the last half hour trembling through a confession.
"What now?" I asked as she dragged me through the hallway.
"You will see."
"That is exactly what serial killers say."
She turned and glared.
"I literally just confessed my love to you."
"Yes, which is why if you murder me now it will be deeply tragic."
She muttered something under her breath that sounded suspiciously like insufferable man and continued pulling me until we stepped back into the backyard and she led me towards the far corner near the swing where I had been too distracted to look earlier.
And then I stopped because there was a table set there. A proper dinner table with white cloth, candles and flowers in the centre with two plates and two glasses and on the warmer trays placed across it sat everything I liked.
I looked from the table.
To her.
Back to the table.
Then to her again.
"No."
She smiled, suddenly looking shy and pleased at the same time.
"Yes."
Dal makhani, Shahi Paneer, Garlic naan, Jeera rice, Dahi kebabs and in the bowl near the end, Gajar ka halwa.
"You made all this?"
All I got from her was a nod and I snapped my head towards her.
"You cooked?"
"Yes."
"Since when do you know how to make dahi kebabs?"
She looked mildly offended.
"I can cook."
"I know you can cook basic survival food. This..." I gestured at the spread, "this looks like Maa and five chefs collaborated."
A blush spread over her cheeks but she was smiling so widely now that it physically did something strange to my chest.
"I asked Maa for help with some recipes yesterday and Yash helped me get the flowers and lights." she admitted and I pointed at the table.
"So that traitor was part of this too?"
"Yes."
I inhaled deeply.
Then nodded solemnly.
"Fine. He gets to live one more day."
She burst into laughter.
God.
There was something deeply dangerous about seeing Shivanya this relaxed after being so emotional because now every smile felt like a reward.
I turned towards her fully.
"You confessed your love, decorated the backyard, and made me my favourite dinner?"
She looked down shyly.
"I told you I wanted it to be special."
For a few seconds, I did not say anything.
I simply looked at the woman standing in front of me with flushed cheeks and uncertain eyes, waiting for my reaction as if she had not already managed to dismantle me thoroughly enough for one evening.
There are people in this world who speak too much when they are overwhelmed.
I had never been one of them.
I reached up and tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear, my knuckles grazing her cheek.
"Sit." I asked her and she blinked.
"What?"
"Sit before the food gets cold."
A tiny smile appeared on her lips, perhaps because she had expected a longer reaction and all she got from me was one word.
As she moved away to pull out the chair opposite mine, I caught her wrist because where she was planning to sit was way too far than I planned on let her be from me.
"Here." I pulled the chair beside mine instead.
She looked at me, raised a brow in amusement but did not say anything about it.
She sat beside me after that, close enough that her saree brushed against my arm every time she shifted and I started eating while she watched me with unconcealed nervousness.
I took a bite of the dal.
Then the paneer.
Then the kebab.
Then the rice.
Everything was just about perfect, completely perfect.
Every few seconds I could feel her eyes on my face, trying to read me, trying to guess whether I liked it, whether all the hours she had spent planning this evening had been worth it.
Finally she could not hold herself back anymore.
"Is it okay?" she asked softly.
I did not answer.
Instead, I placed the spoon down on the plate slowly and she immediately straightened, her expression falling a little as if my silence had convinced her that she had ruined something.
I turned towards her and took her hand in mine. Her fingers were cold from nervousness as I lifted her hand to my lips and pressed a slow kiss against her knuckles, letting it stay there for one extra second.
When I looked back up at her, her eyes had already softened and relief washed through her so visibly that the tightness in her shoulders disappeared and the smallest smile trembled onto her lips.
I kept holding her hand as I picked the spoon back up with the other.
And under the glow of fairy lights, with my wife beside me, her confession still wrapped around my chest and the taste of food she had made just for me on my tongue, I realised that there are some nights a man carries for the rest of his life.
This was going to be one of mine.
Shivanya's Look -
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