Page 77 of Born in Ruin

Mayukhi stopped laughing. Her mouth fell open and she gaped at him.

“You love me?” she repeated.

“I tell you I’d destroy the world for you and you don’t blink but you’re shocked by me saying I love you?”

“I, it’s just,” she stammered before falling silent.

“It’s just what, Kraken?”

“It’s just that I’m not really the girl people fall in love with.”

“Yukhi.” Ishaan kissed her gently on her lips. “I have hated you for so long but even in that hate I was obsessed with you. All my life, since the age of ten, you were an ever present presence in my life. One I could never get rid of. I never knew why. When that hate turned to friendship and then to love, I couldn’t say. You are the only girl I have ever fallen in love with. There is and always will be only you. Loving you? It was never a choice. It just is.”

She smiled, a tremulous smile. “Even though I put chilli powder in your lime juice on sports day?”

“Again! That was you?” He gaped at her.

Mayukhi laughed, leaning forward to kiss him. “I love you too Adajania. I don’t know why it happened. I don’t know how it happened. I don’t know when it happened. But it did. I love you as much as I hated you. I love you so damn much.”

“I love you too, Kraken. So damn much.”

FORTY-TWO

Mayukhi

One week later…

Mayukhi stood in front of the mirror, running her hands down the soft cotton of her black Anarkali kurta. The gauzy, net dupatta kept slipping off one shoulder as she tried to slip her silver jhumkas in.

“Allow me,” Ishaan murmured, his fingers taking the cool metal from her and slipping it in without a hitch.

Mayukhi smiled, leaning back against him, her back pressing into his hard chest. Ishaan wrapped his arms around her waist and drew her in. He nuzzled his face into her hair, a contented groan escaping him.

“I love you, Kraken, I do, but I can’t believe I let you talk me into this.”

She turned in his arms, her hands going to play with his hair, messing it up so it didn’t fall in its perfect style anymore.

“I can believe it. You let me talk you into shit all the time. Remember the time you turned up at the school pool in your swimming trunks after hours?”

“You told me there were swim team tryouts happening,” he smiled, giving her hair a gentle tug. He’d arrived there only to find the school faculty having an end of term pool party. They’d thought he was trying to sneak in an afterhours swim. He’d ended up running laps of the school grounds as punishment.

They were still laughing when the doorbell rang. Ishaan’s smile vanished, tension seeping through him.

“Come on,” Mayukhi said gently, tugging at his hand. “It’s going to be fine. We can do this.”

He allowed her to lead him to the front door, opening it before he could chicken out and run in the opposite direction. The things you did for love, he thought as he met his father’s gaze for the first time in decades.

He looked weak, frail, an old man. Nothing like the demon who haunted Ishaan’s nightmares most nights.

“Ishaan!” His mother’s tremulous call had him looking away from his father. “Thank you for inviting us.”

He stepped back, allowing his family to file into his home. “Please come in.”

Too little, too late.

That’s what he’d told his mother the last time she’d been here. But if Mayukhi could forgive him his sins and love him anyway, maybe he could try and do the same for his family too.

And so, he drew the love of his life closer to him and said, “I’d like you all to meet Mayukhi, my fiancée.”

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