Assuming he was out, she walked straight toward the bathroom. The moment she pushed the door open, she froze. Inside the shower cubicle, beneath the cascading rain shower, stood Karan.
Bare.
“Oh God,” she almost jolted as she instantly turned around.
Karan noticed her too.
“I’m sorry—sorry,” she blurted out immediately in a rushed and flustered voice. “I didn’t know you were in here. I—I didn’t see anything. I swear. The glass is so foggy…I didn’t see anything. Believe me.”
She swallowed hard, realising she was rambling.
By the time she stopped, the sound of the water had ceased, and Karan stepped out of the shower.
She should have run. She knew that. The moment she had seen him, she should have walked right out. Yet somehow, her feet refused to move.
What she had seen stayed etched in her mind. Karan, inside the shower cubicle, drenched, water streaming down his body. Steam clung to the glass, the space thick with heat. His one arm rested against the glass wall, his head slightly bowed as the rain shower poured over him, tracing the hard lines of his frame before disappearing lower.
It was an image she knew she would never forget. No matter how hard she tried. The moment that chain of thoughts snapped, she felt him right behind her.
“What were you saying?” he asked, his voice turning husky with every syllable.
She bit her lip, still refusing to turn around, keeping her gaze fixed anywhere but on him. “I said… I didn’t see anything,” she repeated.
The very next second, Karan caught hold of her arms and turned her around.
Mishti immediately shut her eyes, tight. Too tight. How was she supposed to open them when he wasn’t even wearing anything?
Yet when he simply turned her around and remained silent, she hesitantly opened one eye. And only after she sensed something wrapped around his lower body did she open the other eye too, releasing the breath she had been holding.
A Turkish towel was tied low around his waist. His body was still wet, water droplets sliding down his skin. His hair dripped, darkened by the shower, and Mishti stood there utterly lost, not knowing what to say next.
Karan watched her closely, studying every reaction, clearly enjoying her discomfort.
She swallowed hard before speaking again, not because it was true, but because she needed him to believe it. “I…I didn’t see anything.”
Karan tilted his head just slightly, already reading her lie. “You sure?”
No.She wasn’t sure at all. Because she had seen far more than she had expected to. Seeing the grin on his face and realising he was teasing her on purpose, she shrugged his hand off, turned around abruptly, and hurried back into the room, completely flustered.
When Karan finally came out sometime later, still draped in the towel around his waist, Mishti immediately rushed toward the bathroom, carefully avoiding his eyes. But Karan stepped in front of her, blocking her path.
She tried moving to the other side. He blocked her again. Left with no option, she finally looked up at him. But he was not looking at her face. His gaze had dropped lower, fixed on her hands. That was when she realised what he was staring at.Her mehndi-clad palms.
She instinctively hid her hands behind her back.
Karan looked at her sharply and said, “Let me see.”
She frowned. “Why?” she asked. “When you were supposed to care about my mehndi duringourmarriage, you were too busy ignoring me. Why this sudden interest now?”
Karan clenched his jaw. Without replying, he reached for her hands, trying to pull them forward. Mishti resisted at first, but the desperation in him made her give in. A soft smile slowly appeared on his lips, the moment his eyes fell on the intricate mehndi on her palms.
And watching him admire the delicate patterns made her smile, too. There was a strange satisfaction in seeing the man who had been consumed by revenge slowly returning to a more human version of himself. The kind that noticed, admired, felt.
When he continued staring for too long, she mocked lightly, “I haven’t written your initials anywhere. No point searching so hard. Avni is the bride, not me.”
She was about to walk past him again into the bathroom to freshen up when he suddenly gripped her arm and pulled her back, and turned her palm over once more.
This time, his thumb brushed gently over the Venus mount of her palm, tracing a part of the design where his initial was cleverly woven into a complex pattern shaped like a heart. The letter K was hidden so smartly inside that heart that almost nobody could notice.
