“I am immune to it.”
“How?” Her eyes widened. “Have so many girls sprayed it at you?!”
An amused sound left his mouth.
“Say!”
“We’ve run drills in these gas chambers.”
Her eyes widened. “Really?”
He blinked a nod.
“But you were a doctor.”
“Platoon surgeon.”
“So they made even you go inside these gas chambers?”
“Hmm.”
“Why?”
“Atharva liked to keep everyone ready.”
“So… all of you?”
“Hmm.”
“Even Chaturvedi?”
All the good humour of the last few minutes fizzled away. Samar began to move away when her hand caught his elbow. “Sorry.”
He looked at her. She wasn’t buzzed or chirpy or grumpy anymore. Something had shifted in her eyes.
“I am sorry. About her, and all that you went through with her and your baby.”
She thought that washisbaby?
“I know I said we would forget it after last night, and I swear I will forget it. I have forgotten it. Consider it forgotten. But I had to tell you this. Whatever is happening now, it’s ok if you come back to my window and yell.”
He did not utter another word. He was scared he would either blurt every single lash of his worst days or cut her so bad with his words about this impending closeness that she would not even look at him again. And right now, in a world spinning on its axis, she was the only stagnant star.
“Were you married?”
“No.”
“And in all these years, you have never thought about anything but her.”
Samar kept staring at her. Amaal’s small eyes went even smaller, the blue so dark that it was drowning. He felt disgust rise up in his body. What was he doing? Using her to hold onto his own sanity and pushing her back into the storm from where she had once barely escaped unscathed? She was ten years younger than him, at the peak of her career, enjoying life.
“Is that why you walked away from me four years ago?”
She asked that question in such a small voice. Hiding a hundred questions inside that one.Is that why you spoke so brutally to me? Is that why you insulted my age? Is that why you never looked back?
Samar swallowed. And her eyes went to his throat. He saw them darken. He felt her body sway closer. He felt his neck bend. He felt her face tip up. Slowly. Very slowly. Everything was so slow. Her scent of lilies was in the air. Soft. Softer than the flowers she grew. Her skin had a scent, too. A scent he discovered he wanted more of as her cheek came close to his nose. Her mouth was round, soft, red. Her tongue came out to moisten it. It was glowing now.
His gaze rose from her lips to her eyes, and found them on his mouth. Their breaths mingled. She pushed closer. He found his mouth automatically falling to hers when good sense suddenly prevailed.
