Page 135 of Since You Stole My Heart

‘Don’t worry, he’s a lot tougher than he looks,’ Vihaan chuckled. ‘In fact, go ahead and punch him just to test it out.’

Dhruv shot him a dirty look, then turned to Kashvi with a pleading expression. ‘Some other day.’

Kashvi lightly touched his cheek and caught him hiss in pain. ‘Did Viraj do this?’

‘It got this bad because I got sloppy.’

‘He’s always sloppy,’ Vihaan added.

‘You’re just bitter because you didn’t get your beauty sleep,’ Dhruv shot back.

Vihaan scoffed. ‘Maybe I would have if you hadn’t kept me up all night trying to pull data from that broken piece of metal, which, by the way, was a complete waste of time.’

‘Maybe you shouldn’t have broken the phone then,’ Dhruv muttered.

Vihaan countered instantly, ‘You told me to take care of it, not bring it back in one piece.’

‘I foolishly assumed you had enough sense to know I didn’t need a dead-or-alive directive.’

Kashvi barely heard their bickering, her gaze fixed on the bruise that made Dhruv tense every time he spoke. ‘I can’t believe you did this, went through all this, just for me,’ she mumbled.

‘It’s no big deal,’ Dhruv shrugged.

The ease with which he dismissed it made her want him to understand she meant it. ‘No, it’s a huge deal. I don’t even know how to thank either of you.’

‘You don’t have to.’

‘I do,’ Kashvi said, taking a deep breath. She met his gaze head-on. ‘In fact, I owe you much more than that. You know, for someone younger than you, I’ve spent a very long time being your personal tormentor. Though I won’t deny that you made it easy by being annoying most of the time.’

Dhruv lifted his hands in surrender, a faint smile playing on his lips.

Flashes of the past hit her all at once. The careless remarks. The times she had snapped at him or dismissed him whenever he tried to help. It had been her stubborn pride that kept her from seeing him clearly, and the guilt of it made it difficult to breathe. ‘I should’ve been kinder to you. I should’ve been better than that, and I wasn’t. I’m sorry.’

Dhruv squeezed his eyes shut, and a tear slipped onto his shirt, instantly alarming her. ‘Hey, is it hurting that much?’

She whirled around. ‘Vihaan, should we get a doctor?’

He straightened immediately, humour fading into concern. ‘That looks bad, man. I know you said you don’t need it, but maybe Kashvi is right.’

Dhruv shook his head, then clasped her hands to pull her attention back to him. ‘Yesterday night, you reminded me of how you came to me the night Viraj took those pictures a few years ago.’

A hollow laugh escaped her at the memory. ‘Di wasn’t home, and Dad isn’t exactly known for comforting hugs, so going to him would’ve been a letdown.’

‘I did the same thing, didn’t I? You came to me, and I shut you out with cruel words.’

Her hands shook as she remembered standing there for a full minute after he shut the door, hoping he would change his mind.

‘You don’t have to answer. I know it’s true,’ Dhruv said softly with a half-hearted smile. ‘I don’t have an excuse for pushing you away the way I did. If I hadn’t been such an idiot that night, none of this would’ve happened. I can’t even think about it without feeling like I’m suffocating.’

‘Did you mean what you said?’ she asked, voicing the fear she had carried ever since.

Dhruv immediately shook his head. ‘I’d had a fight with Dad, and I was in a haze of anger. So I snapped at you. Later, I came to your room, but you weren’t there.’

‘I couldn’t stand being inside a locked room, so I slept in the gym,’ she confessed quietly.

He squeezed her hands as he said, ‘I know I’ve given you enough reasons to hate me long before any of this. I showed up out of nowhere in your life as proof of Dad’s affair, and then made everything worse by being a terrible brother to you. I know I don’t get to ask you to forgive me, but I hope someday... you hate me a little less. Enough that I can live with it.’

‘That’s not true,’ Kashvi said firmly. ‘I might have been just as terrible at showing it, and I definitely didn’t make it easy for you, but I don’t hate you. I didn’t even hate you when we were kids. When you came home, I was too young to understand the complicated dynamics behind it. I was over the moon to finally have a brother.’