Page 149 of Since You Stole My Heart

Kashvi hesitated, and he caught on immediately. ‘Kash, answer me honestly.’

‘It hurts,’ she admitted, looking away.

He gently held her chin, making her meet his gaze. ‘Where?’

Slowly, she showed him her bandaged hand. ‘And?’ he urged softly.

Kashvi lifted her tank top halfway, but once he saw the edge of the bruise, he pushed the fabric slightly higher, revealing it completely.

A terrifying, icy rage burned beneath his fractured restraint. Swayam’s eyes stayed locked on the bruise, and the longer he looked at it, the harsher his breathing became. His jaw clenched so hard she saw the muscle twitch violently at his temple. His fists closed so tightly his knuckles turned white.

‘I’m going to kill someone,’ he said with lethal calm.

Kashvi quickly pulled the top back down. ‘I’m okay. It looks worse than it is, so please just relax a little.’

‘Relax?’ Swayam repeated sharply, disbelief and fury colliding in his voice. ‘You want me to relax right now?’

She swallowed.

‘I just meant… I’m fine,’ she tried again.

‘Oh. You’re fine?” His eyes never left hers. “That’s good, because I only planned to stay long enough to make sure of that.’

Kashvi’s stomach dropped.

As soon as Swayam started walking towards the bedroom door, she asked quickly, ‘Where are you going?’

His breathing had turned rough and uneven, and the veins in his forearms stood out sharply beneath his skin as his fists clenched at his sides. Slowly, he looked back at her.

‘Where do you think I’m going?’ Swayam asked, brimming with quiet anger.

‘Why don’t you relax a little before you do something reckless?’ Kashvi shot back.

His nostrils flared, and when he finally spoke, his voice sounded scraped raw. ‘Reckless?’ Swayam repeated.

The word dissolved into a disbelieving laugh, and his eyes burned savagely. ‘I came home and found you unconscious on the fucking floor. You’re sitting here with bruises and stitches, and you’re telling me to relax?’

His voice broke on her name, and she flinched at the terror in it.

Swayam raked both hands through his hair before pacing away from the door and back towards her bed like he couldn’t stay still inside his own skin. Rage radiated off him in suffocating waves. His chest rose and fell unevenly beneath his shirt as he admitted hoarsely, ‘I thought I was going to lose you forever.’

The confession punched straight through her chest. ‘Don’t go. Stay with me,’ she whispered, pleading.

Swayam crouched in front of her, his eyes wild and glassy, burning with fear and wrath so intense they barely looked human anymore. ‘You haven’t even looked at yourself once tonight, have you?’

Kashvi shook her head. She avoided looking too closely at anything, including herself. Because doing that would make this nightmare feel more real.

‘I knew it. Because if you had, you’d understand why I’m close to losing my mind. Do you have any idea what finding you in that state did to me? I walked in and saw blood pooling around your hand. You were barely conscious. I thought I was... too late.’

The anguish in his expression nearly destroyed her.

‘I kept thinking, what if I hadn’t come? What if you hadn’t called me when you did? What if something worse had happened before I got here?’

His hand came up gently to cup her jaw, and the tenderness in his voice nearly undid Kashvi. ‘I swear, I lost ten years off my life waiting outside just to hear you were okay. But now that I know you are, all I can think about is finding the man who hurt you and ripping him apart with my bare hands.’

Kashvi cried silently as she gathered her courage. ‘You might not feel that way if you knew who it was.’

His haunted gaze locked onto hers. ‘Do you really think that just because Viraj is my cousin, I would let him get away with hurting you?’