Page 58 of Entangled Vows

Dear Lord. She was going crazy.

It had to be her writer brain, constantly seeking inspiration in every little detail. It was just an overactive imagination, brimming with fanciful thoughts and imagined scenarios. It wasn’t attraction. Not in the slightest. That simply couldn’t be… right? And yet, the shiver that ran down her spine said otherwise.

She groaned, burying her face in the pillow as she muttered out loud, “You’re not the boss of me.”

Bungee rustled quietly in his corner, his eyes following her every move in utter silence.

“He is not the boss of me. He isnotthe boss of me,” she chanted like a mantra, hugging a cushion tightly to her chest.

The words came out quieter than they felt in her head, but she held onto them like they were a warm layer of protection. Let him be pissed. She didn’t care. If it bothered him, she’d happily sleep here every single night. No way was she going to let him control her. She snuggled deeper under the blanket, letting out a contented sigh. Even though she tried to fight it, her thoughts were starting to soften. And as she drifted off, her last thought wasn’t about the couch, or even the fight.

It was his name, echoing in the depths of her mind.

∞∞∞

The house was silent when Vikram returned from the gym. Sweat clung to his skin, but it wasn’t just the workout that had him wired. Mahika had a way of unsettling him and making him lose it. Working out was his way of burning off that tension before he did something reckless, like pushing her onto the bed to make it perfectly clear she wasn’t meant to sleep anywhere but beside him.

He glanced at the time. Mahika must have dozed off by now. Good. She needed the rest after the chaos of the past few weeks. At least, that was the excuse he told himself. However, the truth was, he hated the distance between them, the invisible walls that had always been there, ever since they were kids.

Reaching the bedroom door, he turned the knob and stepped inside. Then he slipped off his shoes and wiped thesweat from his neck with his towel. Without bothering to turn on the main lights, he made his way towards the bathroom. A dim floor lamp in the corner cast a soft glow around him, and that’s when he saw her.

His wife. Asleep. On the goddamn couch.

He stood there for a second, thinking maybe she’d just dozed off while scrolling through her phone. But no, her breathing was even, and the throw pillow under her head flattened as if she’d made the couch her bed for the night.

His jaw ticked as his eyes fell on the infuriatingly stubborn woman curled up on it and occupying the one spot, he’d told her to avoid. He knew it wasn’t about comfort. It wasn’t even about space. It was aboutdefiance.Plain and simple.

Mahika had made a sport out of pushing his buttons. Always. This… this petty little act of rebellion was just the latest in her long list of ways to test his patience. She’d slept on that couch with a barely-there blanket, not because she liked it, but becausehehad demanded her to make herself comfortable inhisbed. And God forbid she ever did anything he suggested without turning it into a battleground of wills.

She was stubborn enough to test a saint’s patience.

A memory from their childhood flashed in his mind, as vivid as if it had happened yesterday. It was the summer she’d decided to learn to ride a scooty. She was sixteen, and he was twenty-three.

He remembered it clearly. How could he not? How could he forget the day he realised she was born solely to send his blood pressure through the damn roof?

At the time, he’d been dating someone far too high-maintenance. That season had been full of subtle shifts. He’d catch himself thinking about Mahika more than he should, noticing things about her he hadn’t before. And for the first time,he found himself resenting his own brother, because he was the one she laughed with, the one she trusted the most.

Mohit had conveniently dumped the responsibility of teaching Mahika to ride a scooty on him before heading off on a secret getaway with his girlfriend. Suraj had vanished too, claiming he had cricket practice.

And Vikram, fool that he was, had agreed. He’d cancelled a long-standing date with his girlfriend, who had thrown a tantrum that could put a cranky toddler to shame.

He still remembered standing in the sunlit driveway of Mahika’s house, one hand on the handlebars, the other steadying the backrest as he walked her through the basics on how to balance, how to twist the accelerator slowly, and how to brake without jerking.

The conversation played in his mind as if it had happened just yesterday.

“Ease into the throttle,” Vikram instructed, demonstrating slowly and carefully. “You twist it like that again, and we’ll be digging this scooty out of a tree.”

Mahika grumbled and adjusted her helmet. “I know what I’m doing, Grizzly.”

“That’s what you said before you hit the gate.”

“The gate came out of nowhere.”

He raised an eyebrow. “It’s been there since your fifth birthday.”

She shot him a glare. “It’s just a scooty. Chill. I’m not auditioning for Formula One.”

“Could’ve fooled me. You rev up so fast like you’re trying to travel through time.”