Page 46 of Lawfully Yours

She looked out the window, then back at him, and froze.

He was watching her. With heat, intensity, and challenge.

Neither of them spoke until Kushal reached for her hand. She didn’t pull away, not even when he raised her arm and brought her wrist to his lips before kissing it.

The kiss was not chaste. It wasn’t polite either.

It was slow. Intentional. And the soft sound of it echoed in her ears and spiralled right through her core.

He still didn’t break eye contact.

“I haven’t lost a single case your uncle has assigned me, Aru,” he murmured, his thumb now brushing her pulse point like he was memorising it.

This was the first time he even called her name and not ‘Arundhati’ like others did, but ‘Aru.’ Her uncle was the only one who ever called her that. It sounded startling, intimate coming from him.

She had to swallow as her throat suddenly felt dry.

“I won’t lose this one either,” he added. “I’ll fight for it. Till my last breath.”

****************

Back to Present – Arundhati’s Apartment

The song ended just then, but Arundhati was still caught in that memory of the first time they met, the feel of his lips brushing her wrist, the promise in his eyes that night outside her uncle’s bungalow.

She took a slow, steady sip of her now lukewarm tea, and whispered into the silence around her, “You really are proving what you promised me that night, Kushal. You’re still fighting to keep this marriage.”

Her voice trembled at the end of the sentence.

“Only if the reason for it... was the one I married you for in the first place.”

Her eyes drifted to the window. She remembered the way he had looked at her in those first few months of their marriage—possessive, attentive, utterly convincing. But now she knew better. Her reasons for asking for a divorce was not just Kushal’s dreams to be at the top of Verma and Associates. That wasn’t even the half of it.

The real wound, the one that still burned, was learning that before her uncle had ever brought up her name to Kushal, he had been planning to propose to someone else.

Kamya Bakshi.

One of Verma & Associates’ highest-profile, wealthiest, and most influential clients. A corporate heiress, brilliant and bold, and from what little Arundhati knew, someone who didn’t take kindly to being cast aside.

Kushal had plans with her.Real ones.Everyone in the firm knew it. The quiet buzz of their private dinners, the rumours of a ring, the talk that he’d finally found someone to “settle down” with.

But then her uncle, Raj Verma, proposed something that Kushal couldn’t ignore. A chance to marry not just anyone, but the heir to the Verma legacy.To be family.

She shut her eyes tightly, shame prickling under her skin.

He didn’t even take a day to think it over. That was what stung most.

He said yes.

Just like that, he closed the chapter on Kamya Bakshi, erased whatever promises he might’ve made, and agreed to a future with her. It was pure strategy. He had always wanted Verma & Associates. Always dreamed of climbing its golden ladder. And if he agreed to marry her, then she,his wife, was the fastest way up.

“How selfish.” She scoffed under her breath.

The truth didn’t come to her suddenly. It unfolded slowly in those five months of them living together in marriage, in offhand comments from colleagues, in the hesitations in Kamya Bakshi’s voice when their paths crossed after the wedding, in the sideways glances exchanged in the Verma & Associates’ boardroom. It came in hushed whispers she wasn’t supposed to hear.

Everyone knew what Kamya and Kushal had between them, before Arundhati, excepther.

A lone tear welled in her eye and slipped down her cheek, but she wiped it away quickly.