Dil Beparwah | ✔

thirty five

||CHAPTER 35||
《¤》

┊A R V I K A┊

I had woken up like this before.

The sun, already up and shining, the bed, disastrously unmade. Clothes, strewn and littering the hardwood floors. Curtains, drawn wide apart. Bedsheet, a shameless reminder of the night before. A clock ticking irately on the nightstand, seconds away from being the mother of all horrors.

A drink too many leading to the unmistakable presence of a recurring one-night-stand.

Unconscious rolling sent me plummeting down the other side of the bed with a thump loud enough to disrupt the sleep of the man who was still here. He scrunched an eye at the stabbing sunlight, rising on his elbows to groggily peek over the side.

"Cozy down there?"

With the blanket swaddling me, I could understand his amusement at my struggle for standing up. "Snug as a bug in a rug."

Gravelly snort, his morning voice, tousled hair and a body that teased my eyes to prod lower. Would have called that an unusual morning delight, had not the sudden opening buzz of the suite door shaken me out of it. My eyes darted to the ornament of ticking hands on the wall—I was supposed to meet with the captains of the ship a noon ago.

Assuming it was Mia, I grabbed the closest item of clothing that would cover the essentials. What I was not expecting though, was for my brother to be impatiently knocking the door instead.

He looked terribly distraught, a shadow forming over his otherwise clean shaven face. "Where the fùçķ were you last night?" he stepped inside with a hurry that marked his panic. "Vika, ek din bhi nahi hua and—and those magazines are churning out repulsive shìť, and it's really not healthy for her or our—"

"—Arnav, calm down. Magazines spew shìť all the time. They are going to do it with or without the... the missing father in the picture."

"The–wait, what?" He followed me towards the kitchenette. "Missing father? Excuse me?"

Caffeine—where was Mia when I needed her? "Sorry, are we still playing dense here?"

I had my back to him, but was very aware of the accusatory frown marring his forehead. "I don't know, are we? Because mai parso se dekh raha hoon tujhe, you're being disturbingly sketchy."

"A random girl parades into your life with a baby, latching onto the first buoy to save herself from drowning and I'm the one being sketchy... do you mind paraphrasing that?"

Enraged, he slammed his fist on the marble slab. "If the baby wasn't mine, I'd have known by now. Arohi would have spoken to me before the arrangement was formally proposed!"

"Sure Arnav, that opportunist bìťçh would have told you and given up the golden chance to claw her way into our business!"

"What are you talking about? Woh mujhse baat bhi nahi karna chaahti thhi until two days ago."

My hysteric laughter was just the tip of the ice-berger. "Because she wasn't smart enough until you offered."

"Did Dad leave me with any other option, Arvika?" he grunted. "You wanted me to fix ties with him."

"Yes, but I also did not expect you to waltz back into the race for a baby that isn't even yours, Arnav!" Juice spilled out of the tetra pack, crinkling under the pressure of my hand.

"For once, things are getting better between me and Dad—"

"Do you really think that he will let you go back to snapping pictures once the deal is bagged? Tu dekh nahi raha Dad kya karne ki koshish kar rahe hai? I—I gave Deewan Group of Companies everything I could, I worked my aśş off to prove my worth with this ship, I am already competing with the Samyak fùçķìñg Deewan, and then you just pop in with a new wife and a baby, mend your issues with Dad, ready to be responsible for your actions."