Better Together

32 | hem and haw

Surprise! Early update and also the longest chapter of the book. I hope you enjoy it.

***

"We need to talk," Ruhaani spoke as soon as she had shut the door and walked up to his large work desk in their room.

Aadarsh looked up from the physical document he had been reading.

"You haven't spoken to me since yesterday morning, Aadarsh." She reminded him when he looked at her like he had no clue what she was talking about.

"As far as I remember, we spoke." He lowered his gaze back to the papers.

Ruhaani walked around the table and stood by his chair. She placed her left palm over the paper he was reading. "Good Morning, Good Night, Okay, Fine, Noted, Alright, Okay, I have some work, not now. Did I miss any meaningful words?"

Aadarsh sighed, staring at the back of her palm that was now obstructing the paragraph he had been reading. She had a hideous shade of pink nail paint on her fingernails, identical to the one Mukti had showed him on his toe nails sometime back.

"Oh wait, do you plan to runaway to another city and return a changed man again? Is that the plan?" She asked mockingly.

Pressing his lips tightly together he looked up to her, with a sharp glare. "Hands off the document." He ordered. If someone told him the simple woman he had met a few months back in a restaurant would turn out to be a bold daring bossy person, he would have called it a poor joke.

She stood stubbornly neither replying nor complying, just simmering his blood. His gaze remained steady on her chocolate brown eyes, while his hand moved to hers. His fingers curled around her wrist and lifted her hand off the paper, quite effortlessly despite her resistance. "Perhaps, you should learn to behave." He scowled.

"I could say the same to you. You're back to ignoring me, again!" Her reply was swift and sharp as always.

The truth in her words angered him. He stood up from his chair, towering over her. "I am not." Yes, he was. He knew he was.

His nascent lust for her was alarming. Every time she was around he was reminded of that moment in the backyard. Every time she looked at him, he was reminded of their constant conflict; they barely ever came to the same page easily. While the former lured him closer to her the latter made him want to run the other way.

It bothered him, troubled him.

He would never be good enough for her. She would always find just faults, because that—he had come to an epiphany the previous afternoon— was her nature. Belittling him.

However, he had zero tolerance for that. Ruhaani was no exception. He didn't like to be belittled. He didn't like to be spoken back to.

"You can't ignore me every time we have a disagreement. It's unhealthy. Everyone at home knows we had a falling out. Even Nirvan asked me, why we both were not talking to each other."

That was exaggeration on her end. They didn't talk much either way, especially around the kids. "I am not ignoring you." He said plainly, lying through his teeth.

Ruhaani scoffed, "Really? So, now you're denying it." Annoyance oozed from her tone.

Aadarsh yanked her hand closer to himself, causing her body to jerk closer to his. "What do you want Ruhaani? You want me to talk to you twenty-four into seven? Oh wait, perhaps you want me to listen to every shortcoming you find in me, every flaw, everything I do wrong, every insult." He snapped.