Chapter 238: Consoling A Hearbroken Wife - Part 2
All four of them stood crowded into the lift as it dropped floor by floor.
Sheetal stared down at the empty flask in her hands, turning it over in some silent calculation only she understood.
Priya kept shooting Robin a look sharp enough to draw blood, and Robin had suddenly developed an intense fascination with his own shoes. Nobody spoke.
The silence rode down with them like a fifth passenger.
Rohit watched the floor numbers tick downward, but his mind wasn’t on the lift at all.
He’d had the opening. The timing. The moment handed to him on a plate — ripe, undefended, exactly the kind he never let slip past. Sheetal, freshly broken, clearly vulnerable, her breathing and her gaze giving away more than she probably realized herself. She’d wanted it. He’d felt it. One real kiss on the lips and the last wall between them would have come down — and with it, a door into Arya’s inner circle that money couldn’t buy.
Instead he’d redirected to her cheek.
Why. Why hand back a connection like that? A perfect asset sitting inside his own sister’s world, practically offering itself, and he’d let it go for nothing.
Was that stupidity? Or had some leftover instinct from the naive litte innocent boy his past self used to be quietly overridden the one running things now?
He already knew the answer, if he was honest with himself. It hadn’t felt right. She’d just lost her husband — humiliated in public for the crime of wanting good things for him.
And hadn’t he been the one who’d been faulty for tonight’s fallout in the first place? Right or wrong, he felt something uncomfortably close to guilt, aimed at the one person tonight who’d shown him nothing but genuine warmth.
He shut his eyes as the lift dropped past ground level into the parking lot, and reminded himself — again — that he was living on borrowed time. Charity wouldn’t buy that time back.
’Fine. I did my part. Whatever comes next isn’t mine to carry. Focus.’
They stepped out into the parking lot, and the four of them stood there, working out what came next.
"So," Rohit said, turning to Sheetal. "Where are you headed now?"
She looked down, working her jaw like the words had lodged somewhere behind her throat and refused to move.
Priya jumped in first. "Di, come with us. There’s no reason to go back to that house tonight — we’ll take care of you until the settlement’s sorted."
"Terrible idea," Robin cut in immediately. "We’ll get spotted. You told your parents you’re at a wedding function tonight — if she shows up with us, that story’s dead."
Rohit was already halfway to offering his own place when his phone buzzed. He checked the screen and his jaw tightened.
Arya.
"Give me a minute," he said, stepping away from the group before answering.
Her voice came through clipped, controlled, and one wrong word away from detonating. "Rohit. Where. Are. You. Right now."
The tone alone made his skin prickle with irritation. He tolerated her — barely, and only because of Ragini — but she didn’t get to speak to him like she owned him.
"Staying at Riya’s hotel," he said flatly. "Happy?"
Silence stretched a beat too long.
"You’re lying," Arya said. "She’s not in her room."
That landed harder than he expected — she was tracking her rival’s whereabouts at this hour, and somehow, with all that surveillance, had no idea her most loyal secretary and closest friend had spent the night falling apart on a nightclub staircase because she’d cared too much to cross a line.
"Why do you even care," he said, dropping any pretense of patience. "I didn’t sign your contract, last I checked."
Arya’s voice cracked with barely-held restraint. "It’s the middle of the night. Aunt Kalyani’s already asking where you are. Do you want to hand her the perfect excuse to run straight to Father with it?"
He scoffed. "Then tell her exactly what I told you. Riya’s covering for me."
He hung up before her anger could fully surface, indifferent to whatever came next.
Then his eyes caught a notification — Aisha, his cousin. The most recent message sat above a small stack of earlier ones, all from a chat his personal AI, Lisa, had flagged as important enough to surface.
He opened it. A photo first — Aisha grinning with cream smeared across one cheek, a half-decorated cake in front of her.
[Yesterday, 9:18 PM
Aisha: loafer, figured you’re annoyed I’ve been spending so much time with tanya. making this cake for you. hurry up and get here]
***
[Yesterday, 10:18 PM
Aisha: seriously where the hell are you?]
***
[Yesterday, 11:24 PM
Aisha: fine. i’ll give you more priority i promise. can you just check your messages once]
***
[Today, 12:45 AM
Aisha : I am done waiting. cake’s in the fridge. there’s food too if you’re hungry. tomorrow I’m sticking to you like glue 😛]
***
He couldn’t help the small laugh that escaped him.
Funny how people shifted depending on where their interests landed.
There was a time he’d counted Arya as his one real ally in this family — and now the supposed ice queen barely registered as family at all, while his supposedly villainous, self-absorbed, nagging cousin was texting him cake pictures at midnight like an actual wife-in-training.
The contrast was almost funny.
’What a circus of a family,’ he thought, pocketing the phone and rejoining the others.
"Any progress?" he asked.
Robin filled him in — Sheetal wanted to go back to her uncle’s house eventually, but given the hour, she’d booked a hotel for the night instead and was waiting on a cab.
Rohit frowned. "That’s ridiculous. Why book a cab when I’m standing right here?"
Sheetal shook her head quickly. "No... please. I don’t want to drag anyone else into this. I’ll manage on my own."
"That’s it?" Rohit said, looking straight at her. "I’m ’anyone’ now?"
She struggled for a response and came up empty.
Rohit simply held his hand out for her phone. She surrendered it, reluctant, and he checked the booking. "Not even accepted yet. What a waste of time."
He cancelled it on the spot and pulled up the location on his own phone.
She protested weakly, but he was already pulling her along by the hand, ignoring the halfhearted resistance. Robin and Priya waved them off from behind while Sheetal, out of options, let herself be led.
The hotel was barely thirty minutes out, but Rohit rode like the speed limit was a personal insult, cutting through the empty roads fast enough that Sheetal had to grab hold of him from behind to keep her balance.
She said nothing, but she didn’t let go either — found something steady in the grip, some kind of anchor in the warmth of his back against her front.
Her eyes stayed shut against the wind the whole ride, and she held on tighter than the road conditions strictly required. Her coat was probably forgotten but it didnt mattered now.
Rohit felt his own pulse climb, sharply aware of the soft press of her breasts against his back, and made a deliberate decision to keep his hands — and everything else — where they belonged, at least for tonight.
They covered the whole distance in ten minutes flat. The hotel was 14th storey building.
He walked her in and stayed to help with check-in. The corridor was empty at this hour, the receptionist half-asleep behind the counter, clearly not expecting company.
The room came to four thousand rupees — decent, upper-middle-class, nothing extravagant. Twelfth floor, room 402. He passed her the keycard and was turning to leave when she pulled him into a hug instead.
The receptionist suddenly discovered the ceiling tiles were fascinating.
Rohit felt her shaking against him, crying harder now than she had all night. He rubbed slow circles against her back. "Hey. It’s alright. Whatever you need — I’m here. Just ask."
Silence, except for the ragged sound of her trying to steady her breathing.
Then, in a voice barely above a whisper, "Then... stay. Please. Just for tonight. I don’t want to be alone."
That caught him off guard. He’d walked into tonight fully prepared to not play his usual angles, and here she was, hugging him voluntarily, asking him to stay of her own accord.
He allowed himself a small, private grin — one she couldn’t see, buried as she was against his shoulder — and gave her back a final reassuring pat. "Alright. I’ll stay tonight."
Cough. Cough.
The receptionist cleared his throat, eyes very deliberately fixed on anything but them. "Sir — visitor fee is normally two thousand. I can bring it down to one, given the hour."
Rohit considered it for a beat, then slid his card across the counter, Sheetal’s hand still folded in his, her face flushing deeper by the second. "Charge me three thousand. Keep the rest."
The receptionist grinned, processed the payment quickly, and handed the card back. Rohit took Sheetal’s hand like a boyfriend would and guided her to the lift.
The night suddenly turned from tragic to interesting.