Story: Drawn Together (Chapter 10 Contd.)

Chapter-10 (Cold)

Their bodies swung out of the car in a catapult, and rolled and rolled rough and hard on the concrete road. Radhika’s teeth rattled with the impact, but her body was held tight by his arms. He took every brunt, crunch, and hit. He shielded her completely, his hands under her head and his face convulsing in pain on every turn of the roll.

Shocked and her breath knocked out hard of from her lungs, Radhika’s mind blackened more. Their bodies stopped hitting on the small rocks and finally collided with a dead dried out trunk of a tree.

Radhika’s felt a searing pain scratch piercingly on the side of her stomach. The pain travelled through all her limbs and body, her eyes watered and she gasped, but her mind panicked looking at a red spot appear and spread on the t-shirt of the side of his left shoulder.

Radhika could hardly breath, adrenaline rushed in a flood into her veins. She felt his body shake too much on top of hers. God, he wasn’t only shaking. He was literally groaning out loud in pain. Sweat soaked both of their bodies, but nothing could beat the extreme fear spreading all over her skin when she heard him grunt out loud and his muscles involuntarily shook hard rattling her body with his.

“Oh, god! Are you alright?” She gasped out breathless, and tugged firmly on his t-shirt.

His body got off of her immediately and he slid beside to her, breathing really hard, the strains of the stuttering and hacking of his breath reached her ears and pierced into her very being. She tried hard to move up but her muscles seem to be paralysed dead on the moist soil. A wetness trickled on her skin over the side of the stomach. Radhika closed her eyes to shake off the pain and tried hard to get up. Before her try of a struggle could motion her frozen muscles to work, he got up and stood on his two feet shockingly with easy fluidity of limbs. Radhika startled looked up but he turned his back to her face. His shoulders heaved up and down, his breath stilted more than before. His straining hard pants still rang into her ears.

Radhika winced, flinched and got up somehow. Her head reeled, and her mind circled fast in a zoom of giddiness. A thick film of shadowed blackness appeared in her vision blurring his image into her eyes.

But, she saw him take a step forward, and her hand as if a reflex caught hold of his wrist. His body instantly locked up and straightened more. A complete silence befell upon them. The night and the woods remained unmoved. He turned around slowly. His eyes didn’t catch hers as they always do first, but travelled towards the hold of her hand on his wrist.

He kept staring down, his face streaked in sweat and dust. The drawn tightness of his face and the paled thinned lips of his half opened mouth panted hard. Radhika waited for his eyes to capture hers.

But he fliched away looking at her hand in pained grunt. A complete look of something horrible came into his features breaking the hard angles and planes of his face into a twisted convulse. The shock of seeing it sting her eyes and a rush of heated mist reddened the white around her hazel pupils. A complete iciness hurt her body with its thousand needles. The other tremulous whitened hand of his caught hers in a hard painful grasp.

Radhika gasped out, her wide swimming gaze caught his in a gaze, and her heart staggered and she gasped more in a surprised sharp intake of breath looking at the cold emptiness circling around his brown eyes.

There was no hue of colour but a spread of extreme pale over his cheeks. It made him look extremely gaunt. There was no flatness of cynical gaze peering down at her but a strange emptiness poured into and around his eyes. She flinched when his frozen fingers clamped biting into the vein of her wrist.

“Your skin is so cold.” She whispered shakenly.

He didn’t reply but removed her hand from over his wrist and pushed it aside.

His empty depths of brown eyes strayed from over her hair and down to her eyes. He didn’t stare much but glided his gaze down in a slow swipe. Radhika’s back straightened like a ramrod and the hair over her arms raised up in alarm looking at something raw pass over his features. With each swipe down of his eyes an unfurling detachment coursed through his face and form and passed into her body. Radhika felt her heart race fast and thudded hard under her chest feeling the coldness of his gaze travel deep into her bones.

He took a step back, Radhika’s eyes widened as she looked down at his feet, she frowned as her eyebrows strained in a depth of fierceness and her forehead pained in concentration. She looked up hurriedly and saw his eyes look down at her stomach. His jaw locked tight in an hard set. His face etched in a strange look. As if he was erasing out something, the look so unpertainable settled in her stomach in extreme anxiety.

He took several steps away from her and his eyes and face remained ever dispassionate. She couldn’t feel the warmth anymore when he was just near or going away. He turned around abruplty. He looked done. Over. Completely turning around in a silence. It vibrated in her mind and raked a clawy feeling over and over again at his soundless muteness.

Radhika hurried after him and she tried to whisper out words. monosyllables. Broken whispers. Trying to get a word out of him, but he walked on really steady feet and now a deep gap filled in between them, as Radhika stuttered and stumbled on her rubbery feet.

It was not the shock of the accident that rattled her nerves in a flipping, it was his behaviour after it that made the cold spread to her core through and through.

Fifteen minutes into the walking the woods cleared and the main road appeared. Radhika’s pace slowed down as she felt about fall down in a heap of weakened limbs. Just then, His Limo came rushing in and stopped right where they stood. Thank god.

Arjun got into the back of it, without even looking around at her, Radhika moved fast. Her hand clamped on the car handle and she moved it to get in, but it didn’t budge. She frowned and pulled a little, because it seemed like it got stuck. She blinked hard and moved back a little, her breath getting stuck in the back of her throat, a little of understanding crept into her skin. She hesitated and her eyes reluctantly went to the glass.

He sat in the middle of the cushioned seat in a cut out manner. His left hand lay sprawled on the back of it, as he leaned back lazily, but everything else faded out from around her looking at his eyes. He was staring back at her. Really looking back at her. Her blood froze when he pierced her with one look. A slow gaze, but it managed to rock her back on her feet.

Punishment, Unrelenting and immense. Radhika willed the shattered and battered of the little courage left in her body to come to her rescue in a wield from such a stare, but nothing shielded her eyes, when the severity of his eyes promised her of many things. Especially of heavy repercussions. The brittle hardness settled now on his features showed of the barely controlled fury. His right hand was fisted on his thigh.

The car jerked to a start.

Radhika kept her gaze still stuck to his blanked out eyes, unable to believe that he wasn’t letting her in still. The car moved slowly and she panicked like hell now. No no, he wouldn’t leave her here now, would he?

But as the his face disappeared along with the zoom of the car, Radhika kept staring at the empty space in complete paralysis. A heavy breath escaped her lips in disbilief. She turned fast and saw the car ripping on the road in a speeding charge leaving only dust in its wake. Her left hand went up over her mouth staring after it.

What? Her hand from her mouth went over her forehead and she moved around in a circle still in a trance.

He left her all alone and cold in the unsafest of place just like that? What happened just now?

He looked at her as if he wanted to hurt her real bad. That surmised and summed upto one thing. Stupid fool that she was, she shouldn’t have took his car out of the garage and drove it off the mansion, and this all wouldn’t have happened. The rustling of leaves jerked her around. She peered into the black woods in a closing in fear. Her chest heaved up and down looking over at the void. Everything around surronded in fear, the sky wasn’t gleaming with stars nor it gave any light of the moon. Her ears attuned to the sounds, the hoots of the owl and running feet of what kind of thinga she didn’t.

Radhika determined her will. He wouldn’t leave her here like that. He will come back to get her. Shw kept glued to the road, waiting and waiting. She shivered feeling the extreme cold of the night obsorb into her skin.

Still he didn’t come. Nothing but empty concrete flat surface stretched. Not any other vehicle came to her rescue. At least, she thought she could get a lift.

Shivering attacked her body and the cold permeated into her bones when looking around the woods again. She sat down on a large stone beside theroad wrapping the thin Sari end around herself more.

Finally a long black shiny car moved along towards her. He came, her mind cried out and rush of joy spread all over and warmed a little her body as she stood up hurriedly and stumbled.

It came and abruptly halted right before her. Radhika through the dim light of the car looked in the back of the seat and the slow smile from her lips wiped away looking at only emptiness.

All the rush dissipated in the sheer disappointment rising high in her chest. She looked at the front seat and saw a tall and broad black suited man have his hands on the steering wheel.

He looked rough with a round cut jaw, very beefy and muscular. He had a buzz cut of hair style.

Radhika stood staring unsurely.

“Get in, mam.” The man said, in a very deep voice.

“Where is he?” She asked in a very small voice.

She already knew the answer of it, but still there was hope that the man would say otherwise.

Radhika only got silence. She stared at herself in the car window. She was surprised to see her face controted in extreme pain.

“It’s getting colder. You need to get in.” The man said again in that robotic deep voice.

Radhika nodded her head and got in.

Immediately she sagged down on the seat in relief as her legs gave out on her. A clear warmth surronded now as the car heated up inside. The Limo had a partition and the man’s back of the head could be visible.

With dry convulse in her throat she asked dreadingly another question.

“He…he…he doesn’t know you came here, does he? He didn’t send you?”

A complete silence surronded for a while, but she finally got the answer.

“No.”

Radhika felt a deep rush of warmth hit her eyes, and her nose sting thinking. A hot lone tear escaped her left eye and travelled down her cool cheeks.

He did look like he regreted saving her, but now her confusion cleared. He abandoned her. Gave up on her. He gave her a look filled with such blistering ice that Radhika felt like looking at her own father, that scared the day lights out of her, she could very well translate such look. It said ‘you can die here, but I wouldn’t care a second of mourning if you do’.

She had read such many a times in her father’s eyes.

Her lower lip quivered and her face tightened as her body threatened to dissolve in sobs, but she bit the inside of her cheek not to cry deep and painfully.

Half an hour of more being more pathetic and misarable, the car stopped at a very dear and familiar house. Radhika got out. She hesitated and bent down to the car window.

“What is your name?” She asked the man behind the wheel.

His head turned to her face and Radhika stared into a pair of black beady eyes.

“It’s Amal.” He replied in a affectless voice.

Radhika smiled a little tired and watery one.

“Thank you, Amal, very much.” She said very softly.

The man stared, opened his mouth to say something but closed his it deciding otherwise and nodded his head.

“I’m not going to say anything about this, you know.” She reassured him, understanding already that the man went against the boss’s order. If she said anything about it, he for sure would lose his job.

The man’s head whipped around to her. A thankful look came into his eyes.

He turned to the front not replying and started the car. A second later it zapped away on the road and disappeared into the night.

Radhika entered into the house and sagged down on the couch of the living room.

She bent forward and clucthed her hair tight in both of her hands.

Why did she ever leave the house today?

First she hurt Sam, then fool that she was, ran to his house like a crazy maniac. Fought with him. Got into his car unmindfully in extreme anger and created such crap. Damn, when had she become so irresponsible. Radhika had never been so impulsive, she was always the calm thinker among all the three sisters.

But the way he taunted her, made fun of her, and declared that they would going to bed panicked her to no end, but now she knew. God, he was only joking and she took the meaning otherwise.

But, She wasn’t even in the wildest scariest dream could imagine such devastating horrifying change come into his demeanor.

He changed right before her eyes into the cut throat businessman she knew of before. All hard and mean. All the teasing softness wiped away in a flash.

Radhika paced about in the hall worrying heavily.

She got her phone from the small tuga she had carried previously tugging in the waist of her Sari.

Dialing a number she put it over her right ear and waited it to ring.

It started ringing and ringing, but he didn’t pick up. She felt her eyes swam more.

She cut the call and dialled frantically again. It was the mansion line number. He had given her three numbers. His private one, this one and the office one. Ordered her to call anytime then, but he didn’t answer at all now.

She felt tears to accumulate in her eyes listening to it ring and ring.

———-

Arjun sat on the couch leisurely in a lean back posture, resting his back on it. The landline phone laid in front of him on the wide glass tea poy, showed the id of the number as it rang incessantly for the third time.

He kept staring at the phone in wariness and complete detachment.

It stopped ringing, but it started once again. The sounds of it blasted all across, hitting and reverberating back on the walls of the empty hall.

—————

Radhika dialled the number for the fourteenth time. She kept pacing the floor almost in tears now.

———–

Arjun leaned front, tilted his head to the side, his hands reached the phone, a second of hovering over the reciever, he moved aside his hands and removed the wire from the back of it. The ringing stopped abruptly.

———-

Radhika heard the ringing stop and the line going into sudden unavailabilty. She frowned and pulled the phone aside from her ear and dialled again. The line yet again connected to a dead end. She closed her eyes and sagged down on the couch in bereavement and dejection.

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Arjun kept staring at the phone. Both of his hands gripped hard the glass in a hold, the muscles rippled on his forearms with the effort.

His eyes stayed locked on the reciever. Several seconds passed like that. His breathing had returned to normal. His face turned stone looking at the phone.

A vision of her lone figure in the woods swarm across his eyes time and again.

The niggling in the back of his mind now lashed out heavily splattering and splintering the cold into million pieces.

The affect of it, burned up his hands and legs and he sprang up on his feet in a flash of a second.

“f**k.” He cursed gutturally, and ran up to the front door.

He took the car keys off the wall hanger and punched in a security code. The protection cell moved away and he ran down the stairs.

In the spiral of it, he found Amal walking up.

“Sir…”He tried to say, but Arjun cut him off.

“Not now.” He bit out.

“But, Sir..”

“f**king, not now.” He growled more, and cursed even loudly.

He charged down and reached his garage. He got inside the car and geared it into motion.

Leave it for the crazy pitite woman to make him go mental for one night, he cursed and glowered up.

He needed her more now. Not for anything more than getting into a deal.

Marry her. Get the land. And be done with this shit and, for f**k’s sake, he couldn’t be able do anything if something happens to her. All the hardwork would go in a drain without her living.

He moved fast the car in the night and reached the place and got out fast.

His eyes moved around the woods and he found not a sign of her.

A slow dread started to creep into his mind as he slid his hand in his hair and pulled at it frustatedly.

He stamped down the lost feeling trying to have its affect. He shook it off.

He had to keep her in a place. He should not let her get into his head again. For that his caluculative mind already streaked out a plan. She wasn’t that interesting even to hold a conversation with him, so it wouldn’t be hard for him to fade her out.

His jaw hardened when he thought of the accute sensitiveness he felt as her image burned up and cleaned out of his mind while he looked at the flaming catching up at the photographs of hers. Not anymore. He was burned again again so many times for getting closer to a person. It should be enough for him to look across at her in a distance. Wary and unattached.

Where the hell was she? He looked around and walked all the way into the woods.

His phone vibrated.

Arjun looked down at it.

‘She is already at the house’—- Amal’s message read.

A deep rush of relief filled his every vein, as incredible warmth spread into his lungs when he took in a heavy healing breath.

*********

Arjun pulled the car into his driveway. He put his forehead on the steering wheel and sighed heavily.

The cars charging up on the road and colliding hard into a blo*dy pulp kept coming back into his mind. Another image of the car carrying her dive into and free falling in the ravine made his jaw lock hard and gritting. A thick coat of cold sweat again covered his skin thinking about it. He grabbed the wheel more hard, the muscles of his forearms rippled because of the death grip he had on it.

He kept a great hold of control not to turn the car to her house. To not grab her hard and rattle her body even more voilently. His fingers itched too much to not throttle some sense into her mind for turning his life up side down in punishment. His arms flexed not to embrace her tight into the depths of his chest forever. It was a wonder how for the first time he saw her, his soul called out in a roar for possession. It was not right. No. It was f**king disturbing and sadistic. She wasn’t like what he saw she would be. That difference in attitude and manner far off from most of the woman he spent time with bewildered him and he wanted to know more about her. She didn’t thread after him or vied heavily for his attention. She didn’t blink several times in fake demureness or smiled salaciously inviting him in clearly, as others do. She drew back more from him and stood far aloof. That hazarded and derailed away his focus trying to figure her out.

That should help, her hesitancy. She didn’t even have the guts to approach him. That was good, he thought coldly, but he knew she had deep undercurrents of temper and determination. He could channel it to something else, Arjun smiled a little, but it didn’t reach his eyes.

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

Radhika’s eyes flew open and she gasped out of the sleep shaking too much. She slid up on the bed, her chest heaving up and down hard to take in a stuttering breath.

An image of his body crunched up dead and lay in a splat under the out of control speeding vehicle, when he jumped into the car trying to save her, gripped her mind in a bitter vice like hold.

The vicious poisonous dream propelled her body to run out of the room. Her face controted and scrunched up in extreme pain as hot tears ran down her cheeks with the affect of the hacked up image. Radhika ran fast out of the house sobbing heavily.

She clutched her head tight and looked around in the night wildly.

“Oh, god.” She cried hard from deep within, and slid down on the ground, on her knees…….

**********

To be Continued…

Next up Part- Him and Her..
(Cold continue in a glacier)

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Phew, simple words felt in only the looks can speak volumes than having actual conversation..

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Happpppppy Festive Spirit, Guys. May all ur worries and problems fade away in the Liveliness of the day 😀

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I love u lots. I miss u immense. I heart u tooo much, dears.

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Til den, always keeeeeeep a hearty smile on ur lips,, my lovelies 😀

Credit to: kfar