Firstly, thank you to everyone who read the first part and left a comment. Your feedback has been amazing and I'm so thrilled by your reactions to the story. 😳 I know I was meant to update before Xmas, but things went a bit hectic and there wasn't any time for me to sit and write. But, finally, here I am. I hope this second part will be worth the wait. Without further ado, here it is. I do hope you all will enjoy it. Please ignore any errors/typos.
Chapter 2
Entranced,
he watched her spinning round and round, unable to tear his eyes from her. If
this is a dream, he thought dimly, I don't want to wake up. She could have been
a fairy or an angel, all lit up in the snow and the lights. There was certainly
something ethereal about her. She didn't seem to be completely of this world.
The way she was so lost in her enjoyment, oblivious to everything around her,
it was as if she wasn't entirely there.
It made her seem all the more captivating...and beautiful.
The sudden blare of a car horn
started Armaan out of his trance. He turned his head to the left and his heart
gave a lurch as he saw the yellow taxi cab skid on a patch of black ice. The
driver was furiously trying to avoid going into a fishtail, but it was too
late. He lost control of the wheel and the car went spinning across the road,
straight towards the girl.
She hadn't seen it. She was too busy
throwing her head back to let the snow fall on her face. Armaan stared in
horror, knowing that by the time she noticed it would be too late. I can't just
stand here and watch her get knocked down, he thought. But what could he do? He
was on the other side of the street, she'd never hear him if he shouted. Which
meant there was only one other thing he could do...
The snow was cold but so soft when
it touched her skin. If she closed her eyes, she could pretend she wasn't in
New York, but a million miles away, where nothing could touch her. As she stood
there, letting the snowflakes gather on her skin and in her hair, Shilpa felt a
dim flicker of peace inside, something she hadn't know for a very long time,
but something she needed, desperately. She breathed in the freezing night air
and wished this moment would never end.
She'd barely had that thought when
someone grabbed her arm and yanked on it. Her eyes flew open with a gasp, but
there was no time to scream or struggle. She was jerked from the road so fast
she didn't have a chance to catch her breath before her head was being crushed
to a hard muscled chest and a pair of strong arms went around her, holding her
tight.
For a moment she was too stunned to
do anything but stand there, listening to the frantic pound of someone's heart
beneath her ear. And then there was the sound of brakes screeching and glass
smashing and a male voice cursed. The arms holding her tightened even more and
she was pulled what felt like halfway across the street.
That was when panic burst inside
her. It occurred to her that she could have been snatched by a murderer and
they were currently hauling her off to kill her. A terrified cry stuck in the
back of her throat as she pressed her hands hard against the firm chest and
pushed with all her strength, trying to break that iron-like hold.
"It's okay, it's okay," her captor
said. Warm breath brushed the top of her head and she could smell stale alcohol
on it. She wrinkled her nose and pushed harder.
"Let go of me!" Her cry came out a
little muffled, but it must have gotten through because the arms around her
loosened. She stumbled backwards and nearly slipped on the snow, but strong
hands caught her upper arms, steadying her.
"Careful." Shilpa lifted her head
and found herself staring into a pair of startling blue eyes. They were the
lightest shade she'd ever seen, the colour of a spring sky. But it wasn't that
that had her heart fluttering breathlessly. It was the expression in those eyes
' intense and searching, as if they were looking into her soul and reading all
the secrets buried there.
"Are you okay?" He spoke softly, his
voice barely more than a whisper, and for some odd reason it made her shiver.
She managed to draw her eyes away
from his and actually look at the rest of him. He had a strong jaw which was
lined with the shadow of stubble. He was tanned, but his skin had a tired look
about it, dark circles underlining his eyes, making the shade all the more
startling. His hair was mussed up and falling into his eyes, but somehow it
suited him. He's handsome, Shilpa's brain informed her, right before she told
it to shut up.
"What do you think you're doing?"
she demanded, breaking free of his hold. She narrowed her eyes at him, wishing
her heart wasn't still jittering about in her chest. It made her feel
breathless and she hated it. So he was cute; he was probably also a psycho. Why
else would he have grabbed her off the street? "How dare you touch me?"
"Huh?" Armaan realised that he
sounded like an idiot, but he was too busy staring at the girl to be able to
think of anything intelligent to say. Up close she was even more beautiful, her
skin creamy and flawless, her lashes long and framing those brilliantly green
eyes that were flashing at him brighter than all the Christmas lights. Some
strands of her hair had fallen across her face, probably when he pulled her
from the road, and he had an overwhelming urge to reach out and brush them
back. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and tried to concentrate on what she
was saying to him.
"Who do you think you are?" she was
ranting, her voice crisp and clear as bells. "How dare you grab my arm? What
the hell were you trying to do? Molest me?"
"What?" Armaan's eyes narrowed into
a scowl. Maybe it was the violent thumping in his head, maybe it was the cold
that seemed to have gotten worse in the few minutes he'd been standing here
listening to her, or maybe it was the distracting way her eyes glittered when she
shouted at him, but he had no idea what she was talking about.
"Oh, don't act dumb!" Shilpa snapped
at him. "I know what you were trying to do! You filthy, disgusting beast!"
"Excuse me, but I just saved your
damn life!" Temper finally sparked inside Armaan and he glared at the
ungrateful creature, wondering what on earth had possessed him to think she was
like an angel. Quite clearly she was a devil. I should have let that taxi knock
her down, after all, he thought sourly. "Instead of yelling at me, you should
be thanking me."
Shilpa heard the anger in his tone,
saw it flicker in those blue eyes, but she was in no mood to back down. She was
sick and tired of other people directing her life. They all treated her as if
she were some kind of chess piece that they could move around as they saw fit.
Well, she'd had enough.
"For what?" she demanded, fisting
her hands on her hips. It made her look like a petulant five-year-old, Armaan
thought, with only the slightest hint of amusement. "For saving me from the
cold? Well, thank you, but I was enjoying the cold. In fact, I don't even care
if I catch the flu or whatever. Maybe I want to get sick."
"What the hell is wrong with you?"
Armaan frowned at her in bewilderment. And here all this time he'd been thinking
he was crazy. The people around him
had been telling him he was mixed up in the head for months now, but he was
pretty certain even in his darkest moments he'd never sprout something as
stupid as what this girl was saying. "Are you insane?"
"Maybe I am!" she declared. "But at
least I'm not drunk." Every time he spoke she could catch another whiff off it.
It was starting to make her stomach churn nauseatingly.
"I'm not... Okay, fine, maybe I've
had a little too much to drink. But I'm not the one who was standing in the
middle of the freakin' road about to get run over."
"I wasn't standing in the middle of
the road. I was on the sidewalk."
"No, you were standing right there."
Armaan grabbed her shoulder with one hand and turned her round to face the
road. With his other hand he pointed at the mangled remains of the taxi cab. It
had hit a lamp post and was now bent into an impossible shape, the front of it
all smashed up and the engine smoking. People were rushing around the scene of
the accident, shouting indistinguishable things. An ambulance was already there
and the driver was being carefully extracted from the wreckage.
Shilpa took it all in with a sense
of numb horror. Her eyes widened and a gasp choked the back of her throat. An
intensely cold feeling pooled in the pit of her stomach and then it heaved and
she had to rush over to a nearby bush before she vomited all over the sidewalk.
She held on to the hard, cold
railing around the hedge while her body shuddered. Her palms were damp with
sweat and her hard hammered in her chest, a loud, horrible thumping noise that
reminded her of that day. In her mind she heard it again, the loud thump,
thump, thump as the car flipped over again and again, heard the terrified
screams, felt the glass shred her skin...
"Are you all right?"
She jumped and whirled round, a
little too fast. Her foot slid on a patch of ice and she nearly landed on her
ass, but the guy reached out and caught her arms. For the second time that
night he hauled her upright, but this time he let go off her almost right away.
"Sorry," he apologised. She was
looking at him like he might any moment put a blade to her neck. It should have
irritated the hell out of him, but strangely it didn't. He could see she had
been badly affected by the car crash. Her eyes were wide and haunted, her skin
had gone pale, and she was shivering violently. "I didn't mean to freak you out
back there. I just wanted to show you what could have happened to you if you'd
stayed in the road."
Shilpa swallowed. She didn't think
she could speak. She had this weird sensation, kind of like her heart was stuck
in her throat, and her stomach was still rolling about uneasily. "Th-thank you,"
she managed to stutter. "For pulling me out of the way."
Armaan shrugged, a slight, sheepish
grin just touching his lips as he dipped his head. He stuffed his hands back in
his pockets and scuffed some of the snow with the toe of his shoes. You're
behaving like a teenage idiot, his brain informed him. Look cool, for God's
sake.
Clearing his throat, he looked back
up at her. "Don't mention it." He cringed inwardly at the sound of his voice,
all perky and ' yes, he had to admit it ' kind of smug. He waited for her to
glare at him or make some sarcastic comment, but she just continued to stare at
him, those green impossibly big and shadowed. For some odd reason, that
expression made his heart ache.
"Here." He dug a bottle out of his
hoody and held it out to her. "This will make you feel better."
Shilpa regarded the bottle
sceptically. "What is it?"
Armaan's face widened into a grin. "Vodka.
It's the cheap stuff, but it will warm you up." And numb the pain, he added
silently, thinking of his own reasons for drinking it.
"Is this what you've been drinking?"
Shilpa asked, screwing the top off and sniffing the clear liquid. The smell was
strong and a weird combination of acidity and sweetness. She wrinkled up her
nose. "It smells disgusting."
"You don't take it to smell it,"
Armaan told her. "Just drink it. It'll stop you catching pneumonia."
The bottle was cold next to her skin
and the liquid inside glinted with little yellow and blue fibres from the fairy
lights overhead. It looked oddly inviting, despite the acrid smell. She'd never
been a drinker. Anjali was always sneaking out as a teenager to drink alco-pops
with her friends, but Shilpa had always thought it a bit pointless. What did
you really get out of it other than a thumping headache the next again morning?
The sensible part of her brain told her to hand the bottle back to the guy,
after all, he could have drugged it. This could be all part of his plan to take
advantage of her.
But the rest of her brain didn't
care. She had come out her wanting to escape; maybe this was the way to do it.
There was no harm in trying it, she decided, lifting the bottle to her lips.
Whatever happened, it couldn't be any worse than the pain she'd already been
through in her life. And, who knew, maybe it might actually numb her feelings
for a while?
She took a deep swig...and nearly
choked it all back up. It burned the back of her throat and left a horrid aftertaste
in her mouth that made her want to throw up again. But the guy had been right,
it did warm her up. She could feel a little ball of warmth travel down her
gullet and into her stomach, where it settled, soothing and pleasant. It
bubbled out through her veins, chasing away the cold and making her feel
inanely happy. She decided that that feeling alone was worth the burning in her
throat and gulped down another mouthful.
"Better?" Armaan watched her, a wry
smile playing about his lips. He'd seen the moment the vodka kicked in. Her
eyes had widened and then deepened with pleasure. A delicate flush had spread
through her cheeks, too, and the corners of her mouth had twitched into a half-smile.
He couldn't help but find it cute.
There was a note of amused
superiority in his voice that made her glance sharply up. Seeing the sparkle of
mirth in his eyes she was transported back in time to her first day at school
in New York. Even after all these years she still remembered the cruel mockery
in the other kids' faces as they taunted her over her Indian accent. She'd lost
the accent, acquiring a vaguely American one in an attempt to fit in with the
new city. But she'd never lost the scars of that experience.
"Are you laughing at me?" she
demanded, eyes narrowing darkly. The change in her was so abrupt it caught
Armaan off guard. One moment she'd looked so lost and wounded, and now she was
shooting sparks from her eyes at him. He didn't know what to say, which was
just as well, because she didn't give him a chance to defend himself.
"Just because I've never had this
vodka before doesn't mean I'm some innocent little girl you can be entertained
by!" she snapped. "You have no right to judge me! You don't know me! I'm a
person with feelings, just like everyone else! I'm not just an object for you
all to talk about and laugh at, like I'm some freak! You get that?"
No, actually, he didn't get that. He
had no earthly idea what she meant or why she'd started yelling at him, but he
was too stunned to say so. Temper had lit up those green eyes, making them burn
like green fire, mesmerising him. So much passion, he thought dimly, his inner
voice sounding all weird and fuzzy. Dreamy.
"Huh?" He said it aloud, snapping
himself out of whatever trance she'd sent him into. Only to discover that she
was no longer standing in front of him.
His heart gave a massive thud and he
spun around, his eyes darting all over the street and the road, searching for
her. Mercifully, it had stopped snowing and the lights glistened off of the
blanket of white coating everything, adding extra illumination. It meant he was
able to spot her stumbling off in the direction of the park, still clutching
his bottle of vodka.
"The little witch!" he breathed. "I
try to help her and she steals my vodka! I'm not going to let her get away with
that."
Narrowing his eyes, he started after
her at a jog, ignoring the slipperiness of the sidewalk. On his good days,
Armaan was extremely athletic. He did boxing and worked out at the gym four
times a week. Weight lifting was one of his favourite pass times. But even so,
he surprised himself at how quickly he caught up with her. She'd barely entered
the park before he had drawn alongside her and caught her by the elbow.
"Get off me!" She jerked her arm
loose, nearly catching him in the jaw. Armaan stepped back, but he didn't let
go of her. So when he slid on the ice and went down, he took her along with
him.
They landed heavily on the ice.
Armaan heard something crack and for a horrible moment he was convinced it was
his head hitting off the ground. It was certainly pounding and he couldn't
actually see anything except a lot of blackness and a faint, yellowish light
that hurt to look at. He heard the girl breathing raggedly, like maybe she was
about to go into a panic attack, and his heart gave a sickening lurch. Somehow
he managed to push himself upright, relieved when his limbs actually worked and
only a little stab of pain shot down his back.
Looking round, he saw the girl lying
on her side in the snow. Her ebony tresses had fallen forward, obscuring her
face. They fell across the crisp white snow, too, looking like an artist had
come along with a paint brush and streaked a canvas. Armaan just stared at her
for a moment, listening to the strange gasping sounds she was making and
wondering if she would bite his head off if he asked her if she was okay.
That was when he realised that she
was quivering. At first he thought the tremors were a product of his messed-up
mind, but when he squinted he saw that her entire body was convulsing. Somehow
he didn't think it was simple shivers that had caused it.
His stomach tightened with worry.
Despite the fact she was a stranger and quite clearly had an attitude problem,
something inside him ached for her. Tentatively, he reached out and brushed her
hair back from her face. The strands were silken and felt wonderful running
through his fingers. A little shiver ran down his spine. And then he saw her
face and his heart stopped for a full minute.
Her eyes were screwed tightly shut,
obviously trying to keep the tears in. But it hadn't worked. All down her cheek
was a glistening wet line and even as he pulled her hair back a single tear
drop leaked out from her eyes and rolled down her face. Her lips were parted
and quivering, soft but anguished sobs escaping from them. He saw her breath
ghost out into the cold night air and something deep inside him ached as if he
had been wounded.
"Please don't cry," he heard himself
say, his voice sounding oddly rough. Without thinking he moved his fingers from
her hair to her cheek and with a gentle, sweeping stoke, he brushed away the
tears still working their way down her face.
That was when she opened her eyes.
They were glassy with unshed tears. A row of fairy lights were strung over the
park entrance and they were reflected in her moist eyes, so that, for a second,
they looked as if they were dappled with yellow flecks. Armaan felt his breath
catch and suddenly everything around him fell away.
His fingers stilled on her cheek.
Her lips were still trembling, but the sobs had stopped, and she just lay
there, staring up at him with those soulful eyes. Armaan didn't understand this
feeling inside him, but he knew as certainly as he knew his own name that he
couldn't bear the sight of those tears. He wanted to chase them away, wanted to
take all her sorrow and make it his own, and give her his happiness in return.
He'd never felt anything so strongly in his life.
He didn't question it. Only one
thing mattered right then, and that was making her pain go away. He closed his
eyes and lowered his lips to hers...
And that's all for part two. 😆 I know not much about their backgrounds came out here, but I promise that will come very soon. Hope you liked it, anyway. Please do comment/like/criticise. 😳
Edited by DulceAmor - 12 years ago
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