Chapter 26: The Reroute
The train had gone. The platform was empty now, just the flicker of the overhead light and the distant hum of the station announcer's voice dissolving into static. Naina stood at the edge, her small bag at her feet, and stared at the phone in her hand. Aarav's name glowed on the screen. It had been ringing for what felt like a small forever.
Nirav stood a few feet away, his jacket still warming her shoulders. He wasn't pressing. He was just waiting, his duffel slung over one arm, watching her with that patient, hungry stillness he wore so well.
She pressed the answer button.
"Aarav." Her voice came out too bright, too quick. She turned her back to Nirav, but she could feel him there, three steps away, his duffel at his feet.
"Naina." His voice was tight, clipped. The way it got when he hadn't slept. "Where are you?"
"On the train." The lie slid out before she could catch it. "We just boarded. The platform was crowded, took us a while."
A pause. She heard him exhale, long and slow. "Good. Good. I was worried."
"Why?" She gripped the phone tighter. "Is something wrong? Is Myra—"
"Myra's fine. She's at your mother's." Another pause, heavier this time. "Priya's still here."
Naina's chest seized. She had known this. Aarav had told her on the call yesterday, his voice breathless and strange. But hearing it again, the flat fact of it, another woman sleeping in her bed, in her home, with her husband. She pressed the phone harder against her ear.
"Still?" she said.
"She has nowhere else to go. Her husband's been calling her, showing up at her office." His voice cracked, just slightly. "I couldn't just—"
"I know." She closed her eyes. The platform swayed around her, or maybe that was her. "I know you couldn't."
A long silence stretched between them. On the other end, she heard a sound. Soft, indistinct. A woman's voice, maybe, from another room. Or just the hum of their refrigerator in the Bangalore night.
"When are you back?" Aarav asked.
"Tomorrow. The train gets in early." She forced a lightness into her voice she did not feel. "I'll come straight home."
"Okay." He sounded relieved. "Text me when you're close. I'll make breakfast."
She wanted to say something else. Something about the call yesterday, the breathless voice, the strange breathing in the background. But the words stuck in her throat, and Nirav shifted his weight behind her, a small sound, a shoe scuffing concrete.
"I have to go," she said. "The train's moving."
"Okay. Safe travels. I love you."
"I love you too."
The call ended. She stood there, the phone warm in her hand, the lie sitting heavy on her tongue. She had never been good at lying to him. That was the strange part. They had built their whole marriage on the premise of hiding from the world together, but never from each other.
She called Anu next.
"Hey," Anu said, her voice panicked. "Where are you? "
"Anu. I missed the train."
"What? How? Where are you?"
"I'm still in Kudal. I missed the train." Naina pressed her fingers to her forehead. "But it's fine. I'll take a bus. There's a direct sleeper to Bangalore. It takes less time than the train, actually."
"Naina, that's a fourteen hour ride. On a bus. Are you sure?"
"I'm sure. Don't wait for me. I'll text you when I'm on the road."
Anu said something else, something about being careful and sending her location, but Naina was already nodding along, her mind elsewhere. She ended the call and turned back to Nirav.
He hadn't moved. His eyes met hers, calm and knowing.
"Bus," he said.
"Bus."
Nirav stepped closer. One step. The leather of his shoes made a soft sound on the concrete.
"What now?" he asked.
She looked at him. His face was open, patient. The jacket she wore was warm from his body, smelling faintly of him. Something clean and sharp. She felt the ring in the pocket, the oxidised silver one he had given her in Malvan, still unworn.
"There's a bus stand," she said. "It's not far."
"Alright." He bent down and picked up his duffel. "Let's go, then."
The bus stand was a cramped little office with a hand-painted board advertising departures to Goa, Kolhapur, and Bangalore. A tired man behind the counter squinted at them through the grime of the window.
"Only one sleeper left," he said, rattling off the price. "Couple seat. Last one."
"Couple seat?" Naina repeated.
"Means the berth fits two. You and your husband squeeze in. That's all we have. Take it or wait till morning."
Naina and Nirav looked at each other. His expression was careful, flat, giving her nothing to hold onto.
"You okay with this?" he asked quietly.
The alternative was a day in Malvan. A hotel room. Shyam. Aarav's tight, clipped voice repeating itself in her head all night. Her hand was already around the ring in the pocket.
"We'll take it," she said.
The bus was an old Volvo, its paint faded to a dusty white. The driver loaded Nirav's duffel into the hold while Naina climbed the steps, her small bag clutched to her chest. The aisle narrowed past six berths, each curtain half-drawn. The last one was theirs.
A single berth. Narrow. A thin mattress covered in worn blue vinyl. Two pillows flat as pancakes and a coarse blanket folded at the foot.
Nirav ducked in after her and slid the curtain closed. The bus shuddered to life. The engine growled. The city lights of Malvan began to slide past the windows.
She was hot. The bus was warm, the jacket had been warm for hours, and her thoughts were a tangle she couldn't sort out. Aarav's voice. Priya in her bed. Nirav's hand on her waist in the auto, his hardness pressed under her, her body answering it without permission. She tugged at the jacket, pulled it off her shoulders, folded it without thinking, set it near his side. The motion lifted her thin night dress at the hem, baring a strip of her thigh above the knee.
And then she saw him look.
Not in the way he usually did. Not the slow, appreciative sweep of a man enjoying a view. This was something rawer. His jaw tightened. His throat moved as he swallowed. He was looking at her chest, at the thin fabric of her night dress, at the way the cold of the bus had drawn her nipples into hard, visible points against the cloth.
She felt her own breath catch. The memory of the auto ride rose between them, unbidden. His hand on her bare waist. The press of him against her thigh, hard and insistent. The way he had looked at her then, like he was barely holding himself back.
He dragged his gaze up to her face. The hunger was still there, banked but burning. He didn't move closer. He just sat there, one hand resting on his own knee, his knuckles white.
"It's a long ride," he said, his voice low.
"It is."
She lay down against the window, her back to him, her heart hammering against her ribs. The bus hit a pothole. The berth shuddered. She felt his weight settle behind her, close but not touching.
Fourteen hours. On a bed. With a man who had every intention of making her forget she was someone's wife.