The sun was setting over Delhi’s T3 terminal, painting the smoggy sky in shades of orange and purple that looked way better than the city probably deserved. Kaveri navigated the airport crowd with the precision of a battle-hardened general. Heels clicking, laptop bag digging into her shoulder, her face set in that perfect corporate mask: calm, composed, in control.
Bullshit.
Inside, her mind was a Mumbai local train during rush hour – a chaotic mess of thoughts and anxieties pushing and shoving for space. Another endless day of PowerPoints, of pretending to be thrilled about ‘synergistic growth paradigms’, of smiling at clients who treated her like a human search engine. She was a top executive, a success story. Or so her LinkedIn profile claimed. In reality, she felt like a hamster on a very expensive, gold-plated wheel.
Her feet, acting on an autopilot honed over years of airport layovers, carried her into the bookstore. The smell of fresh paper and ink hit her, and for the first time that day, her shoulders relaxed a fraction. This was her temple. Her escape.
Her eyes scanned the shelves, and then she saw it. Vikram Singh’s new book. The one she’d been waiting for, the one her book club was already buzzing about. A real, genuine smile—the kind that reached her eyes—spread across her face. She reached out, her fingers tingling with anticipation.
Only to meet another hand.
She looked up, startled. The hand belonged to a man. A man with kind eyes, a neat beard, and a smile that seemed to say, Oops, my bad. For a crazy second, her heart did a little bhangra beat. Get a grip, Kaveri. He’s just a guy.
“Oh, sorry. You take it,” she said, her voice coming out a little too polite, a little too formal. The corporate mask was back on.
He shook his head, that easy smile still there. “No, please. You were here first.”
Kaveri looked at the book, then at him, then back at the book. “It’s… it’s the last copy,” she said, feeling a bit silly. “I’ve been waiting for this for ages.”
“Me too,” he said, a small frown line appearing between his brows. He looked genuinely disappointed. Then, a thought seemed to strike him. He hesitated. “This is a crazy idea, but… what if we share it? We could read here until our flights.”
Kaveri’s internal risk-assessment department went into overdrive. Sharing a book? With a total stranger? In Delhi? Is he a creep? Does he look like a creep? No, he looks… nice. He wore a simple but well-fitting shirt, and there was a quiet confidence about him that wasn't arrogant. He just seemed… comfortable in his own skin. Something she hadn't felt in years.
“Okay,” she heard herself say. “Let’s do it.”
They found a quiet corner, two plush chairs that had seen better days. “I’m Veer,” he said, his voice a low, warm hum that seemed to cut through the airport noise.
“Kaveri,” she replied. And as their fingers brushed while passing the book, she felt a tiny jolt. A flicker of something she hadn't felt since… well, since a very long time.
For the next hour, the world disappeared. They were no longer two strangers in an airport; they were partners in a literary heist. They read in comfortable silence, their shared world contained within the pages of the book. Kaveri would steal glances at Veer, watching the way his brow furrowed in concentration, the way his lips would curve into a faint smile at a clever line. He felt… safe.
“This part,” Veer murmured, pointing to a passage. “The way the hero feels trapped between his dreams and his duties… Singh just gets it, you know?”
“He does,” Kaveri agreed, her voice soft. “It’s like he’s looked into your soul and written down what he’s found.”
In that moment, she wasn’t Kaveri Sharma, the high-flying executive. She wasn’t Ronit’s wife, a role she played with practiced efficiency. She was just Kaveri, a woman who loved books, talking to a man who understood. The nagging emptiness that was her constant companion, the feeling that her life was a checklist she was methodically ticking off, began to fade.
Veer, too, felt it. Reading the story of a man yearning for a connection his marriage lacked, he felt a pang of recognition. He loved his wife, Pooja. She was a good woman. But their life had become a comfortable, predictable script. Full of EMIs and relatives and PTMs, but empty of the spark that had once been there. In Kaveri, he saw a flicker of that same restlessness, that same quiet desperation.
Then, the inevitable happened. The crackle of the PA system. “Flight to Mumbai has been delayed.”
Their bubble burst. They were back in the airport, back in their lives.
“Looks like we’re stuck here for a bit,” Veer said, his voice carefully neutral.
Kaveri clutched the book tighter. “We might as well finish this, then?”
“I’d like that,” Veer said, and his smile was so genuine it made her heart ache a little.
As they read on, a new tension began to creep in. A hyper-awareness of each other. The brush of his fingers when he took the book from her. The way their knees were just inches apart. Kaveri’s mind was screaming at her. You’re a married woman. What are you doing? But another, quieter voice whispered, When was the last time you felt this alive?
Then came the final nail in the coffin. “We regret to announce that all flights to Mumbai and Chennai have been cancelled due to severe weather.”
Panic. Pure, unadulterated panic surged through Kaveri. A cancelled flight meant finding a hotel, navigating the chaos. Alone.
But Veer was already on his feet, a look of calm determination on his face. He disappeared into the crowd around the hotel booking desk. He returned minutes later, looking grim.
“Okay. There’s one room left in the entire airport hotel complex.” He paused, taking a deep breath. “It has a single bed.”
The words hung in the air between them. A single bed. The implication was a ten-ton truck parked in the middle of their cozy, literary bubble. Kaveri’s face flushed. Her mind was a warzone. Say no. Thank him and go find a chair to sleep in. It’s the right thing to do.
But she was so, so tired. Tired of being responsible. Tired of doing the right thing.
“Okay,” she blurted out, the word escaping before her brain could stop it. “But I get to set the rules.”
Veer looked surprised, then amused. “Name them.”
“Rule number one,” she said, crossing her arms, trying to look stern. “No funny business.”
Veer held her gaze, a flicker of something she couldn’t quite read in his eyes. Then he smiled, a slow, reluctant smile. “Rules it is.”
The walk to the hotel, the awkward elevator ride, it all felt like a dream. Or a nightmare. She wasn’t sure which. When they got to the room, Veer, like a true gentleman, insisted on a coin toss for the bed. She won. The relief was immediately followed by a pang of guilt as she watched him wrestle with the lumpy, pull-out couch.
The room was small, suffocatingly so. She tried to read, but the words were just black squiggles on a page. Every time he sighed, every rustle of his sheets, sent a jolt through her.
“This is crazy,” she finally whispered into the darkness.
Veer’s voice came back, equally quiet. “What is?”
“All of this. Us. Pretending this is just… normal.”
The silence that followed was deafening. Then, she saw his silhouette rise from the couch. He moved across the small room until he was standing right in front of her.
“We can stop,” he said, his voice husky. “You say the word, and I’ll go back to the couch. We’ll check out in the morning and never see each other again.”
She looked up at him, at the man who had seen a part of her she kept hidden from the world. The man who made her feel more like herself in a few hours than her husband had in years. A single tear escaped, tracing a path down her cheek.
“No,” she whispered.
And that was it. The dam broke. He cupped her face in his hands, and his lips met hers. It wasn't a sweet, romantic kiss. It was desperate. Hungry. It was the kiss of two people who had been starving for something they couldn’t name. It was a kiss full of unspoken frustrations and a terrifying, thrilling hope. All the rules, all the guilt, all the carefully constructed walls of her life, they just… disappeared.
They moved to the bed, and the small, sterile room became their universe. There were no titles, no spouses, no expectations. There was only the raw, honest connection between a man and a woman who had found a piece of their lost selves in each other. They didn’t sleep. They clung to each other, whispering secrets to the ceiling, holding on to this stolen, impossible moment.
Dawn came too soon, painting the room in the unforgiving light of morning. The spell was broken. Shame, cold and sharp, pricked at Kaveri. She looked at Veer, asleep beside her, and her heart twisted with a feeling she couldn't identify. It wasn't just desire. It was… longing.
The airport announcement was their wake-up call. They showered separately, dressed in silence. The easy intimacy of the night was gone, replaced by a thick, suffocating awkwardness.
“I should… go,” Kaveri stammered at the door.
“Your flight…” Veer started, his voice rough.
“Right.”
She turned to leave, but his voice stopped her. “This isn’t goodbye, is it?”
It was a plea. A fragile thread of hope cast across the chasm that had opened between them.
Kaveri’s mind was a war. Yes, it is. It has to be. But her heart had other ideas.
“I don’t know,” she said, the honesty of it surprising herself. “Can we just… see what happens?”
A smile bloomed on Veer’s face, hesitant but real. “I’d like that,” he said, reaching out to gently brush a strand of hair from her face. His touch was a brand.
They walked to the baggage claim in a silence heavy with unspoken promises. A quick glance, a half-smile, and he was gone.
On the flight back to her life, Kaveri felt like a different person. The world outside the window was the same, but she was changed. The guilt was there, a heavy stone in her stomach. But alongside it, there was something else. A spark. A dangerous, thrilling secret that was hers and hers alone.
When she walked into her house, the familiar comfort of it felt like a cage. Her husband’s perfunctory hug, the predictable rhythm of her life… it all seemed dull, lifeless, drained of colour.
In the days that followed, she moved through her life like a ghost. Her body was there, in the meetings, at the dinner table. But her mind was in a small hotel room in Delhi. She kept rereading the Vikram Singh book. The lines about forbidden love and stolen moments no longer felt like fiction. They felt like her life.
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