Addicted to you

Chapter One

A/N: Welcome back! This is such an overwhelming experience, seeing many familiar faces on this new platform. I'm so glad to have you all re-join me in this tale. Hope you all enjoy this as much as you did before, and new readers, a warm welcome!!

This part is almost the same as the previous version, except a few added words here and there. But next part will have some major changes as I'm going to add a new scene on Arnav, something we haven't seen before. His perspective as what's going on in his mind while Khushi is bidding her farewell to her family!!

I'm so looking forward to it.

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The future for me is already a thing of the past – You were my first love and you will be my last.

~~ Bob Dylan ~~

December, 2012 (Present day)

International Airport,

Mumbai, India

"Are you sure about this?"

Khushi Gupta held her boarding pass in her hand, hoping that the small blue booklet would provide her the strength to deal with her worried mother. It had been the only thing her mother seemed to ask from the time she announced her decision to have much needed break from mundane life. She watched with a sigh – her mother staring at her with moist eyes while her father stood beside her silently. She wanted to scream, her hands itching to pull her hair, tired of explaining her need to get away from the environment to clear her mind from the past one month. Instead, she reached out for her mother for a tight hug.

"It's hardly a month's trip, Ma." She whispered softly as she stepped back, looking straight at her parents with finality in her voice. "I'll be back before you knew it."

Khushi repeated those words robotically. She knew she was being unfair, hurting them by sticking to her decision. It wasn't easy for them to let her travel alone to the other side of the world when things were too raw, yet, she knew they understood her need to be away from the place – from the happenings. She tried hard to forget everything and move on but it turned out to be an impossible task. The more she tried to forget everything, the complicated it turned out to do the same. She all but wanted to check-in before her mother broke down completely. She couldn't leave if her mother lost her control and Khushi didn't want that to happen. Not today. Not when this was the only conscious decision she had ever taken without considering others, the only impulsive thing she had ever done in her twenty-seven years of life.

May be, the second impulsive thing, she heard a soft, husky voice chuckle from a decade's long memory teasingly. How was that even after all these years, he was the one she remembered instinctively, wanting for him to tell her that she would be fine? There was a part of her that hated the very idea of him, of how he still had the undenying affect on her; how he riled her up enough to let her guarded self go and react impulsively, not caring the hurt she was inflicting on her family by doing so?

But it was a much needed one, she repeated in an attempt to assure herself.

Shaking her head from the thoughts that had been plagued her consciousness for a while now, Khushi looked at her father who seemed to be attuned to her thoughts more than he had ever been as he snaked his arm around her mother's shoulder.