50: Betrayed by His Own

“Girls?” Bharath called, voice tight. “Are you okay? Did someone get hurt?”

No one answered at first. Marisol stared, throat working but no sound coming. Sarah’s hands were pressed together at her lips, eyes damp and wide. Mia didn’t move; she just looked from Zara to Ayesha like something had shifted in them, and she felt it echo inside herself.

Zara lay curled on the rug, a tremor still running through her, trying to steady herself after the kiss. Ayesha was on the comforter with her palm over her heart, breathing carefully, still trying to understand what had just happened to her. She hadn’t known it could feel like this.

“Please answer me,” Bharath said again. “I heard a fall.”

They turned to him. He was blindfolded in the center of the bed, skin flushed, waiting for a reply that wouldn’t come because none of them trusted their voices yet.

The three girls looked at each other. They remembered the first time it had hit them too, the shock of it. Somehow, it had touched them too.

Marisol found breath first, barely. “That was stronger than our first time.”

Sarah nodded without looking away from him. “I thought we’d already hit the ceiling.”

Mia swallowed. “They looked like they went somewhere else ... and came back changed.”

Bharath shifted against the cuffs, panic edging his voice. “Girls ... please answer me.”

Sarah straightened a little. “Did something in him change?”

Marisol shook her head slowly. “No ... everything still looks the same.”

They looked down again at Zara and Ayesha - Zara’s fingers still flexing against the sheet, Ayesha silently mouthing something. One kiss had done this. One.

Sarah let out a long, careful breath. “We need a better word than ‘kiss.’”

After Zara and Ayesha collapsed, the room went still in a way that felt heavy. No one needed to say it out loud. It was clear that they belonged as well. They were his soulmates just like them. Marisol, Sarah, and Mia traded a look. What they had seen couldn’t be faked.

Mia was the first to move. She crawled to Zara and brushed a curl from her forehead. “You okay sweetie?” she whispered.

“Please answer me,” Bharath said, louder now. Leather bit against wood as he tested the cuffs. “I heard someone fall.”

Zara’s eyes fluttered. “I saw stars,” she breathed.

Mia squeezed her hand. “You’re safe.”

Across the bed, Sarah knelt beside Ayesha, who was sitting up, blinking like she’d forgotten her own name. “Ayesha,” Sarah murmured, steady and soft.

Ayesha looked up.

“Honey. I think you know now. You are one of us now, if you still want to be,” Sarah said.

Ayesha’s mouth trembled into a small, startled smile. “You think ... wow ... that was...”

“We know,” Marisol answered from the edge of the mattress, voice low. “Come.”

The girls hugged each other in solidarity. They had new sisters now. Zara and Ayesha looked thrilled. They belonged in this family. They had passed the kiss test.

The headboard creaked.

“Marisol? Sarah? Mia?” Bharath’s words came fast, breath climbing. “Please ... talk to me. Who fell? Are you hurt?” He pulled harder; the cuffs scraped and thudded. “I’m not playing. Answer me.”

Finally, the desperation in his voice cut through the haze that the girls were in. Sarah’s head snapped up. Marisol’s shoulders squared. Mia swallowed hard.

“Yes mi amor,” Mia said quickly. “We’re okay.”

“Poor thing,” giggled Mia along with Sarah, “we completely forgot about him in all the excitement.”

Bharath heaved a sigh of relief when his girls finally responded to him. His chest eased one notch when he felt Marisol reach him and lovingly undid the knots from his left while Sarah did from his right. They kissed him to reassure him that they were ok, thrilling in the evergreen spark that made them tremble.

Even after the countless times they kissed, it was always as good as that first time for them. Marisol tucked herself against his left shoulder, cheek to his collarbone, calm warmth. Sarah gathered his right hand into both of hers and pressed it to her sternum, pulse to pulse, a quiet rhythm he could match if he needed to. Mia leaned in just enough to lay the barest touch of her knuckles against his upper arm as she showered him butterfly kisses.

Once he overcame his panic, he remembered that he was a little angry about them not responding immediately. He was about to chide them for letting him stew in the darkness when Sarah pulled the blindfold off him. He gasped and blinked as the lights in the room overwhelmed him temporarily.

“Babe, I’m not sure I -”

He became speechless when he saw Ayesha and Zara reclining against his legs casting adoring glances at him. He almost fell off the bed with shock causing the girls to giggle together.

“Look,” Sarah whispered, her breath touching the soft place under his ear, mischief and wonder braided tight in her voice. Marisol’s fingers slid from his jaw to his cheek and turned his face a fraction, like nudging a compass toward north.

He saw them.

Zara and Ayesha stood at the foot of the bed and then looked like they weren’t sure what to do with their hands. The wraps they wore were basically nothing—thin gold and red, more see-through than not. Bharath stared, forgot to breathe, tried to sit up, and Sarah pressed a palm to his chest.

“Eyes only mi amor,” Marisol said. “For now.”

Mia nodded hard, like she’d say the same thing out loud if her voice would work.

Zara moved towards Bharath as Ayesha matched it. They weren’t trying to pose. There were no fake or snooty smiles. Just wide eyes on Bharath, like they were waiting on a result they couldn’t control.

Bharath’s mouth opened and nothing came out.

“Breathe baby. I know they are mind blowingly hot,” Sarah said.

He pulled in air and still looked lost. “I don’t ... I don’t get what’s happening. Why are they here? I thought they hated me? Why are they dressed like this?”

“They don’t hate you,” Marisol said before he could spiral. “They hated who they were being.”

Sarah pushed a curl behind her ear. “You didn’t see what we saw after you left. They broke down. Not at us. At themselves.”

Ayesha’s fingers gripped the bedspread. Zara’s chin dipped, steady but nervous.

“Why me?” Bharath asked. It came out small, like he was fourteen again. “Why us? Any of this?”

“Because they watched how you love us,” Sarah said. “Not the sex. The way you listen. The way you never make it a scoreboard.”

Mia swallowed. “You look at us like we matter more than anything. People notice.”

“I thought they thought this was a joke,” Bharath said. “Or ... cult vibes.”

“They did at first,” Marisol said. “Then it stopped being funny.”

“We talked to them,” Sarah added. “About us. How this started. What changed. Difference between being wanted and being chosen.”

Bharath’s eyes flicked between the girls and the two at the end of the bed. “You talked about me? But I’ve never even talked to them before this. I swear!”

“About us,” Marisol said. “We didn’t share anything that wasn’t ours. We didn’t need to. They already knew a lot just from watching.”

He looked at Zara and Ayesha. They looked back like they’d practiced being brave in the hallway and this was the test.

“They were watching us?”

Zara slid to her knees. Ayesha followed. The room got quiet in a way that made everyone hold still.

“Before you say anything more Bharath,” Zara said, voice low. “We need to say sorry.”

“We’re sorry,” Ayesha said, hands shaking. “To you. To them. For being mean. For acting like we were better. We weren’t. We were just scared.”

Zara nodded fast. “We saw something good and called it fake because we couldn’t handle not having it. You didn’t deserve that.”

Nobody rushed to fill the silence. Even Mia stayed quiet.

“We’re not here to get forgiven on the spot,” Ayesha said. “If you never forgive us, we’ll live with that. We just ... wanted you to hear us say it.”

“But why did you have to dress like this to say that? I mean ... you could have just approached me at the library.”

Sarah snorted and Mia burst into giggles.

Zara reached out, hesitated, then barely touched his calf with her fingertips. “You didn’t get to choose this. That’s on us too. We should’ve come in daylight and talked like normal people.”

Bharath kept his eyes on their faces. “Okay,” he said. “Help me understand. Why are you different now?”

They leaned in before he could say more and each kissed one of his ankles causing him to jump. His body reacted, and he hated that it did, and he hated that he hated it, and his brain felt like a mess of wires.

“What are you doing?”

“You changed us,” Ayesha said. “Not by touching us. You didn’t. By how you are with them.”

“I watched you listen,” Zara said. “It sounds dumb when I say it, but it wasn’t dumb.”

“They belong to us mi amor. They are also your soulmates. When they watched us together, they realized that they belong with us as well. When we talked to them, we weren’t sure but we knew in our hearts that they belonged with us as well,” opined Marisol as if that made sense.

“How were you sure that they belonged with us? I have never even had a proper conversation with them!”

Mia took a breath like she was about to jump in cold water. “I told them about my first kiss with you. How it felt like ... a switch flipped. I told them the same thing I told you after. That it rearranged me.”

Sarah nodded. “We told them that’s one of our signs. Not just butterflies. That click.”

“We made a plan,” Marisol said, wincing at herself. “A dumb one.”

“We blindfolded you,” Sarah said, not dodging it.

“And tied you,” Marisol added.

Bharath flinched.

“We thought that if we asked you would say no. So we wanted to know for sure,” Sarah said. “It was just a gut feeling we had about them. We wanted to experience the same thing that we do everyday.”

“More importantly mi amor,” Marisol said. “They belong to us. The kiss you had with them was undeniable. Did you even think that it was not one of us?”

Bharath took a deep breath and finally said, “No. I couldn’t make out it wasn’t one of you. I thought it was either you, or Sarah or Mia.”