"How did you come so fast?" I asked them when we were racing on the highway again.

"I'm a champion driver, sweetheart," said Nitish bhaiya, tuning back from the driver's seat to wink at me. I smiled at him.

"I think maniac would be a more appropriate term," said Kuldeep drily. "But between us crashing to our death and Allie being taken away by those hooligans, I'd prefer the former," he added, also turning back to grin at me.

I'm so fond of both of them. But of course I'm fondest of the man sitting beside me, his hand holding mine protectively.

"She needs a place to stay the night," said Kuldeep. "Of course, we have our rooms booked in the hotel, but you were going back to your parents, weren't you, Shubman?"

"Yeah, I was," said Shubman.

"Alisha can have Shubman's room in the hotel then."

"No!" said Shubman. "You don't want to stay alone, do you, Allie?"

"Umm...no," I said, because that was what he obviously wanted me to say.

"I'll stay with her. I'll not go back home today," said Shubman.

The implication of what he was saying sent a thrill through me suddenly.

Nitish bhaiya chuckled.

------------------

It was very late by the time we had finished dinner from a roadside shop and Kuldeep had managed to convince Shubman's parents that he needed to stay with the team today, because now KKR had a not-very-unrealistic chance of qualifying.

Nitish bhaiya, meanwhile, gave me the details of Shubman's match winning knock, his father's celebration and his Man of the Match interview.

Finally after Kuldeep and Nitish bhaiya had gone to their rooms, Shubman and I found his room.

For the first time, there was an awkwardness in the air between me and Shubman. He looked nervous, like he does around Suhana.

"You must be tired," I ventured to say.

"A bit," he said, rubbing his nose.

There was a silence that streched on and on, enough to almost make me wish I was somewhere else.

"For heaven's sake, Allie, it's you and me," he said finally, sounding exasperated. "We can sleep on the same bed and not, you know, feel, uncomfortable."

I'm glad he said it, but in some deep part of my heart, I felt disappointed.

The moment I lied down on the extreme edge of the bed (with Shubman at the other egde), facing away from him, the events of the night started replaying in my mind.

How that man was observing me on the train like I'm an object, how he had leered at me, how they carried me off roughly...

I tried to distract my thoughts from the trauma. As usual, I began to think of Shubman being beside me, which was a paradox because he actually was beside me and I wasn't even holding his hand, let alone kissing him.

"Are you crying?" Shubman asked me in the darkness.

"No," I lied.

I felt him moving towards me on the bed; then I felt his arm across my waist.

"Listen to me properly, Allie," he said. "If you don't take a stupid step like you did today, nothing like this would ever happen again."

I turned in the darkness to face him.

"What if I hadn't called you in time?" I sniffled.

"But you did," he said. "If you start with what-ifs, there'd be no end of troubles in your life. What if you hadn't taken a college in Kolkata? What if I played for a team other than KKR? What if there was no Acropolis Mall? What if there was no IPL? What if I wasn't a cricketer? What if we weren't born one year but fifty years apart? What if we weren't Indians? What if there was nothing called cricket at all? What if there were no humans on the earth? What if--"

"SHUT. UP," I said forcefully, because he seemed quite prepared to continue till the morning.

But I realised that I was laughing. He joined my laughter and we continued for about five minutes before we could stop.

After we stopped laughing, we found ourselves staring into each other's eyes in the dim light filtering from underneath the door.

He brought his head close to mine and kissed me with more intensity than he ever had.

I kissed him back, grasping his shirt, feeling desperate to stay in contact with him as long as possible.

When we broke apart after an eternity, we were both gasping for breath.

Shubman's hand remained on my waist.

A small part of me wished that he would do more than just kiss me.

But he just said, "Go to sleep, Allie, you have to get back tomorrow."

"Yes," I said, letting my arm stay around his neck.

We fell asleep cuddling like that.

It was the best sleep I had in my life.