“Look,” Tani cleared her voice, interrupting their standoff. “You’re clearly in the middle of something. Maybe this will go better if I’m not around.”
“Great idea,” Zara chimed in, a bright smile on her face even as her eyes glittered with angry tears.
Kabir made a frustrated, growling sound.
“I’ll go.” Tani backed up, and was almost at the door when Kabir caught up with her. He grabbed her hand as she reached for the handle
“Bug, I-“
“Not now okay?” she said, managing a trembling smile. “Now is not for us. It’s for her.”
His hand slid away from hers, falling to his side. “When is it for us?”
“I don’t know, Kabs,” she whispered, steeling herself and stepping away from him. “Maybe never.”
CHAPTER 37
KABIR
Maybe never.
The two words ping ponged inside his skull, each echo sharper than the last, slicing through whatever was left of his composure.
Kabir lay sprawled on the bed of his hotel suite, one arm flung over his eyes, the other clenched tightly around the neck of a bottle of Macallan. His fingers were white at the knuckles, tendons strained, a man holding on to the last thing within reach because everything else had slipped through his grasp.
Everything.
The television blared in front of him, lights and music flashing across the screen in chaotic, meaningless bursts. Bass thudded through the walls, too loud, too bright, too cheerful for the hollow cavern of his chest. The sound seeped into his brain, into the cracks, drowning nothing and numbing even less.
Laughter spilled from the living area. Someone squealed in excitement. He could hear furniture scraping against the floor as someone pushed a sofa aside to make space to dance.
Loud, drunk voices exploded from every corner of the space.
There was a party happening out there. A whole bunch of strangers who wanted to be fame adjacent. He’d wanted noise around him to drown out the silence so he’d allowed them to come to his suite. And, yet, he was in here. Alone.
Maybe never.
He squeezed his eyes shut, but the words only grew louder.
He’d never truly been alone, had he?
Not in the loneliest hotel rooms. Not in the loudest afterparties. Not in the darkest nights when the music died and cold silence crept in like a familiar ghost.
Because she had always been there.
Tani lived in the very marrow of him, in his pulsing heartbeat, in the lyrics he wrote, in the music he made, in every tortured breath he dragged into his lungs. She was stitched into the pieces of him he didn’t show to the world. She was his invisible shadow, his guiding light, his grounding centre.
Even when she wasn’t physically there… she was.
Until now.
Now the future, his, hers, theirs, had shrunk to two small, merciless words.
Maybe never.
His grip tightened on the bottle. The room spun around as a drunken, broken sound escaped him. His chest felt too small, too tight, too fragile to contain everything he’d been holding in for years.
He pressed the heel of his hand to his eyes, trying to stop the world from blurring.
