“I’ll be there.” He took another swig from his bottle. Or not. He reached for the pouty stranger and hauled her up against him. “Now could you please leave?” He gestured with his bottle to the door. “That way. Keep moving.”
“Kabir-“
“As I’ve told you,” he snapped, his words slurring into each other, “you manage my professional life. Leave my personal life to me.”
She sent him a fiery glare but didn’t say another word. She turned on her heel and left, shutting the door behind her with a decisive click.
CHAPTER 38
TANISHA
Today would have beenher wedding day. The thought drifted through her mind in slow motion, weightless, detached, touching nothing inside her.
Tani sat on her bed, knees pulled up, hands hanging loosely between them. Her gaze was fixed on the blank stretch of wall ahead, unfocused and unmoving.
She should have been grieving the relationship. She should have felt shattered, abandoned, humiliated, devastated…the list was endless. But she felt none of them. She dug deep, searching for even a sliver of sorrow. What she found instead was relief, endless, depthless relief.
Jay was gone. The wedding was off. And she could breathe again.
She wasn’t grieving the relationship but she was grieving the girl who’d been willing to settle for it. Her eyes drifted to the cupboard in the corner, focusing on it like she hadn’t focused on anything else.
Her wedding lehenga hung inside, still wrapped in the boutique’s designer cover. An irrational urge shot through her, to pull it out, drag it into the backyard, douse it in kerosene andwatch it burn until nothing remained but ash and smoke and freedom.
Her hands twitched. But she exhaled sharply and forced herself to reach for her sanity. She stood and walked over to the cupboard. She reached in, grabbed the lehenga and hauled it out. Then she pulled out every single item that made up her trousseau. Blouses, dupattas, casual clothes, shoes. All of it.
Every symbol of the life she had almost forced herself into.
She dropped the whole pile into an open suitcase and zipped it shut with a final, decisive pull. She left the suitcase by the door and then reached for another one.
This time, she packed slowly, taking everything she’d brought with her from New York. With each folded piece, her heart settled and her spine straightened. She felt like she could breathe again.
“Going somewhere?”
She glanced up to see Vikram lounging in her doorway, one hand tucked into a jeans pocket, looking like the poster boy for society darlings.
“Yeah.” She was flushed and breathless from the frantic exertion. “Back to New York.”
Vikram straightened, sauntering into the room and glancing at the chaos she’d managed to wreak on it. “And not even going to say goodbye apparently,” he murmured.
He plopped down on the bed, crushing one of her favourite work shirts as he sat. “Running, Tan Tan?”
Tani sighed. “Vik, I just need to get away.”
“Hmm.”
She sat down on the bed beside him, not looking at him, keeping her eyes on the ground between her feet. “It’s a mess. I made a fucking, big mess.”
“You didn’t make it alone.”
She didn’t want the out he offered. “I was the catalyst for all of it.” Her heart hurt even thinking about it.
They fell silent, a comfortable one, one built on years of whispered confidences and childhood secrets, a friendship so deep it didn’t need definition anymore.
“So,” he said finally, clearing his throat a little. “You and Kabir huh?”
Tani didn’t reply, not knowing what to say that would encapsulate the enormity of what was ‘her and Kabir’.
“Didn’t know you had a thing for old men,” Vik said now, leaning back on his elbows.
