“And if I beat you?”
Her smile was broad. “Oh, man, you are funny. Okay, if you win, I’ll answer a question.”
“Very well.”
Sejal preened when she easily won the first hand. “What did your mom—”
“Are you sure you want to waste your question on my mother?” Krish leaned back in his chair. Someone had switched the television off, and lo-fi music filled the air.
Sejal rubbed her hands together. “You better believe it. You and your family are like an onion, Krish. I’d like to peel some layers off you, and I don’t know when we’ll have a break in our trip again to do it.”
Peeling things offwas a terrible image when he was still thinking about playing this game by strip rules, but he nodded.
“Besides, this is just my first win. So. What is the deal with your mom? Was she intelligence? An assassin? I’d believe either.”
He motioned her closer, and then closer still, until she was a few inches away from him, and he could smell the soap his mom always kept stocked. On Sejal, the scent was delicious instead of practical. “She was a florist.”
Sejal rolled her eyes. “You have to answer honestly.”
“I am.” His mother had indeed done a brief stint as a florist. Mostly to create a believable cover.
“Okay. Different question, Krish. Why did you guys move to America?”
He liked the way she said his name, the way it sounded in her low, deep voice. Maybe it was that voice, or maybe it was that silly salad she’d bought him, or maybe it was his admiration for how handily she’d figured out his mom, but he found himself opening his mouth and answering honestly. “My mom needed a change of scenery. Like I told you, my dad passed away when I was young.”
“So that part of your story when we met was true.”
He dipped his head. Funny how their childhoods were oddlysimilar, losing a parent around the same age, both of them with siblings to take care of. “He was a detective. He was investigating a drug smuggling ring.”
Her eyes widened. “Oh no. It wasn’t... was it a Cobra ring?”
“That would make things between us extra messy, wouldn’t it?” he asked dryly. “But, no. Not Cobra, but still vicious. He was off-duty. They ran our car off the road. He didn’t make it.”
He couldn’t stop himself from brushing the raised linear scar on his face, the living reminder his whole family had of his father’s death.
Her gaze went to his cheek. “My God. Were you in the car?”
“Yes. Him and I. I don’t remember it,” he added, as he always did when someone found out about this tragic part of his past. The main reason he hated to tell people, because he had to rush to comfort them. “I was really young.”
“You were injured, though.”
The scar was never discussed in his home. He didn’t much discuss it outside of his home, either. Oddly, he didn’t feel quite so reticent to talk about it with Sejal. “It was a pretty deep cut, from some glass, and it didn’t heal as well as it could have. It used to be much bigger. My mom took me to all sorts of specialists.”
“It’s not so bad.” She surprised him by brushing her cool fingers over the injury. “Does it make you self-conscious?”
“Not anymore. And I never really cared how I looked. I mostly hated the immediate curiosity people had about it.”
“Because to explain how you got it, you had to pry open a deep, dark trauma.”
He cocked his finger at her. “Bingo.”
“I get that. No wonder you have such strong older sibling vibes. You probably had to grow up faster than normal, for your littlebrother’s sake.” Her hand dropped away from his face. “I suppose that explains why you went into law enforcement.”
Actually, his father was the reason Krishhadn’tgone into law enforcement, despite his mother’s best efforts.
He took a sip of his Coke. He couldn’t really recall what his dad looked like anymore, only the face he’d seen in photos. But Krish remembered what he’d smelled like, and his big arms around him. He remembered that his father had had a mustache that tickled when he kissed him.
He’d had to hear about his father, the hero, his whole life, and, yes, he was in awe of what the man had done. But as a kid and even as an adult, he was alsomad, unreasonable as it might be. Mad that his father’s work had needlessly taken him away from his wife and kids. All sorts of terrible things could befall a person, but Krish never wanted his career to be the reason he wasn’t around for his family. “I respect the work he did, and the hero he was. And we did have our mom. She tried not to parentify me too much.”
