His heart was breaking. He washurtingMalini?
How was that even—
What?
No.
That wasn’t supposed to happen. He stood. “I need to…” He had no idea what he needed. Just that he couldn’t be in this room right now. He turned away from his sister and walked out the door. He didn’t know where he was going, but suddenly, Nimita was in front of him.
“Hey,” she said. “I was just coming to see how you—how Malini was doing.” She sounded formal, distant, like an acquaintance. It was…odd.
He saw her, he knew it was her, but he felt detached from the world.
Her brow furrowed. She took his hand. “Come with me.” This time, she used the voice she used when she talked to him, soft, intimate. It was the only reason he followed.
They walked down a few doors and ended up in a small, empty waiting room.
“Sit.” She led him to a chair in the back, away from the door and pulled one over for herself opposite him. Their knees touched. Strangely comforting. She placed her hands on his knees, and he wanted to disappear into the sensation of her touch.
“Roshan?” Nimita said his name softly. “Talk to me.”
He just looked at Nimita for a time. Drank her in. Her floral scent, currently mixed with the ocean, her smooth silken brown skin, her mouth where he lost himself, time and time again. But it was her eyes that did him in every time. Right now they were raw, like she’d been crying, but her eyes were dry. What he saw there was not just concern for him but something that calmed him, while it also lit a fire.
“Malini said… Malini said that I was hurting her,” Roshan managed. “That watching over her was hurting her. That is not supposed to happen.”
“Roshan. I’m sorry.”
“The thing is, I could stop hovering and watching every detail, but…”
“But?” Nimita took his hands in hers as she leaned toward him. The floral scent mixed with the ocean wafted to him.
“But I want her to be safe.”
“She can be safe and happy,” Nimita said.
He met that soft brown gaze that always fortified him. “I know that.”
“No.” She shook her head, squeezing his hands again. “I don’t think you do. Letting her claim her own happiness requires you to…let her go,” she repeated the words she had said at Holi. But this time, he heard them. “Let her be her own person. You will always be her safe place. Claiming your happiness requires risk.”
His eyes widened.
“Letting go…is…scary. She may not always be safe. It’s just life. Being happy requires some level of risk. Malini is willing to take that risk for herself. You have to be able to let her.”
“Nimita…what I said at the mandhir…”
She shook her head. “Not right now, Roshan.”
He nodded and stared at her, his eyes burning with tears, his nostrils flaring as he tried to stay them. One escaped then, two. His lips trembled. “I have spent my life protecting her—from bullies, from sickness…when she wanted to come out here for college, I took a position here, too, to watch over her… Even before that, I became pediatric oncologist, for god’s sake.”
Nimita was still watching him. He focused on her, on those eyes as he said the thing that scared him the most. The words were stuck in his throat. He forced them out, only able to say them because it washerlistening. “I don’t know who I am if I’m not taking care of her. I am her protector. That is the beginning and the end of who I am. So ifnottaking care of her is the thing that will make her happy… I can do that. I just don’t know who I am after that. I’m completely and utterly lost. She’s my responsibility. Her safety and happiness have always been my responsibility, and I’m failing her.”
“Roshan.” A voice came from behind Nimita.
Roshan did not need to look to know it was his mother. He didn’t want to acknowledge her. He wanted to stay lost and safe in Nimita’s eyes.
“Oh, Vinay.” His mother’s voice was full of true regret. “What have we done?”
Nimita tried to remove her hands from his to stand. He shook his head at her. She nodded and stayed put.
