“Will I? I don’t think I’ll be around long enough for that.” Daksh’s hand clenched over his haversack. “I have to leave,” he said quietly.
Kanak’s gaze dropped to his bag and then came back to him. “I see.”
“That’s it?” he asked. “Your husband told me to stop running.”
“My husband always has to have an opinion on everyone’s life,” she muttered darkly. “Although in his defence, he’s usually right.”
Daksh snorted. The lights in Vedika’s room turned off. He’d been watching. Even while talking to Kanak, he’d been watching. His smile faded.
“I came to say goodbye.”
“Are you going to come in and say it or this is like a Devdas, Romeo and Juliet thing?”
Daksh glanced at her sideways. “Do you ever filter your thoughts?”
“Nope,” she said cheerfully. “I leave that to the rest of the family. I also, unlike the love of my life, leave people to make their own decisions. So, I’m going to go in now.”
She took a small step forward before stopping and turning to him. “Are you coming?”
“So much for letting people making their own decisions,” Daksh grumbled, hiding his smile, as he hefted his bag and followed her towards the gate.
“Oh honey,” Kanak murmured. “You’ll learn that once the Thakkars adopt you, you’re never really free of us. We’re like a boa constrictor and octopus, merged into one.”
“Now that’s something I’d like to photograph,” he said, as they stepped into the shadowed hallway of her home.
“It’s about time,” a quiet voice said from the darkest shadow by the staircase. “It took you guys forever to come in.”
Daksh jumped even as Kanak turned calmly to face Vedika. “Don’t sneak up on the elderly,” she scolded. “I could have had a heart attack.”
Vedika snorted, coming forward. “Elderly, my arse,” she muttered, but she was looking at Daksh.
His heart clenched as his gaze met her bruised, exhausted ones. He’d done that. He’d put that look on her face. She looked at his bag and back to his face and she knew.
“You’re leaving.” The quiet devastation in her words were a punch to the gut.
Kanak disappeared up the stairs without another word, giving them space and privacy.
“Daksh, I know. That your father…what he said,” Vedika’s voice faltered on the last word.
He exhaled hard, keeping his face averted from her. “He’s not my father. He’s just the man who allowed me to live in his house.”
Vedika froze for a second. And then she came closer. Her hand came up to cup his face, turning it towards her so he was forced to meet her gaze. He saw the shock in her eyes but none of the pity he expected.
“Well, that’s a pleasant surprise. Who’d want to share genetics with him anyway?” Vedika wrinkled her nose in disgust surprising a laugh out of Daksh.
“That’s the debt you owed him,” she said now. This time she omitted the word father.
“I owed him for every grain of rice, every thread of clothing, every night of shelter, every fucking breath I took…” Daksh shook his head. “Even my return for Ashish’s wedding…it was a command performance. I owed him a happy family in society’s eyes. I owed him for allowing my mother her dignity.”
He stepped out of her embrace, unable to tell her his truth while being enveloped in the warmth of hers.
“I stayed in that house but I wasn’t allowed to join them for meals. I ate with the help in the kitchen. My food was portioned and regulated. It didn’t increase as I grew…” He glanced down at his large frame and smiled ruefully, “and as you can see, I sort of outgrew them all. I was permanently hungry.”
He saw it then. The knowledge of his big meals, her comments about it, all swimming through her head. Pain and regret mingled in those big, beautiful eyes of hers.
“It’s not on you,” he told her softly. “None of it is on you.”
“That man deserves to be shot.”
