Daksh’s eyebrows flew up. “I get termites on my dick and he just gets to be shot? That doesn’t seem fair.”
Vedika laughed, though her eyes still swam with unshed tears.
“I grew up like that, Vedika. I don’t know how to explain it. It’s so hardwired into my system, the not belonging, the outsider in a world of insiders…I went to the same school as Ashish but tutors came home only for him. Even though he was the genius and I was the one who struggled.” He laughed. “Guess my biological dad, whoever he was, wasn’t the academic type. To the outside world, I was a part of the family. Inside, I was their dirty secret.”
Vedika didn’t say a word. She waited, patiently, for him to continue. When he didn’t, she stepped forward, toward him. He didn’t move, he didn’t even dare breathe.
“Why are you leaving now?” she asked, wrapping her arms around herself. “Why are you leaving me?”
“I can’t be your dirty secret,” he told her honestly. “I can’t, I won’t, live like that anymore.”
“You wouldn’t be,” she whispered, furious at the insinuation.
“No?” he asked, an eyebrow raised, daring her to dispute the truth. “A week after your engagement to my brother breaks, you’re in bed with me. You’re ready to go official with that?”
She flinched like he’d slapped her. She started to say something but he stopped her.
“The first time I picked up a camera in a workshop that took place at school, something inside me clicked. For the first time in my life, something came to me effortlessly. And I knew it wouldbe my passport to a life away from him, from them. My life suits me. If I didn’t stay in one place long enough, no one could ask me to leave. So, I left before anyone could. I had to make my life one that he had no claim to, one in which I didn’t owe him for anything.”
He scrubbed his hands over his face, trying to make sense of his thoughts and put them into words that would make sense to her. She was the only person on this planet that he would explain himself to.
“I emptied out my bank balance and savings to pay off Ashish’s debts. I wanted to, I needed to, wipe the slate clean with them. There’s no coming back from that. No going back either. I never want to return to their home for anything. I have a home in New York that I rent, I have no assets of my own, no fixed income pouring in. I have work, thankfully, plenty of work, and a reputation that will hold in any professional circle, in my world.”
Her gaze sharpened. “And inmyworld?” she asked, zeroing in on his qualifier.
“In your world,” he told her. “I’m nothing. I’m an illegitimate child of a broken family, who never completed college, and wanders the world taking photographs. The daughter of Aakash and Kanak Thakkar, the Thakkar heiress, Harvard educated, and about to take the corporate world by storm deserves better.”
“Better?” she repeated. “You think I deserve better than you.”
“I think I want to be that better for you,” he told her honestly. “Desperately. But I’m not there yet.”
“This is about money?” she asked, disbelievingly.
“No, sweetheart,” he said softly. “It’s about worth.”
“You don’t get to decide what I should or shouldn’t have in my life,” she snapped, angry fire lighting up her eyes.
There she was, he thought. His feral mouse.
“I know.” His voice was gentle but firm. “I want you to do that when you’re ready.”
She opened her mouth to tell him she was ready now. He saw it in her eyes but he also saw her hesitation. It was too much, too soon. He knew. The wild ferocity of their feelings for each other swam in him too. He knew exactly how it felt.
And that was why he had to leave. He dropped his bag, coming closer. He stopped in front of her, hesitating, then raising his arms. “Could I please hold you? One last time?”
In response, she threw herself into his arms. He pulled her close, shutting his eyes and burying his face in her hair, inhaling the scent of her, allowing himself this fragment of peace. His home. One he’d carry in his heart wherever he went.
“Don’t go,” she whispered.
In response, he just held her tighter.
“Goodbye Mouse,” he said, the words choking him, dropping a gentle kiss to her forehead. “Don’t eat any lobster without me.”
“That fucking lobster,” she whispered.
He laughed sadly. “That fucking lobster.”
And then he forced himself to let go of her and walk out of her life.
