“Areyouokay?” Ashish asked, interrupting her doomsday freefall. “You sound a little out of it.”
Irrational, he meant but didn’t say, diplomatically swallowing his words.
“I’m fine,” she said abruptly. “But will you check? On him?”
Ashish sighed. “I will.”
But a day later, when she checked in with him, Ashish reported that he hadn’t heard anything from Daksh. All his calls and texts were met with complete silence.
Deflated, Vedika stopped badgering Ashish and went back to her sad, online stalking. Three days later, she hit the motherlode. Someone had uploaded a story and tagged Daksh in it. He’d shared it on his story and Vedika got her first glimpse of Daksh since the day he’d left, the day he’d walked out of her life.
He’d lost weight, she thought, her gaze tracing the clean lines of his face, noting the dark circles under his eyes, and the thin, tight smile he flashed at the person taking the video. His clothes hung loosely off his tall, lean frame as he moved out of a tent and on to open ground.
Daksh looked out towards the horizon, an endless stretch of dry, brown land. As she watched, he squatted, lifted the camera to his face, focusing on something in the distance, something she couldn’t see. The camera clicked and he rose, a small, satisfied smile curving his lips.
“All that effort for a picture of a mouse?” the voice behind the video said with a laugh.
Daksh turned slowly, his gaze locking onto the camera. The hint of a smile faded from his mouth, something far more serious taking its place.
“All the effort in the world,” he said quietly.
And then it cut out, leaving her to slide slowly to the ground, her back braced against the wall as she played that clip over and over again.
Daksh’s tired, beloved face looked directly at her from the screen as he said, “All the effort in the world.”
CHAPTER 46
DAKSH
Tired,dusty, and heartsore, Daksh sat in the jeep that took him back to the luxury safari camp he was staying at. He flicked through the pictures on his camera, making a note of the ones that would make the cut and deleting the rest to free up storage space. His phone screen lit up next to him and he glanced at it, the screensaver as always getting his attention first.
Vedika stood on the beach in Goa, her long, unruly hair flying about her face. He ran his thumb over the curve of her cheek before picking up the phone to check the email that had just arrived. His driver arrived a moment later and they started the bone jolting ride back to the camp.
Another day here and his work would be done. Then he was off to Alaska for another twenty days, after which he had a week’s break before he left for the Galapagos Islands. Work was pouring in, he’d just been nominated for another award, and there was talk of an exhibition of his prints at MOMA.
He should be on top of the world. But, all he felt was this bottomless, gaping hole in his chest, one that he didn’t think would ever fill. Not without her. He sighed, closing his eyes and resting his head on the seat.
His mother and brother had been in touch, tentative olive branches that Daksh hadn’t bothered responding to. From the man who called himself his father, there had been nothing and that was what Daksh wanted. He wanted nothing to do with any of them right now, maybe even forever.
And then there was the other family…The one he couldn’t seem to shake off. Kabir and Vikram had kept in touch, reaching out to check on him, an incessant barrage of messages that had been impossible to ignore.
And most surprisingly had been Aakash Thakkar’s simple message asking if Daksh took on private photography commissions. Aakash wanted to commission a photoshoot of his wife. Daksh had replied telling him that he was a wildlife photographer and didn’t do portrait or candid human shoots. Aakash’s prompt reply ‘which is why I figured a hellcat was right up your alley’ still made Daksh chuckle.
But from the one person, the only person he wanted to hear, there had been nothing but silence. It had taken every ounce of willpower within him to not ask her brothers about her and it had taken every last inch of his soul to not reach out to her himself. But he was determined to give her time and space. Time to get over the tumult of everything that had happened in her life and space to figure out if she still wanted a broken, flawed, nomadic reprobate.
The jeep pulled into the camp’s dusty, gravelly parking lot and Daksh got out, slinging his equipment over both shoulders. He felt like half the mud from the savannah grasslands coated his skin, making him a walking, talking dust storm.
There was a gaggle of people near the reception hut in the distance. New check ins, he presumed, making his exhaustedway towards his tent in the distance. He’d just reached it and put his stuff down in preparation to unzip and enter the tent when he heard footsteps behind him.
And then, a soft, hesitant, “Daksh.”
Daksh froze. Had his mind finally snapped? Had the days and weeks of desperate longing made him manifest his deepest, most hopeless fantasy.
“Daksh?” the voice said again.
He turned slowly, painfully slowly and there she was. Her hair had grown long enough to be pulled back into a stubby ponytail, clips holding the flyaways back from her tired face. She wore cargo pants with a loose white t-shirt that seemed to envelop her, as always getting swallowed up in her clothes.
“Hi,” she said.
