I’d been confident I could find a way to keep my familyandSebastian. Now… I wasn’t so sure.
Neha’s face softened with pity. “I’m not trying to scare you,” she said, her voice gentling. “But you’ve worked your ass off to get to where you are now, and family is family. Boyfriends come and go; blood is forever. So before you make any rash decisions, I want you to thinkvery carefullyabout everything you might lose if you continue dating Sebastian. Are you willing to throw it all away for a relationship you’re not even sure will last?”
My headache spread from the base of my skull to the backs of my eyes. I was tempted to tell her she was wrong and that our relationshipwouldlast, but I was suddenly so, so tired.
Tired of arguing. Tired of fighting. Tired of trying to explain things to people who didn’t get it or didn’twantto get it.
I was tired of being me.
Priya saved me from having to answer when she asked us to come over and check the embroidery details.
We did as she asked, but Neha’s question echoed in my head the entire time.
Are you willing to throw all that away for a relationship you’re not even sure will last?
I touched the locket at my throat, my chest tight.
Deep down, I knew my answer.
And it scared the hell out of me.
Sebastian
I entered my father’s study without knocking.
The door to his home office was cracked open—unusual, but not unheard of—and the shades were half-drawn when I walked in. It smelled like smoke and leather.
He sat behind his desk, a cigar tucked between his fingers. Deep grooves lined his face as he puffed on the Cuban. He appeared to have aged a decade over the past few weeks, but his eyes were as steely as ever.
“This is a surprise,” he said. “Aren’t you supposed to be at work? The launch is in two weeks, and you have a lot left to do if you want to meet our contract terms.” He took another puff of his cigar. “Unless you’ve given up your foolish dreams of being a professional chef and are sticking to what you’re best at.”
“Don’t worry about the launch. You’ll get your event of the season.” I sank into the seat opposite his, my words projecting a confidence I didn’t quite feel. The stress from the launch and from hiding my relationship with Maya was taking its toll in the form of sleepless nights and occasional anxiety attacks, but I’d die before I admitted it to him. “I could ask you the same question. Aren’t you supposed to be at work?”
His mouth twisted into a mirthless slant. “It’s amazing what you can get away with when you’re your own boss.” He placed his cigar in a crystal ashtray. “To what do I owe the honor? It’s not often you stop by without notice.”
“I came to check on Maman, but we also need to talk.” I paused. “She was looking forward to the Switzerland trip. She’s quite upset about it.”
My mother wasn’t taking our estrangement from the Singhs well. The housekeeper said she’d spent the past month alternating between crying, drinking, and buying exorbitantly priced items from the Sotheby’s auction website while binge-eating chocolate. She’d been purchasing a three-hundred-thousand-dollar emerald necklace when I checked on her earlier.
She insisted she was fine, but I suspected she was taking the estrangement especially hard because it represented another giant loss in her life. After my aunt, Maya’s mother was her closest friend.
I hated Neal for dividing us like this, and I hated my father for putting him in a position where he felt like that was necessary.
A crinkled formed between my father’s brows, but it vanished as quickly as it’d appeared. “Your mother will be fine. She has other friends.”
“That’s not the point,” I gritted out in French. “You know how hard Aunt Brigitte’s death hit her. Now she can’t even talk to her best friend because you’re too stubborn to apologize.” I tried to tamp down my rising anger. “Why did you do it? Why did you take that meeting with Charles Whitaker?”
If he hadn’t said yes to that goddamn dinner, we wouldn’t be in this predicament. He kept dismissing the meal as “nothing important,” but he had to have known it would get back to Neal. What I didn’t understand waswhy. What was his angle?
My father’s face tightened. “It was one fucking dinner,” he snapped, also in French. “Everyone needs to get over it.”
“There’s no such thing as ‘one fucking dinner’ in business. That’s the first thing you taught me.”
“I don’t have to explain myself to you. You have no idea what I sacrificed for—” He stopped, his lips thinning. He switched back to English. “Did you come to pester me about this boring topic again, or is there another reason you’re here?”
I stared at him, my gaze raking over the stress lines bracketing his mouth and the exhaustion lurking in his eyes. It was my first time reallylookingat him in a month. I didn’t know if he’d changed during that time or if I had, but he looked smaller. More tired.
I’d built him up to be this monster in my head, but he wasn’t. He was just another man.
