"Two weeks," she said. "What are we going to do with two whole weeks?"
"Everything," he said. "Nothing." His lips pressed to her temple. "Whatever you want."
They stood in the water's edge until the sun finished going down and the sky went through its progression of colors—orange, rose, violet, the particular deep blue that preceded dark—and the first stars appeared.
Bruno trotted back to them, sat, looked at the sky, then at his people, and decided it was all acceptable.
The Beach - That Night
The sand was still warm from the day's sun. They'd eaten dinner on the villa terrace and come back to the beach because neither of them wanted to be inside when the night was this—the stars overhead undimmed by city light, the ocean moving in its patient rhythm, the air tasting of salt and warmth and possibility.
Nimisha lay on her back in the sand and looked up.
"I can see the Milky Way," she said.
Samarth lay beside her. "Can you?"
"I've never seen it with my eyes before. Only photographs." She traced the sweep of it with her finger. "It looks like someone spilled sugar across the sky."
"It looks like everything," he said.
She turned her head to find him already looking at her.
"Stop," she said.
"Stop what?"
"Looking at me like that."
"Like what?"
"Like I'm—" She stopped. "Like I'm something extraordinary."
"You are."
"I'm ordinary," she said. "I write romance novels and I eat too much chocolate and I have arguments with a dog."
"You're extraordinary," he said. "The ordinary things are just how it presents."
She looked back at the stars.
"Tell me something," she said. "Something you've never told anyone."
He was quiet for a moment.
"I almost left," he said. "The night of our wedding. After you went to sleep. I sat in my office and I thought about how I could extract myself from the arrangement. Find some political solution that satisfied both families without requiring—" He paused. "Without requiring me to go through with it."
She turned her head. "Why didn't you?"
"I went back to check that you were alright." His voice was quiet. "You were asleep. You'd cried—I could see it on your face—and then you'd composed yourself in your sleep, if that's possible. Even your sleeping face was trying to be fine." He looked at the stars. "I sat in the chair by the window for three hours watching you sleep and I thought: I cannot leave her to someone else. I cannot leave her in this house with my mother's disapproval and my family's politics and no one on her side."
"So you stayed," she said. "Not for the alliance."
"Not for the alliance." He turned to look at her. "For you. Even then. I just didn't know how to call it what it was."
She reached out and took his hand in the dark.
He laced his fingers through hers.
