Samarth stood beside Nimisha, his arm around her, watching their son.
She felt him exhale slowly, the way he did when something reached him that he wasn't prepared for.
"Hey," she said quietly.
"Hmm."
"What are you thinking?"
He looked down at her. His eyes were—he'd stop her if she said it aloud—bright.
"That I almost walked away," he said. "The night of the wedding. I sat in my office and I thought about leaving."
"I know. You told me."
"But I didn't tell you why I went back." He looked at Aryan again. "I went to check on you. That's all. I told myself it was responsibility—that you were in my house and someone should—" He stopped. "But it wasn't that. I just needed to see that you were alright. A person I'd just met. A stranger I was supposed to feel nothing for." He pressed his lips to her hair. "I've needed to know you were alright every day since."
She leaned into him.
"I know," she said again.
"I love you," he said. "Ridiculously. Completely. In a way I had no framework for before you."
"I know that too."
"You're very calm about it."
"I've had two years to get used to it." She tilted her face up. "I love you too. Also ridiculously. Also completely." She watched Shaurya attempt to wipe cake from Aryan's face while Aryan expressed his opinions about this. "We made a good one."
"We did." He pressed his lips to her temple. "Your eyes. My stubborn."
"His own everything," she corrected. "He's entirely himself already."
"He really is."
Bruno, sensing perhaps that the moment required documentation, walked to Samarth's other side and sat, his massive body warm and present.
The three of them—four, with Aryan—stood in the middle of the afternoon noise and life and occasion of a first birthday partyin a house that had once been cold and was now this, and were entirely and specifically themselves.
Our family,Nimisha thought, the words the same ones she'd said on a beach two years ago.
Samarth's hand tightened on her shoulder, as if he'd heard it.
That Night - Master Bedroom, 11:47 PM
Aryan had been put to bed at seven—a process that had required the participation of both parents, Bruno lying across the doorway, and three readings of a board book about a bear who couldn't sleep.
The irony was not lost on either of them.
Guests had departed through the evening, the estate settling gradually into quiet. The staff had cleared the garden with impressive efficiency. The balloon count had been reduced to a handful that Aryan would probably destroy tomorrow with focused joy.
The estate was still.
Their bedroom was lit by the small lamp on Nimisha's nightstand—the one she'd chosen herself, warm gold, the only thing in the room she'd added in the first month of marriage and which had stayed through everything.
She was at the vanity, taking out her earrings, when she met Samarth's eyes in the mirror.
He was leaning against the doorframe, jacket gone, shirt open at the collar, watching her with the unhurried attention he'd given her for two years and which still, consistently, made her pulse do something undignified.
