Page 27 of The Promise of a Traitor

“I thought I’d give you a ride to work,” he said, opening the car door behind him and waiting for her to get in.

Aastha took a step back. She saw something flare in his eyes for a split moment before it banked and disappeared beneath his rigid control. “Why?”

“Why not?” He shrugged. “We are getting engaged soon, aren’t we?”

“Are we?” There it was again. The break in his control. His hand fisted at his side before he deliberately unclenched it. “I don’t know what game you’re playing, Adi. But I know there is one in play.”

For the longest moment, he said nothing and then he smiled. Her heart ached as she watched his lips curve. Adi had smiled her so often in the past, open, warm, and loving. This…this was a shark baring its teeth at her. A predator enjoying a little game with his prey.

Where was the man she’d fallen in love with? Was he gone forever?

His hand went to the car door again, pulling it wider. With his other hand, he gestured for her to get in.

“Shall we, Aastha?”

The words were soft, almost a caress. But she would have been the biggest fool in the world not to see the challenge hidden in it. He was watching her, his face a cold, composed mask but she saw the white knuckled grip he had on the car door. She’d always known him better than anyone else. She’d seen what he’d never wanted anyone to see.

She hesitated, every instinct telling her to flee. As much as she’d like to believe she knew Advik, she also knew she was standing in front of a stranger, one who’d changed immeasurably in the last seven years. As had she, she acknowledged silently. She wasn’t the silly girl who’d thought love could conquer everything.

RUN, her mind screamed at her. Run and keep running, it urged.

“In or out, Aastha?”

She thought of her father’s hand resting on her head in blessing, her sister sleeping, exhausted after a restless night, and her forever angry, anxious mother whose machinations were only ever born from a frantic need to survive. She swallowed and slid into the car. The door shut behind her with a finality that felt like the lid of a coffin slamming shut.

Chapter Seventeen

Advik

Traffic was lighter than normal as he pulled out from the gate of her apartment building and into the road adjacent to it. If he was a fanciful man, he would have thought it was a sign, one that allowed him more time with Aastha. But then, she’d wrung all the fancy out of him a long time ago.

“What is it?” she asked, her gaze on the family in the car alongside theirs. The man laughed, saying something to the woman in the passenger seat. He saw her gaze fix on the little scene before the other car sped up and they disappeared from sight.

“What is what?” he asked.

“Whatever you’re thinking,” she murmured. “You have that look on your face.”

What look, he wanted to ask but he wasn’t interested in revisiting the past or any of his looks that she was familiar with.

“Where do I drop you?” he asked instead.

“Here would be fine,” she replied, still staring out of the window, almost like looking at him was anathema to her.

Fat Chance. “Where do you work, Aastha?” he ground out.

“Go straight down this road and take a right at the next traffic light.”

He glanced at her profile, his gaze lingering on this stranger who was still so familiar. “You could just tell me where we’re going. I’ll plug it into the GPS. Would be faster.”

She didn’t respond. They drove a little longer in stony silence until she gestured with her hand for him to turn at the roundabout and go right again.

He frowned as the tree lined road came into view. This was familiar…

“Stop here,” she said, her voice catching on the last word.

And Advik came to a stop outside Chai & Stories. His gaze went to the cutesy, storefront, the one he’d walked into a few days ago only to have his world rocked. By her.

“You work here?”