Page 5 of The Promise of a Traitor

Aastha drew in a shaky breath, sweat beading her brow. “How have you been?” she asked quietly, her fingers pleating the long, loose fabric of her maxi dress.

“Do you care?”

Her gaze darted to his, the harsh words scraping against her skin, against her conscience.

“Let’s not do this dance,” he said, a mocking smile twisting those beautiful lips she’d kissed so many times.

“You look at me like you hate me,” she said, the words feeling like ice as they left her lips.

“I do.”

Her fingers froze, twined with the fabric, her nail snagging on a raggedy edge, a reminder of why she was sitting here. Why her mother was marrying her off to a rich stranger. A rich stranger who was also the man she loved so desperately…so futilely.

A man who hated her apparently.

“I should go,” she said now, not wanting to risk the tears stinging her eyes overflowing in an embarrassing display of weakness.

“Why?” He put his coffee down on the table with so much force that the dark, steaming liquid sloshed over the sides and onto his hands.

Aastha grabbed for the tissues and dabbed at his hand. Advik pulled it back, shaking it out as if to erase her fleeting touch.

“Don’t touch me,” he said crisply.

When you touch me, Aastha, it grounds me, anchors me…makes me feel comfortable in my own skin.

The whispered words from the past echoed in her ears as Aastha pushed back from the table. “I guess we’re done here then?”

He looked up at her. “Are we?”

“We don’t need to get to know each other because, I think, we already know too much about each other. And you hate me…so what’s the point of us even pretending to have this farce of a conversation.” She grabbed her purse and hoisted it on to one shoulder. “I’m done. I’m leaving.”

“Of course you are,” he drawled. “You’re so damn good at it too.”

Her cheeks flamed, heat rushing through her. “Yeah, I am,” she replied, the fight going out of her. “Watch me do it again.”

And with that, she swept out of the coffee shop, head held high, heart a dead husk in her chest.

She made it till the end of the street before collapsing against the grimy wall of a storefront, helpless tears running down her face. She buried her face in her hands, her shoulders shaking as sobs ripped through her.

You look at me like you hate me.

I do.

Chapter Three

Advik

Fury burned through him as he sat in that ridiculous café watching her walk away from him. The door shut behind her with its idiotic, cheerful tinkle. He caught a glimpse of orange fabric as she rounded the corner of the café and then she was gone.

How the fuck had this happened? He pulled out his phone and scanned through the millions of messages from his mother, many of which he’d ignored. And then he found it, the profile of the girl his mother had wanted him to meet.

Aashika Agarwal. Daughter of Pramod and Binita Agarwal, Entrepreneur. Nothing in that profile was familiar to him. Nothing except for the picture. If he’d looked at it, if he’d bothered to open the messages his mother had sent him, he’d have seen…Her.

Not Aashika Agarwal, entrepreneur. But Aastha, his Aastha…or who had been his Aastha.

Aashika…Who the fuck was Aashika?

She’d given him a fake name, he thought numbly. Had anything about their time together been real? Or had this always been her plan? Enjoy herself with some random idiot before returning to India to marry another random idiot chosen by her parents.