29
Rahul
Present day
Present day
Things that tested you were supposed to make you stronger, weren’t they? Rahul didn’t feel strong. He felt as powerless as he had as a teenager, wanting to put his fist through a brick wall. Dr. Gokhale seemed like the perfect match for Kimi. He understood her illness. It wouldn’t throw him off. Wouldn’t make him want to pick her up in his arms and tuck her in bed until whatever was leeching her of color passed. If it passed. Would a doctor have this ball of fear inside every time she looked like her knees were going to buckle?
And when she looked that stoic, a doctor would know how to respond to that. Wouldn’t he? She had been in the bathroom for far too long. She’d disappeared in there the moment she made it up to their hotel room on shaky legs. He wasn’t sure if it was because she was sick again the way she had been on the plane or if it was the shock of her father constructing such a complicated lie.
He paced their hotel room, back and forth from the wall of windows to the bathroom door. There was no way he was leaving her by herself, so they had just one room and it was where they were going to stay until it was time to catch a flight home later tonight. He could only hope that Kirit had been careful when he’d called Dr. Gokhale and that he wouldn’t inadvertently give away their location.
He tracked the sounds in the bathroom with desperation, wondering if it made him a total psycho to knock on the door and ask how she was. His patience could only bear so much.
Why had he said those things to her in the car on the way to the airport? Why had he let his anger take over so completely? The mess that was his family—it wasn’t her fault. Aie should never have spoken to her about things. Kimi had enough to deal with without having to soak up everyone else’s shit.
Because she did. She was a damn sponge that soaked up her environment, dissolved into it. She had no fear of losing herself to anything. For someone who had so much to fear, how did she have no fear? That moment when she had bitten his head off for being ashamed of his own home brought on a rush of regret. Her eyes had burned with pride in him. Pride he’d seen in her eyes from the first time he’d met her. Pride that had stayed steadfast no matter what he’d done. Seeing it in his home, in his mother’s kitchen had changed everything. It had conflated the pressure of being this close to her and not being able to be with her, be hers.
She had laughed with Aie over dinner. She had ruffled Mohit’s hair. Ruffled his hair, for heaven’s sake! Mohit, who snapped Rahul’s head off for even looking at him, had practically been eating out of her hands by the time they left. Making fun of the red and yellow spice stains on her white pants, in her hair. All that color had made her look like she had just played holi.
Rahul had tried to wipe some yellow off her cheek, but each stroke of his thumb had painted a rising blush in its place. And heated his blood. He’d had the insane urge to touch the blush with his lips. Mohit had walked in on them and laughed and Kimi had glared. But then she had laughed too as though she and Mohit already had inside jokes to share.
Fifteen minutes, he had left her alone with Aie for all of fifteen minutes, just to quickly wash up and change for the flight, and that had ruined everything. He had known from the way she looked at him when he came out that something had changed in how she saw him. A sense of foreboding had enveloped him, as though he had climbed on a runaway handcart going downhill with no way to avoid a crash.
Then she had said the name he had never wanted her to say, never wanted her to know. And his anger had killed everything. He had pushed her away again. Harder than he ever had. Because she’d dared to reach for that piece of him that had turned him into a coward.
So long as she’d been angry too, things had been fine. But one moment she was her vibrant self and the next moment she looked like she was shaking on the inside and he couldn’t remember why he had been angry. He would have done anything to pull her into his lap and hold her until it passed, but the one time he tried to reach for her she withdrew into herself, rolled into a ball, and fell into a fitful sleep. Thank God for that ridiculous eye mask she had pulled on because he hadn’t been able to stop watching her sleep, mapping every frown that creased her forehead, every wave of discomfort that pursed her lips.
By the time they reached Dr. Gokhale’s office, he thought she was feeling better. But after he’d told her about Kirit’s phone call, she had collapsed into herself again.
“Did you know?” she asked, storming out of the bathroom. Finally. “Did you know that my transplant happened in India?”
“How exactly would I have known?” He turned away from the view of the city and studied her across the hotel room.
She was in a rage, her hair out of her ponytail and cascading down her back, her face freshly washed. Her red T-shirt with a towel-wrapped Minnie Mouse, barely containing her anger. But it wasn’t just anger, it was anger darkened by betrayal and heartbreak. The way she had looked on their way back from Kalsubai Peak.
The fact that Kirit had called Dr. Gokhale meant Kirit knew. Of course he knew. He was the one who had orchestrated the entire deception about where the surgery happened. But why?
Kirit had told Rahul that they were taking her to Hong Kong for the transplant when they’d put her on a heart-lung machine. Then he’d sent Rahul away after blaming him for her condition. Except, he hadn’t taken her to Hong Kong until after the surgery. And everything about that felt like having stepped on the tip of a gigantic anthill of killer ants.
“Seriously, how would I know, Kimi? You had a cardiac arrest and they took you away. I didn’t even get to say good-bye.” And the most important case of his career had been imploding around him.
“Oh, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have had that cardiac arrest. How bloody insensitive of me.” She let out a grunt of frustration. “And you wanted to say good-bye? Really? Is that why you left me without a word? Right after . . . right after . . .”
He knew what she wanted to call it. But he could not hear those words from her right now. “I’m sorry I left. It was . . . I couldn’t . . . You were sick, Kimi, and I was scared of what I had done.”
Another grunt. “You were scared? So that made it okay for you to run into another woman’s arms?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Great, are we going to do this right now? Are we going to pretend?”
“I’m not pretending. Whose arms did I run into?”
She looked like she was going to kill him. “Jennifer Joshi. That’s who. When did you become such a good liar, Rahul?”
What the hell? He’d only lied to her about one thing. And this was certainly not it.
“Jen was working with me on a case. Yes, we became friends. But that was all.” Jen, amazingly enough, had reminded him so much of Kimi. Which is probably why he had been drawn to her in the first place. “All we were doing was working on a case.” The idea of him and Jen was entirely laughable.
“Right. You were working your case, all right. I came to see you, Rahul, because I couldn’t bear that you had left like that. I saw you with her. Was being with me so awful that you had to go kiss another woman?”
“I never even touched Jen, let alone kissed her, I swear. I have no idea what you saw, but it wasn’t me.”
“So carrying her up to her flat in your arms while kissing her is not touching her? It hadn’t even been two hours since we’d made lo—”
That’s when it struck him—“How did you have that heart attack, Kimi? Where were you when you collapsed?”
She didn’t answer. But he knew. He had gone back to see her again, because he had realized what a coward he’d been leaving her like that. It had been too late. She was already in the hospital unable to keep her heart beating on its own.
For the past two years he had thought it was because of what they had done, but she had followed him and seen him with Jen. “You walked home through the streets of Dharavi? When you knew that your heart couldn’t take it?”
“I didn’t know that. I didn’t think about that. I saw you kissing another woman hours after we’d made love.” She rubbed her scar again. “It hurt, Rahul.”
She has an unhealthy obsession with you. I trusted you. You made a promise. You need to keep it and stop this madness. No good can come of it, Kirit had said before sending him away from the hospital.
She wasn’t the one with the unhealthy obsession. His own obsession was what had put her on a ventilator. He had sworn he’d give her up if she came back home alive.
And he had.
Over and over again.
But she’d come after him with her preposterous idea and her newly healthy body.
I can’t live without you, Rahul. And I know you can’t either. Now we don’t have to.
It had been beautiful, the hope in her eyes. She had sparkled with it on top of that mountain. She always saw things so clearly. To her everything was in its simplest, purest form. He would have given anything to not see them as the mess they were.
I don’t feel the same way about you, Kimi. I’ve only ever thought of you as a friend.
It had been that easy to get her to believe him.
“Sorry,” he said. Not because she had misunderstood something she’d seen him do, but because he’d lost count of all the times he’d hurt her.
She sat down on the bed in front of him without accepting his apology.
“Are you feeling better now?” he asked, because she looked better than she had on the plane, but there was exhaustion in her eyes.
“Don’t,” she said, looking up at him. “Don’t make everything about my health. Is that all I am to you? A sick friend? Has it always been only sympathy? Is that all I am, your charity case?”
You’re my heart. He wanted to tell her. My heart.
He was so tired of not saying it. Of pushing her away. Of being terrified of losing her. Of causing her pain over and over again.
But all he could do was shake his head. She was hungering for a fight right now. She was feeling pushed into a corner, and she needed to push back at something.
“What are we, Rahul?”
“What do you want from me, Kimi?” He couldn’t bear to look at her when she was hurting this much. He turned away and looked back at the city—giant spikes of glass shooting up from a thick bed of greenery. A lifeless thing anchored in a life-giving thing.
“I don’t want there to be lies between us,” she said from behind him.
“Not this again, Kimi, please. I didn’t kiss Jen and I didn’t know anything about the transplant. But whatever this is, I’m going to get to the bottom of it. I’ll get you your answers. I swear.”
“Thanks,” she said, coming to stand beside him. “I need this, Rahul. I need to know. I need . . .” She trailed off, and he knew he should let it go. But he turned to her.
“What do you need, Kimi?”
Those huge, soft eyes blinked up at him, gauging how much to risk again. “I need you to not shut me out.”
He thought about the Post-it note she’d left on Tina. “I’m not the one who shut you out.” She had told him she wanted nothing more to do with him. Over and over again.
“Do you really want me to butt out of your life?”
God, no. He had been so lost without her for the past year.
“Can you please not shut me out today? Just for one day. Please?”
He touched her cheek, her skin butter-soft against his fingers. How did she not know that he couldn’t shut her out? That there would be nothing left of him if she removed herself from him?
“I didn’t ask your mother questions about you, I swear. I think she was just trying to warn me off.” She leaned into his hand, the afternoon sun catching all those blond highlights that she loved so much. That he loved so much. Because she did. Because they made her happy.
He couldn’t not touch them, couldn’t not trace the golden lines radiating from her worry-creased forehead. “Everyone keeps warning you. Why don’t you listen?”
“Because you’re you, Rahul.”
“I’m not who you think I am, Kimi.” And yet he wanted to be everything she thought he was.
Those soft lips parted in a smile. “Haven’t we had this conversation before?”
That would be all their conversations. They were in a loop, bonded atoms, the positive and negative forces inside them perfectly balanced between attraction and repulsion to hold them in each other’s orbit.
Her hand went to her scar again, rubbing it in those light strokes she seemed to crave when she was in turmoil. “Why do you do that?” he asked, touching the lightest finger to her hand on her chest. “Does it hurt?”
“No,” she whispered. “Actually, the scar itself is numb. It’s like touching something with no nerve endings. When I touch it, I feel it on my fingers but not on the scar itself. Here, give me your hand.” She took his hand. “Stick out your index finger.” She did the same with her hand and lined up her index finger flush with his. “Now use your other hand to stroke our two fingers together.”
He did as she asked. It was the oddest sensation. Like feeling only half a touch.
“Strange, huh?”
He stroked their joint fingers again, unable to stop touching her. Unable to fight that fight anymore. “I can’t feel things either,” he said. “Not the way people do. Not the way you do.” She was looking up at him, one side of her face lit up by the sun. “It’s just like this. Like a part of me is numb. Whatever Aie was warning you about, it’s true.”
She turned her hand and intertwined their fingers, touching palm to palm, transforming one touch into another, transforming everything inside him. “Now that I think about it, maybe your aie wasn’t warning me away from you. I think she just wanted me to understand.”
He couldn’t look away from their clasped hands, alive with a connection he felt all through his body. “Understand what?”
She pulled his hand to her lips. “How deeply you hurt. So I wouldn’t hurt you.”
He pulled his hand away and sat down on the bed. She followed him, looking down at him until he looked up at her. Her eyes were equal parts soft and fierce. “Will you tell me about her?”
For the longest time he couldn’t speak, couldn’t feel anything. Then all at once, his throat constricted around his silence. The pain growing unbearable until he let it out.
“Her name was Mona,” he said, and the sob that escaped him was the last thing he’d expected.
She cupped his face, taking everything he was feeling into her hands. He couldn’t remember the last time he had cried, but trying to hold back the tears made his chest burn. “Just don’t stop touching me,” he wanted to say. Instead, he said, “Aie shouldn’t have told you.”
Kimi sat down next to him without letting his face go, then she wrapped her arms around him and pressed her cheek against his chest. His heartbeat raced beneath her ear.
It had been so long since he’d felt her arms around him like this. Since he’d thought about Mona, her sticky-sweet breath. Her chatterbox voice. It was terrifying to let it out like this, to feel it again. What if he lost it? What if he forgot?
He didn’t know if he said those words out loud. But if Kimi heard them, there would be two people who would remember. And he knew Kimi would remember. “She was eight years old. And just so . . .” His voice scraped out of his tight, raw throat. “So beautiful and smart. And she never stopped talking. You would have been best friends, the two of you. If one of you ever stopped talking, that is.”
She smiled through the rivers that were wetting his shirt. Why couldn’t he do that? Why couldn’t he cry like that. Because that’s exactly how he felt.
She stroked his face, his chest. “It had been only two years since your baba died,” she said, looking up at him with those wet doe eyes.
“Don’t, Kimi. Don’t pity me. Please.”
She stood. For a moment he thought she was angry again, because her eyes blazed. If she walked away from him now, he was going after her. But she didn’t walk away. She climbed into his lap and took his face in both hands again. “Is that what you think I’m feeling for you right now, Rahul. Pity?”
Her breath was sweet and warm, and too close to his lips. He should pull away.
“You’re not?” he said into her lips. Fuck pulling away. Fuck ever letting her go. She was everything. Everything and he was nothing without her.
“Not even close.”
And then she did it. She bent down and he reached up and their lips met. Something electric sparked through his chest, through the room, through the entire bloody universe. Hot and bright. Bright and hot.
She inhaled. A tiny gasp. And everything but her and her lips went up in flames.
His hands cupped her head, her scalp warm and perfect in his hands, her hair silk between his fingers. He took her lips, her breath, sucking on the soft, lush sweetness, nudging for entrance. Pushing as she pushed back. Groaning as she groaned. Sounds, taste, breath, all of it becoming one thing. One huge, pulsing inferno. Fast, so fast. Head spinning, blood surging places, hands everywhere. Her fists in his hair, the pain of that pull everywhere, in his chest, his belly, his dick. All of him thrown wide open in hunger and need. Teeth against teeth, tongue against tongue. Breath, running short, until he had to pull away to suck one in, panting, unable to pull away even as he pulled away.
“Why haven’t we ever done that before?” she said, just as breathless, just as tightly pressed into him. Pressure against pressure.
A laugh escaped him, easing the inferno, coloring it in with joy. “Because—”
“It was a rhetorical question,” she said, pressing a finger to his lips. Then she slid off his lap without removing her finger and straddled him. And then she kissed him again and again.
When his hands had dug under her shirt and his brain didn’t have a single thought left in it except: Please don’t pull away from me, don’t ever pull away from me again, she pulled away. Just a little bit. Then in her most coquettish American movie accent she said, “Officer Savant, I think you should know that I’m not a virgin.”