Chapter 36
“YOU’RE QUIET TODAY,” Kat remarks.
Rajan stares out the window. “I’ve had a lot going on.”
“At work?”
Work does suck. His shoulder aches, but the foreman straight-up said he’d be fired if he took another day off. “Work’s fine.”
“I see.” Kat watches him. “These life stressors, what are you doing to cope with them?”
Her question hangs in the air. He has a feeling she’s asking about drugs. Or maybe about the drug relapse they don’t talk about.
He gnaws on a toothpick. Kat can think whatever she wants.
Rajan didn’t relapse again, and no one’s more surprised than him after what happened two nights ago.
When he finally got home from Simran’s, everyone was asleep.
He’d eyed his father’s bottles of whiskey.
The one thing Rajan didn’t have, after all, was an alcohol problem.
He was tempted. Maybe it would help him forget the bodies on the café floor, the gunfire, the heart-pounding fear, and the man he almost killed. Possibly, it would help drown his guilt about a promise he made his mother a long time ago.
However, he knew with utter certainty that alcohol could not make him forget Simran. Her hair on his skin, her body in his hands, her sounds when he kissed her. And the way she kissed him—he wouldn’t forget that even if he was dead.
“Nothing,” he says to Kat. Strangely, he currently has no desire to go do drugs. He does, however, have a desire to go find Simran. God, he resisted her for so long. But, as always, eventually his control failed him. Now she’s all he can think about.
That counselor from juvie whispers again in his head. You can’t have one thing giving you all your happiness, whether that’s a drug or something else. It’ll suck the life out of everything else. Until that’s all you have.
Maybe that’s why he hasn’t relapsed again. He’s simply found a new addiction. If that’s the case, he should go do some coke to switch back over. At least that way, he’d only be ruining his own life.
Maybe Kat suspects his thoughts are spiraling, because she sets down her pen. “You like working with your hands, don’t you? It might help to start a creative project. A way to de-stress that isn’t self-destructive.” A beat. “You seem...less settled, than the last time we met.”
Rajan plucks another toothpick from his pocket. He’s chewing through these faster than usual. “That’s because I did something bad.”
Kat goes very still. She’s still smiling, but there’s a slight warning in her voice. “Are you sure you want to keep talking, Rajan?”
“I kissed someone I shouldn’t have.”
“Oh.” Kat relaxes slightly. “Well, did they not want you to?”
“No. That’s the thing. She shouldn’t have, either.”
“Are one of you in a relationship already?”
“No.”
Kat’s smile becomes confused. Rajan doesn’t blame her.
The barriers between him and Simran are invisible to most, yet insurmountable.
He almost wishes it were cheating. Then he could clearly explain why he’s a bad person.
Instead, all he can do is try to correct things the only way he knows how: avoidance.
He’ll talk to Simran eventually—but only once he has a solid plan to get her out of the Lions.
He flicks his toothpick into the garbage. “Are we done?”
“Almost. Didn’t I tell you to put your shoulder in a sling?”
Their eyes connect. Rajan didn’t think she’d mention their meeting in the ER, since she seems perfectly content ignoring everything else.
Casually, he shrugs. “For what? It works fine.” While she’s shaking her head, he nudges the photo on the desk. “I see you got a new frame for your kid.”
“I finally found the perfect size,” Kat replies. Right. “Just a few weeks of probation left, Rajan. Stay out of trouble.”
Her voice is laden with meaning. It kind of pisses him off. He feels like he’s fourteen again, wondering why Simran didn’t rat him out to the principal. What’s Kat’s game? Why is she not bringing up evidence he knows she has?
As he leaves, Snake Tattoo loiters in the hall, waiting his turn. Despite being irritated, Rajan has the urge to turn back and tell Kat to put her photo in a drawer. But that would be stupid.
He waits until Snake Tattoo reaches him. Then he grabs him by the arm and slams him into the wall.
Before he can speak, Rajan says, “Make her cry again and I’ll break both your fucking arms.”
He emphasizes this with another shove, then lets go without waiting for a response. He doesn’t get one, anyway. Snake Tattoo remains silent behind him.
It’s a stupid move, attacking an Ace while this turf war escalates, but Rajan hasn’t been thinking straight in days. He punches the down button on the elevator. Kat’s right. He needs an outlet.
Rajan’s shift at the construction site ends at seven, and while everyone’s clocking out, he makes a show of taking off his hard hat and neon work vest. But he doesn’t go home just yet. He doesn’t trust himself enough not to detour. Whether that detour would be for drugs or for Simran, he can’t say.
Instead, once alone, he drags out a few saws from the shed, trying to decide which would best cut that tree in his yard.
He figures the trunk is big enough to make a simple outdoor bench—a nicer place to sit than that broken-down swing set.
Focusing on the problem makes him feel at ease for the first time in days.
Once he’s selected a chain saw, though, it changes.
Staring at it, Rajan feels a strange sense of anticipation, like.
..it’s becoming real. Not just a theoretical possibility, not just something he’s doing to distract himself.
He could actually make something with that maple.
Something cool. And with that realization comes all sorts of other questions.
Like, what size boards should he be cutting for a bench?
What angle cuts? Where will the screws go?
That’s how he ends up sitting on the steps of the construction trailer, sketching out bench designs on a wooden plank with a Sharpie. He’s on his fourth variation when a voice sounds in the dark.
“Rajan.”
His hands automatically close around the nearest two-by-four, ready to swing. But it’s—Simran. Standing there in a pair of small glasses he recognizes from ninth grade. Wearing an orange salwar kameez. Neither of these facts register properly.
“What the—Why are you here?” he sputters. It’s nearly nine.
“I asked your brother where you were.”
“My brother?”
“I have Yash’s number, remember? I figured if you weren’t home, you might still be at work.”
He sinks back to the step he was sitting on. Reluctantly. God, Simran is really testing him. At least with a drug addiction, the drugs can’t literally walk up to him while he’s trying to avoid them.
He can’t help but notice, though, that Simran looks tired. Probably his fault. “You didn’t answer my question. Why’re you here?”
“Because I missed you.”
Her voice is soft, a caress to his skin, which makes him remember the actual caress of her fingers, which makes him sit up to maintain vigilance against her sneak attacks on his sanity.
It definitely doesn’t help that she then sits beside him, smelling overpoweringly of floral perfume.
Her eyes are luminous, the blacks expanded.
He has to say something. Anything. Before she does—
“Do you want a relationship with me?” Simran asks.
Rajan nearly chokes on his own spit. He scrambles to his feet. So they’re not ignoring it after all. “What?”
“Because I do,” she says heedlessly. Something’s off about her, but he can’t tell what. “I need to know where you stand.”
Oh no. Hell no. He starts pacing. “What about Jassa?”
She remains seated. “I don’t want him. I want you.”
His whole body wants to react to that statement. Jesus, Simran loves to torture him. This is exactly the nightmare he’s been trying to avoid. She’s giving up Jassa—the one she’s been after this whole time—for him?
He turns back to her. “We are not doing this. You know what people would say. What our parents would say. And you know what? They’d be right.”
“They wouldn’t.”
But even she doesn’t sound certain. If he has to remind her of every reason they shouldn’t be together, he will. “How would you know? Can you see the future?”
“Can you?”
He stares at her dead-on. “I know I’ll fuck up, because I know myself. I’ve ruined people who loved me. I won’t do it again.” When she tries to speak, he holds up a hand. “You know how this story goes.”
The uproar would be horrendous. Simran would become another cautionary tale of how far a golden girl can fall.
He’ll have no part in that, not when she could have someone perfect for her, like Jassa.
As much as he hates to admit that. His hands ball into fists, and he gets a spontaneous rage headache at the thought of them together, of anyone touching her the way Rajan did.
The possessiveness surprises him. He turns away again so she won’t see it on his face; his insecurities are his own problem. “Besides,” he continues as evenly as he can, “I thought you were trying to make your family happy. This is the opposite. I don’t have to explain that to you, do I?”
“No,” Simran says, sounding miserable. They lapse into silence. Her on the step, him standing a few feet away, the moonlight their only companion.
“It’s a good thing Hillway’s almost over,” he mutters. “We shouldn’t see each other after this.” Now that he knows too much about her—intimate things—his self-control is thin.
But when Simran sniffles, even that disintegrates. Instantly he’s back at her side. She’s hugging her knees, tears in her eyes, and his hands hover, wanting desperately to touch but knowing he shouldn’t. “C’mon, what’re you crying about? What happened today?”
She hiccups a laugh. “You just said you don’t want to see me again and you’re asking why I’m crying?”
“You’re crying over me?” That’s messed up.
“Okay, well, we’ll see each other sometimes, okay?
Kelowna’s not that big. I’ll wave to you in the grocery store.
As long as some uncle doesn’t snipe me for looking at you.
Right?” He nudges her, hoping that’ll help, but instead it sets off a fresh wave of sobs.
He sighs. Wanting to distract her, he picks up the hem of her kameez.
“Where’d you go tonight in this pretty suit? ”
Another laugh escapes her. “Neetu’s. She’s got an engagement party on Saturday, but she had a smaller family party tonight.” Her voice becomes quieter. “I shouldn’t have gone.”
“Why not?” When she doesn’t answer, he gives in to temptation and pushes her hair back.
Strands are plastered to her temples. Why’s she so sweaty?
Is she nervous? There’s an edge to her that’s not normally there, even at her most upset.
And now that he’s this close, there’s something sickly under her perfume, despite how much of the stuff she’s doused herself in.
He frowns. “Wait. Have you been throwing up? Don’t tell me you’re coming down with something. ”
Her body flinches, and then she’s standing, so suddenly her kameez flutters. “I—should go. I don’t know why I came here.” Almost to herself, “I wasn’t thinking.”
“What—”
But she’s already speed-walking away. He doesn’t chase her. He just watches until she reaches her truck at the side of the road. Once she’s driving away, he gets to his feet, too. This is probably a sign he should go home.
The house is eerily quiet when he enters. He glances down the hall and sees Yash peeking around his door. When Rajan meets his eyes, he ducks back inside.
“Yash,” Rajan calls, but the door slides shut. Okay, obviously something happened. If Sukha fought him over Oreos again, Rajan swears he’s putting a house-wide embargo in place.
But before he can find out, his father appears at the living room doorway. “We have a guest. Come here.”
A guest? The last guests they entertained were Simran and the cops. God, if it’s the cops again...He glances out the window, but there’s no cruiser.
His father doesn’t explain, just disappears back into the living room. Rajan shucks off his shoes and turns the corner, too.
Where he stops dead in his tracks.
Because the person sitting on the couch is someone he knows; very well, actually.
This person has occupied a lot of his brain space lately, and caused a shit ton of grief.
And yet, he hasn’t ever spoken to her, or even looked her in the eye until right now.
And right now...there’s only one reason she could be here.
Simran’s mother steeples her fingers. “So,” she says. “You’re the boy who taught my daughter to lie to me.”