Chapter 17
KABIR
When the table fell into that uneasy silence, every pair of eyes fixed on him and the phone that refused to stop vibrating, Kabir felt the walls closing in.
The restaurant wasn’t even small; it was one of those high-ceilinged, glass-fronted places his family liked, all warm lights and clinking cutlery and low piano music.
But the moment his phone’s low buzzing cut through it, the space seemed to shrink around him, compressing until the air itself felt thick.
He grabbed the phone like it was burning through the tablecloth and pushed back from the table. Chairs scraped behind him. Someone said his name. He didn’t stop. He couldn’t stop.
His bodyguards, stationed discreetly near the entrance, straightened and fell in behind him without a word.
Their presence boxed him in even further.
He hated needing them, hated how the world recognized him before he even had a chance to breathe.
But in public, with families and cameras and strangers with fast fingers… he didn’t have a choice. Not anymore.
The moment he stepped into the corridor outside the restaurant, the phone vibrated violently in his hand again, a buzzing wasp trapped against his skin. Frustration rose hot and sharp in his throat, scraping against the panic that always lurked just beneath.
He looked down at the screen.
DO NOT ANSWER.
That name, those stupid, childish words, glared up at him. Ridiculous. Immature. He knew it.
He also knew it was the only way he could bring himself to save her number at all.
His aunt never used the same number twice.
She’d learned long ago that he wouldn’t pick up anything unfamiliar, so she rotated through them, new SIMs, new burners, new tactics.
That discovery had only made her more creative.
So, he’d given up and not blocked the last number.
He should block her. He should’ve blocked her years ago.
But he didn’t.
Because he knew exactly what happened when she couldn’t get to him.
When her poison had nowhere to go, it seeped sideways, into the people he loved.
And he would rather receive a hundred calls that hollowed him out than let her venom spill over onto the people who didn’t deserve it, the people whose only mistake had been to love him.
He thumbed the screen, breathing hard through the pressure building in his chest. The hallway felt suffocatingly narrow, the restaurant behind him suddenly too close and too loud. Even his guards’ quiet presence felt like walls closing in around him.
He was trapped. He stepped out of the restaurant and onto the pavement, sucking in desperate gasps of air.
“Kabir.”
Her voice, quiet, soft, and achingly familiar, broke over him. His shoulders dropped instantly, head bowing under the weight of exhaustion so old it lived in his bones. Whatever composure he’d scraped together inside that restaurant crumbled at the sound of her saying his name.
“What’s going on?”
He forced his voice out through a throat gone tight. “Nothing.” He didn’t look at her. He couldn’t. If he met her eyes, he’d give himself away in a heartbeat. Ignoring her was a coward’s choice but it was the only armour he had left.
“Bullshit.”
A humourless sound escaped him. Of course. Tani had never once let him hide. Not when they were younger. Not now, when loving her felt like a sin he had to keep committing in silence.
“Listen, Bug…” His hand closed around the vibrating phone, knuckles whitening. “I have to go deal with this.”
She smirked, that infuriatingly familiar tilt of her lips that undid him effortlessly. “Is the supermodel girlfriend more trouble than she’s worth?”
He looked at her then, really looked. The delicate sweep of her jaw. The faint arch of her brows. The softness he’d memorised long before he had any right to. Forbidden feelings, feelings for someone who belonged to someone else now, pulled at him like a riptide.
“Yeah, sure,” he said finally. It was safer to lie. Safer to let her believe that. “I need to go dump her arse.”
“Dump her arse?” she echoed, disbelief colouring her voice.
He gestured sharply to his guards to call for the car. He could feel the storm gathering, inside him, inside her, inside the mess he’d dragged them both into. His nerves crackled under his skin, every instinct screaming to pull her close and push her away at the same time.
“I’m coming with you,” Tani muttered.
“What?” He stared at her, stunned. “You want to come with me while I break up with her?”
“You’re not breaking up with anyone,” she said briskly, already tapping out a message on her phone. Probably to the family. Probably about to tell the world they were disappearing together and that they were definitely not going wedding shopping.
His breath caught painfully. God, she didn’t even realise what she did to him.
“Excuse me?”
“I’ve known you all my life, Kabs.” Her voice softened just a fraction, slipping under his defenses like it always did.
“You’d never talk about a woman like that.
Even if you were planning to ‘dump her arse.’ So there is something else going on.
Something that bothers you enough to put that look on your face.
I know that look.” She pointed a finger at his face.
“I hate that look. I hate to see it on you. So, I’ll say this one last time. Take me with you. Or I’ll follow.”
Something in his chest twisted hard.
“Don’t be a brat, Bug,” he said, harsher than intended. “Go do your wedding shopping.”
“Fuck you,” she replied calmly, just as his car pulled up. And he deserved it. God, he deserved worse.
Crowds were forming around them, murmurs rising, phones tilting toward them, whispers like static. The world kept watching him fall apart, piece by piece. It never stopped. He exhaled sharply.
“Get inside, Tani,” he said, clipped and cold.
“No.” She crossed her arms, her gaze locking onto his with laser-sharp certainty. She had no idea how close she stood to the edge of him. One more step and he’d break.
“Has it…” He couldn’t find his voice. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Has it occurred to you that I don’t want you with me?”
The hurt that flashed through her eyes was a blade. But the pain that tore through him was the whole damn knife.
He stepped back. Forced himself to watch her fall apart for a fraction of a second because he’d earned that too. Because he was the reason her eyes looked like that.
Then he got into the car. Closed the door. Only then, shielded by blacked-out glass, did the agony hit like a freight train.
“FUCK!”
He slammed his fist into the seat, the sound ringing through the quiet interior. His driver didn’t flinch. His guard didn’t even blink.
The car pulled away.
None of them noticed what was still happening on the sidewalk.
Tani stood there, phone pressed to her ear, breathing shaky.
“Dad,” she whispered. “I need you.”