Chapter 43
KABIR
His gaze followed her as she pottered around in her little kitchen, brewing coffee in a fancy machine that looked like it belonged on a spaceship. She filtered it into a cup and then set it before him.
Black, no sugar, just the way he liked it. For some reason, the sight of it brought a lump to his throat.
“How is Zara?” she asked, her back to him as she fixed her own coffee.
“She’s adjusting,” Kabir exhaled. “We both are. It’s a long road and we’ve just gotten started on it.” Warmth filtered through his voice as he added, “She’s a firecracker. Just like you.”
Tani’s hand shook, a few grains of coffee powder spilling from the spoon she held on to the countertop. She gripped the edge of the kitchen counter and took a deep breath before cleaning it up and making her coffee.
“You left me,” Kabir said, still staring into the inky depths of his coffee. His voice was quiet but he couldn’t hide the hurt in it.
“I did,” she agreed softly.
Silence stretched for a beat as he asked what his heart had been demanding to know over these last few weeks.
“For good?” He forced himself to look up from the coffee and meet her eyes. It took all the courage he had left.
Tani held her cup between her palms, letting the warmth seep into her chilled fingers, grounding herself. When she finally spoke, her voice was gentle but sure.
“For as long as I live, Kabir Kashyap,” she murmured, “I will only ever love you. I could leave you and run to the far ends of the earth and I still wouldn’t be able to leave you for good.”
His breath hitched.
“I wrote to you,” she said. “I sent you an email every day telling you everything. You never replied.”
“An email?” He stared at her. “I don’t think I’ve checked my email in years. I have people who do that.”
Tani looked horrified. “Who has been reading my mails?”
Kabir shrugged. “Varsha? Rahul? I don’t know really. But it doesn’t matter now. Tell me what you said in the emails. Tell me what I need to hear.”
Tani shook her head, colour high in her cheeks. “I left,” she murmured, “until we could get our heads on straight.”
He didn’t respond. He just watched her like a man who’d been starving and had suddenly been given something he wasn’t sure he was allowed to touch. His eyes devoured every line of her face, as if memorizing her anew, as if making sure she was real.
“It was too much, Kabs,” she said softly, her fingers tightening around the mug. Her voice wavered.. “Just… too much.”
She lifted her eyes to him then, and the raw honesty in them sliced through him more effectively than any anger ever could.
“There was too much noise and I…I needed to be heard.”
“I heard you,” he said. “I’ve always heard you.”
“You listened,” she corrected, “but you didn’t hear me.”
That hurt but he supposed the truth would hurt. He hadn’t heard her when she’d tried telling him what her problem was. He’d been too convinced he knew what was good for both of them.
“Talk to me, Tani. I’m here and I’m all yours. Tell me what you want.”
Her breath caught and a single tear slipped free, catching the light as it slid down her cheek.
“You,” she said with raw honesty. “All of you. No secrets, no fears, no insecurities. I don’t want half of you or the parts that you think are safe for me to love. I want the whole man.”
His throat bobbed, but she kept going, her heart in every syllable.
“I love you, Kabir. I’m proud, so proud of the man you are. There is no greater privilege in my mind than being the woman you love.”
Her voice broke, but her eyes held his firmly, fiercely.
“And whatever comes with it, your past, your birth family, your cousin, the dark parts, the messy parts, the parts that scare you, I will love all of it. Because it’s yours. Because it’s you. Because it’s what shaped the man I’m madly, stupidly, insanely in love with.”
Kabir swallowed hard. “When you said, maybe never, did you mean it?”
Tears slipped past Tani’s iron control, sliding down her cheeks. “In the moment, maybe,” she confessed. “We never seem to get our timing right, the two of us. But Kabs, you don’t scare me. Your life doesn’t scare me. Losing you does.”
“You couldn’t lose me even if you tried. I’ve loved you for so damn long I don’t remember who I was before you.” Kabir let out a shuddering breath, eyes bright, rimmed with exhaustion and something far more fragile, something that looked and felt an awful lot like hope.
“You were the only dream I ever had that wasn’t poisoned by my past. The only thing that felt pure. Every good part of me, every soft part, comes from knowing you. And I’ve spent years trying to pretend I didn’t need you because I was terrified I’d ruin you.”
His voice cracked. “But the truth Bug? The truth is I am ruined without you. I love you in every place I’m broken. I love you in every breath I take. You are the only woman I have ever loved, and the only one I ever fucking will.”
He walked around the kitchen counter and wrapped his arms around hers. “One last chance, Tani. Please? I promise not to fuck it up this time.”
“Don’t you get it?” she asked, smiling softly through her tears. “I’ll give you every chance in the world for a shot at being loved by you. Every inch of you and your life is mine.”
A deep, shuddering breath escaped him as he curved his body around hers, holding her tight.
“You don’t need to worry about Zara,” he said, his face buried in her hair. “I’ll handle-“
“Don’t you get it, dumbass?” She rose on her tiptoes, the tip of her nose touching his. “Like I said, every single inch of your life is mine. Including her.”
He smoothed her hair back from her face. “It doesn’t seem fair that I come into this relationship with so much baggage and you’re just perfect.”
“Perfect?” Tani arched a brow. “I have Rehan in my family tree.”
Kabir’s hand paused in her hair. “Well now…okay,” he drawled. “Maybe you win.”
Tani burst into laughter, the sound filling the space around them, expanding until it felt like it wrapped his heart in a golden glow. And then he just had to reach down and kiss her, steal the joy from her lips, soak it in until it warmed him from the inside out.
Would he ever get tired of this, holding her in his arms, wrapped in her laughter and love?
Maybe never.