Chapter 32
DAKSH
Could we meet?
The three words had destroyed any hope he’d had of catching a flight out of India. He’d been hoping to be halfway to Australia by now, snorkelling by the Great Barrier Reef. But the Universe was conspiring against him.
First, the confrontation with his father and brother had left him feeling raw and on edge. His father’s outrageous ask had left him fuming. He’d stormed out of there and to his room and thrown his stuff together, intending to leave immediately.
Unfortunately, the first possible option had been later that evening. And then, her text had arrived.
It had been the brakes to his plans that nobody else could have applied. What was this pull he felt towards her? Why her? Anybody else, literally anybody else on this planet, would have been a better choice than her. A less complicated one.
Ending up with Vedika Thakkar would delight his father. And Daksh really hated delighting that fucker.
He sat, awkwardly, in the middle of a comfortable yet luxurious formal sitting room in Thakkar Mansion.
A helper who looked like an old school British butler had led him here and left him to stew in his silent awkwardness for a while now.
He should have told Vedika he’d meet her outside this palace but he hadn’t wanted to make her wander the city with a hangover. Fuck him. He should leave!
The door to the sitting room opened and Vedika entered. The hair, the edgy, shorter crop she’d gone for was still a shock. She’d brushed it back from her face and clipped the sides to keep it from falling in her eyes. It looked good on her, he thought. It just didn’t look like Vedika.
“Hello Mouse,” he said softly, getting to his feet.
She flinched, her eyes, ringed with dark circles, darting away from him. She was twisting her fingers together, almost painfully. Daksh walked over to where she stood and grabbed them, forcing her to stop hurting herself. Would this woman ever stop torturing herself for existing?
She stared down at their twined hands like she was seeing a ghost. Vedika wrenched her hands away from him and backed away. Daksh frowned at the extreme reaction but didn’t pursue it.
“How are you feeling today?”
“I’m okay, I guess.” Her gaze sharpened as she saw his haversack resting against one of the chairs. “You’re leaving,” she said, her voice falling, rife with disappointment.
“I am checking into a hotel for a bit,” he told her, making a mental note to cancel his tickets. He didn’t have it in him to be responsible for that look in her eyes. So, it looked like he’d be hanging around for a little longer.
Dammit. This wasn’t healthy.
Her eyes, shadowed with pain, met his. “Problems at home?” she asked.
Daksh shrugged.
“Because of me?”
He exhaled, looking over her head to the shut door, hoping someone would walk through it and interrupt this awkward as fuck conversation.
When no one burst through like a saving grace, he had no choice but to answer, “No, of course not.”
“Of course not,” she whispered softly. “Why would it be because of me?”
“How long do you plan to keep this up?” he asked lightly.
“Keep what up?”
“This,” he gestured vaguely at her, his mouth twisting with angry amusement. “The tragic heroine act. Nobody understands me. Nobody loves me. Poor, broken Vedika.”
Her head snapped up. Fire flared instantly. Good. He’d take her anger over that hollow, lifeless expression any day.
“I am not doing that.”
“No?” His laugh was sharp. “Then what do you call this? Because from where I’m standing it looks a lot like you’ve just… given up on yourself.”
“I have not given up!”
“You literally renamed yourself,” he cut in. “What was it? Not Vedika?” His voice dripped mockery. “That’s not even very original.”
For a moment she just stared at him like he’d slapped her.
Then the hurt turned feral.
“You asshole,” she breathed, her voice shaking with fury as she marched up to him. “How dare you. How dare you take something I told you when I was hurting and throw it back at me like a joke?”
“How dare you decide you don’t deserve to exist?” he shot back, just as quietly. “How dare you decide that Vedika doesn’t deserve to exist? How dare you dim your light?”
That stopped her.
“My what?”
“Your light,” he said, the anger gone from his voice now, replaced by something rougher. More dangerous. “How dare you pretend it doesn’t exist just because someone, some idiot, failed to see it? If you do that, you’re an even bigger idiot.”
“My light?” she repeated, disbelief dripping from every syllable. “You don’t get to say things like that.”
“I get to say whatever I want.”
He stepped closer before she could move away, his hands coming up to hold her face before she could decide whether to fight him or flee.
“Stop apologising for who you are, Mouse.”
Her eyes flashed, anger, hurt and disbelief flashing in them.
“Who I am?” she whispered. “Do you even remember who you thought I was when you met me in Goa?”
His jaw tightened.
“I remember.”
“What?” she challenged. “Say it. Go on. I was too loud, too neurotic, too repressed, right? Too much? Embarrassing? Exhausting?”
“I thought you were chaos in a tightly wound package,” he said.
She froze.
“I thought you were rigid. Controlled. Annoying. Completely incapable of unwinding, even for a second.” His thumb brushed the corner of her jaw.
“I thought you were the kind of girl who walks into people’s lives like a contained storm and doesn’t even realise the damage she’s doing.
And I thought that when the storm is unleashed, there would be nothing but collateral damage. ”
Her throat moved as she swallowed.
“And now?” she asked.
“And now,” he said quietly, “I know the damage isn’t collateral.”
Silence stretched between them.
“And what does that mean?” she asked.
“Nothing I can talk about right now,” he said, his voice dropping. His fingers tightened slightly against her skin.
Her hands came up to wrap around his wrists, holding on for support.
“Talk to me, Mouse. Tell me what’s going on inside that complicated head of yours.”
“I’m…” her breath left her in a whoosh, the soft exhale shaky. “embarrassed,” she said finally.
“Why?” Daksh tipped her chin up forcing her to meet his eyes.
“Why?”
“Yes, why? What have you got to be embarrassed about?”
“I molested you!” she shouted, the words echoing around the large room, rebounding towards his shocked ears.
“You what?” Dumbfounded, Daksh stared at her.
“I am so sorry!” she wailed. “I groped you and I kissed you and,” she dropped her face into her hands, “I LICKED you. Without your consent.” The last three words were a horrified whisper.
“It wasn’t me!” Vedika said now, her words tumbling over one another. “It was ‘Not Vedika’.”
“Your alter ego?” he asked, amusement trickling through him. “The impossibly sexy one?”
She dropped her hands and glared at him. “Don’t mock me!”
“You were, you know,” he murmured, “impossibly sexy. In that hot as fuck haircut, the fuck me dress, dancing on the bar counter.”
A strangled moan escaped her. “It wasn’t me. I was just trying to be anybody but myself for one day. That’s all I wanted. One day. And then, I made the mistake of adding alcohol. I don’t normally drink alcohol.”
“You don’t say,” he murmured, biting back a smile. “I did Goa with you. I know exactly how much alcohol you drink, or rather don’t drink, even on vacation. I’ll have you know, Mouse, that no one does Goa like you. No one.”
Vedika glared at him. “Stop it. I know I’m not a fun train.”
His smile gentled. “You’ve had a hard, few days. If I had to count the number of days I ended up shit faced drunk because of my hard days, we’d run out of time and I don’t want that.”
Her eyes widened slightly, something in his tone catching her attention. “Don’t want to run out of time?” she asked.
“Yeah, because there’s something more important I want to tell you.” He dipped his head to whisper in her ears. His breath feathered over the nape of her neck, disturbing the short, fine hair there. The warmth of her body filtered through to his and he struggled to hold onto his train of thought.
“What?” she asked, her voice a husky gasp.
Daksh Mathur would never know if this single decision would make or break him…Either way, it would define his very existence.
He took a deep breath, letting the sweet fragrance that was all her fill his senses and said, “You have my consent, Vedika. For anything and everything you’d like to do with me, to me, for me…Name it and it’s yours.”