Chapter 44
DAKSH
There are times in one’s life when it feels like the world simultaneously speeds up and slows down. Daksh stood outside the Thakkar mansion, night blanketing him, watching the lights go on inside the house, bathing the scene in a soft, warm yellow glow.
He should go in, talk to Vedika, say goodbye and leave. But his feet wouldn’t move. He stayed where he was, his haversack by his feet, hands shoved in his pockets, eyes on the window on the second floor, third from the right. The curtains were drawn but light filtered through them. She was home.
She was his home.
Still his feet didn’t move. Just one moment more, he told himself. And then…
Before he could complete that thought, a car rolled up beside him, coming to a stop. Kanak Thakkar got out of the driver’s side and propped her hands on to the top of the car.
Daksh winced a little as he saw her bracelet scrape the top of the Bugatti but Kanak didn’t even seem to notice.
“Surveilling the place?” she asked conversationally, as if it was perfectly normal to run into someone standing on the pavement outside her house, staring at it.
“I need to talk to Vedika,” he said, reaching down to grab his haversack and hoist it up. And still, his feet didn’t move.
Kanak watched him for a second, her perceptive glance taking in the tense lines of his face. Then she shut the car door, tossed her keys to the guard who’d come running and was now hovering behind her and walked over to where he stood.
She stood shoulder to shoulder beside him, watching the house, clearly trying to see what he was seeing.
“Peace,” he told her, when she didn’t say anything. “I look at it and see peace.”
Kanak smiled. “That’s probably because the house is so large, we all can disappear into our own little corners and never have to interact. It’s easy to keep peace when you have ample space.”
Daksh laughed. “It’s not the space. It’s the people.”
“For you,” Kanak said, gently. “It’s her.”
Daksh stilled. “You don’t mind?” he asked, after a moment. “That it’s me?”
“Why would I?” she asked breezily, like she wasn’t turning his world on its head. “I like you, Daksh.”
It felt like she’d wrapped him in a hug, one that, for once in his life, made him feel seen.
“I like anyone who makes the vein in my husband’s forehead throb,” she grinned, seeing the emotion in his eyes and trying to lighten the moment. “And you do such a magnificent job of it. Hainan Gibbon,” she muttered to herself, snickering.
Daksh laughed. “He came to see me today.”
“I know.” Kanak’s smile softened. “He’s trying to make things right in his own arrogant, overbearing way. You’ll get used to him.”
“Will I? I don’t think I’ll be around long enough for that.” Daksh’s hand clenched over his haversack. “I have to leave,” he said quietly.
Kanak’s gaze dropped to his bag and then came back to him. “I see.”
“That’s it?” he asked. “Your husband told me to stop running.”
“My husband always has to have an opinion on everyone’s life,” she muttered darkly. “Although in his defence, he’s usually right.”
Daksh snorted. The lights in Vedika’s room turned off. He’d been watching. Even while talking to Kanak, he’d been watching. His smile faded.
“I came to say goodbye.”
“Are you going to come in and say it or this is like a Devdas, Romeo and Juliet thing?”
Daksh glanced at her sideways. “Do you ever filter your thoughts?”
“Nope,” she said cheerfully. “I leave that to the rest of the family. I also, unlike the love of my life, leave people to make their own decisions. So, I’m going to go in now.”
She took a small step forward before stopping and turning to him. “Are you coming?”
“So much for letting people making their own decisions,” Daksh grumbled, hiding his smile, as he hefted his bag and followed her towards the gate.
“Oh honey,” Kanak murmured. “You’ll learn that once the Thakkars adopt you, you’re never really free of us. We’re like a boa constrictor and octopus, merged into one.”
“Now that’s something I’d like to photograph,” he said, as they stepped into the shadowed hallway of her home.
“It’s about time,” a quiet voice said from the darkest shadow by the staircase. “It took you guys forever to come in.”
Daksh jumped even as Kanak turned calmly to face Vedika. “Don’t sneak up on the elderly,” she scolded. “I could have had a heart attack.”
Vedika snorted, coming forward. “Elderly, my arse,” she muttered, but she was looking at Daksh.
His heart clenched as his gaze met her bruised, exhausted ones. He’d done that. He’d put that look on her face. She looked at his bag and back to his face and she knew.
“You’re leaving.” The quiet devastation in her words were a punch to the gut.
Kanak disappeared up the stairs without another word, giving them space and privacy.
“Daksh, I know. That your father…what he said,” Vedika’s voice faltered on the last word.
He exhaled hard, keeping his face averted from her. “He’s not my father. He’s just the man who allowed me to live in his house.”
Vedika froze for a second. And then she came closer. Her hand came up to cup his face, turning it towards her so he was forced to meet her gaze. He saw the shock in her eyes but none of the pity he expected.
“Well, that’s a pleasant surprise. Who’d want to share genetics with him anyway?” Vedika wrinkled her nose in disgust surprising a laugh out of Daksh.
“That’s the debt you owed him,” she said now. This time she omitted the word father.
“I owed him for every grain of rice, every thread of clothing, every night of shelter, every fucking breath I took…” Daksh shook his head. “Even my return for Ashish’s wedding…it was a command performance. I owed him a happy family in society’s eyes. I owed him for allowing my mother her dignity.”
He stepped out of her embrace, unable to tell her his truth while being enveloped in the warmth of hers.
“I stayed in that house but I wasn’t allowed to join them for meals.
I ate with the help in the kitchen. My food was portioned and regulated.
It didn’t increase as I grew…” He glanced down at his large frame and smiled ruefully, “and as you can see, I sort of outgrew them all. I was permanently hungry.”
He saw it then. The knowledge of his big meals, her comments about it, all swimming through her head. Pain and regret mingled in those big, beautiful eyes of hers.
“It’s not on you,” he told her softly. “None of it is on you.”
“That man deserves to be shot.”
Daksh’s eyebrows flew up. “I get termites on my dick and he just gets to be shot? That doesn’t seem fair.”
Vedika laughed, though her eyes still swam with unshed tears.
“I grew up like that, Vedika. I don’t know how to explain it.
It’s so hardwired into my system, the not belonging, the outsider in a world of insiders…
I went to the same school as Ashish but tutors came home only for him.
Even though he was the genius and I was the one who struggled.
” He laughed. “Guess my biological dad, whoever he was, wasn’t the academic type.
To the outside world, I was a part of the family. Inside, I was their dirty secret.”
Vedika didn’t say a word. She waited, patiently, for him to continue. When he didn’t, she stepped forward, toward him. He didn’t move, he didn’t even dare breathe.
“Why are you leaving now?” she asked, wrapping her arms around herself. “Why are you leaving me?”
“I can’t be your dirty secret,” he told her honestly. “I can’t, I won’t, live like that anymore.”
“You wouldn’t be,” she whispered, furious at the insinuation.
“No?” he asked, an eyebrow raised, daring her to dispute the truth. “A week after your engagement to my brother breaks, you’re in bed with me. You’re ready to go official with that?”
She flinched like he’d slapped her. She started to say something but he stopped her.
“The first time I picked up a camera in a workshop that took place at school, something inside me clicked. For the first time in my life, something came to me effortlessly. And I knew it would be my passport to a life away from him, from them. My life suits me. If I didn’t stay in one place long enough, no one could ask me to leave.
So, I left before anyone could. I had to make my life one that he had no claim to, one in which I didn’t owe him for anything. ”
He scrubbed his hands over his face, trying to make sense of his thoughts and put them into words that would make sense to her. She was the only person on this planet that he would explain himself to.
“I emptied out my bank balance and savings to pay off Ashish’s debts.
I wanted to, I needed to, wipe the slate clean with them.
There’s no coming back from that. No going back either.
I never want to return to their home for anything.
I have a home in New York that I rent, I have no assets of my own, no fixed income pouring in.
I have work, thankfully, plenty of work, and a reputation that will hold in any professional circle, in my world. ”
Her gaze sharpened. “And in my world?” she asked, zeroing in on his qualifier.
“In your world,” he told her. “I’m nothing.
I’m an illegitimate child of a broken family, who never completed college, and wanders the world taking photographs.
The daughter of Aakash and Kanak Thakkar, the Thakkar heiress, Harvard educated, and about to take the corporate world by storm deserves better. ”
“Better?” she repeated. “You think I deserve better than you.”
“I think I want to be that better for you,” he told her honestly. “Desperately. But I’m not there yet.”
“This is about money?” she asked, disbelievingly.
“No, sweetheart,” he said softly. “It’s about worth.”
“You don’t get to decide what I should or shouldn’t have in my life,” she snapped, angry fire lighting up her eyes.
There she was, he thought. His feral mouse.
“I know.” His voice was gentle but firm. “I want you to do that when you’re ready.”
She opened her mouth to tell him she was ready now. He saw it in her eyes but he also saw her hesitation. It was too much, too soon. He knew. The wild ferocity of their feelings for each other swam in him too. He knew exactly how it felt.
And that was why he had to leave. He dropped his bag, coming closer. He stopped in front of her, hesitating, then raising his arms. “Could I please hold you? One last time?”
In response, she threw herself into his arms. He pulled her close, shutting his eyes and burying his face in her hair, inhaling the scent of her, allowing himself this fragment of peace. His home. One he’d carry in his heart wherever he went.
“Don’t go,” she whispered.
In response, he just held her tighter.
“Goodbye Mouse,” he said, the words choking him, dropping a gentle kiss to her forehead. “Don’t eat any lobster without me.”
“That fucking lobster,” she whispered.
He laughed sadly. “That fucking lobster.”
And then he forced himself to let go of her and walk out of her life.