Chapter 46
DAKSH
Tired, dusty, and heartsore, Daksh sat in the jeep that took him back to the luxury safari camp he was staying at.
He flicked through the pictures on his camera, making a note of the ones that would make the cut and deleting the rest to free up storage space.
His phone screen lit up next to him and he glanced at it, the screensaver as always getting his attention first.
Vedika stood on the beach in Goa, her long, unruly hair flying about her face. He ran his thumb over the curve of her cheek before picking up the phone to check the email that had just arrived. His driver arrived a moment later and they started the bone jolting ride back to the camp.
Another day here and his work would be done. Then he was off to Alaska for another twenty days, after which he had a week’s break before he left for the Galapagos Islands. Work was pouring in, he’d just been nominated for another award, and there was talk of an exhibition of his prints at MOMA.
He should be on top of the world. But, all he felt was this bottomless, gaping hole in his chest, one that he didn’t think would ever fill. Not without her. He sighed, closing his eyes and resting his head on the seat.
His mother and brother had been in touch, tentative olive branches that Daksh hadn’t bothered responding to. From the man who called himself his father, there had been nothing and that was what Daksh wanted. He wanted nothing to do with any of them right now, maybe even forever.
And then there was the other family…The one he couldn’t seem to shake off. Kabir and Vikram had kept in touch, reaching out to check on him, an incessant barrage of messages that had been impossible to ignore.
And most surprisingly had been Aakash Thakkar’s simple message asking if Daksh took on private photography commissions.
Aakash wanted to commission a photoshoot of his wife.
Daksh had replied telling him that he was a wildlife photographer and didn’t do portrait or candid human shoots.
Aakash’s prompt reply ‘which is why I figured a hellcat was right up your alley’ still made Daksh chuckle.
But from the one person, the only person he wanted to hear, there had been nothing but silence.
It had taken every ounce of willpower within him to not ask her brothers about her and it had taken every last inch of his soul to not reach out to her himself.
But he was determined to give her time and space.
Time to get over the tumult of everything that had happened in her life and space to figure out if she still wanted a broken, flawed, nomadic reprobate.
The jeep pulled into the camp’s dusty, gravelly parking lot and Daksh got out, slinging his equipment over both shoulders. He felt like half the mud from the savannah grasslands coated his skin, making him a walking, talking dust storm.
There was a gaggle of people near the reception hut in the distance. New check ins, he presumed, making his exhausted way towards his tent in the distance. He’d just reached it and put his stuff down in preparation to unzip and enter the tent when he heard footsteps behind him.
And then, a soft, hesitant, “Daksh.”
Daksh froze. Had his mind finally snapped? Had the days and weeks of desperate longing made him manifest his deepest, most hopeless fantasy.
“Daksh?” the voice said again.
He turned slowly, painfully slowly and there she was.
Her hair had grown long enough to be pulled back into a stubby ponytail, clips holding the flyaways back from her tired face.
She wore cargo pants with a loose white t-shirt that seemed to envelop her, as always getting swallowed up in her clothes.
“Hi,” she said.
He stared. If he spoke, would she disappear? Was it a mirage? Did he have heat stroke?
Mirage Vedika came forward, climbing the few steps that led to his tent and stopping before him. Then she caught his grimy, dirty hand and brought it to her face. “It’s me,” she said simply.
His fingers trembled beneath hers, the soft, curve of her cheek fitting perfectly beneath his callused palm.
“I’m here,” she whispered, reaching up on tiptoe to wipe the tear that escaped him, trailing down his face, a dusty trail of pain and devastation.
A shudder ran through his body as the dam he’d built, brick by careful brick, around his emotions broke. His big body bowed around hers as he buried his face in the side of her neck, bringing her close, holding her to him, his arms vising around her.
Vedika burrowed into him, her own body shaking with the force of her sobs. “I’m here,” she kept repeating.
She was here. She was really here.
His mouth found hers, a desperate seeking, a reaffirmation that for once life was aligning the way he’d dreamed of. Her lips parted beneath his, welcoming him, her body arching towards him.
A desperate groan escaped him as he stumbled backwards through the tent flap, pulling her along. They fell into the bed, rolling, gasping, hands feverishly moving over each other, a frantic reaffirmation of their feelings, too big, too overwhelming to voice.
They pulled, yanked, dragged clothes off each other until skin finally met blessed skin. She mewled as he pulled away from her long enough to sheathe himself before returning to kiss the protest away.
When he finally slid into her, he felt every last jagged piece of himself slide into place.
He was home. They moved together, their foreheads pressed together, breaths mingling, gaze caught in each other’s, an endless, timeless moment that shattered into a pleasure so intense Daksh thought he’d never recover from it.
He shook in her embrace, her hands moving over his back in soothing circles as he fought to put himself back together, his legendary control shot to bits. When he could finally breathe without feeling like he was going to fly apart, he looked at her.
“Hi,” she said, smiling shyly.
“Hi,” he grinned, a shaky quirk of his lips.
He was about to say more when her stomach growled. His eyebrows lifted. “This is starting to become a pattern.”
Vedika laughed, a bright peal of sound that brought sunshine to his dark, gloomy heart.
Daksh’s smile softened. “What can I order for you?”
She stroked his jaw, her fingers cradling it, cradling him, like he was precious. “Do you think they’d have lobster?”
Damn this woman. She destroyed him, shattered him, and then built him up in the most exquisite way possible.
“Sweetheart, if they don’t, I’ll set up the fucking traps myself.” Reluctantly, he rolled away from her and called for the butler assigned to his tent, placing their food order after checking with Vedika on what would suit her stomach.
They wandered into the bathroom to clean up but ended up doing filthy, torturous things to each other, and running out of hot water before they could claim to be clean.
It was only as they sat on the deck attached to the tent, their meal spread out between them, the sun setting over the Maasai Mara, that he asked her the question burning a hole through his gut, “What now?”
Vedika beckoned him over. “Come here?”
He shuffled closer, obediently, allowing her to position herself against him.
She held her phone up and took a quick selfie of the two of them.
Before he could react, she’d posted it to her social media with a simple red heart beneath it.
As he watched, her fingers flew over the phone and she sent the picture to her family group chat.
It exploded with messages, all of them congratulatory and positive.
A knot of emotion clogged his throat as he watched the lines of text welcoming him to their family. A family, he thought, that actually seemed to want him, one he could belong to.
Aakash’s message pinged through catching his eye. Does this mean he’ll do the photoshoot?
Daksh laughed, blinking back tears. “You know, I could have taken a better picture than the one you just clicked,” he teased.
“Shut up,” Vedika giggled before sobering, “Is there anyone left to tell about us?” Vedika asked, her fingers still poised over her phone. “Anyone else we need to go ‘official’ with?”
He shook his head, still unable to string words together.
“Because I choose you, Daksh Mathur. You are mine. My forever, my one love, my fucking lobster.”
“You are everything, Vedika Thakkar. My everything.” His voice roughened. “You deserved better than me then. Maybe you still do. But if you give me one more chance… I’ll spend the rest of my life becoming the man you should have had all along.”
“You are already the man I want to have. But if you insist, I’ll give you every chance I have in this lifetime and in all the ones that follow,” she whispered. “Just promise you won’t leave me again.”
“Never,” he swore, kissing her long and deep. When they finally surfaced for air, he said, “Not unless you ask me to. I’ll figure something out on the work front and-“
“No, you won’t,” she said bossily. “I have it all figured out.” She dove for one of her bags and pulled out a laptop.
He watched in amazement as she pulled up an excel sheet which fed into a fully constructed PowerPoint presentation.
And then she proceeded to tell him exactly how their lives would look like together.
A base in Mumbai since her work kept her there.
Flight schedules aligned with their deadlines.
Protected weekends blocked off months in advance.
A rule that no argument would be left unresolved for more than twenty-four hours.
Her planned leave that would allow her to travel with him once in three months.
And time, carefully guarded time, where they would just be Daksh and Vedika, nothing more, nothing less.
Somewhere between her calmly stating, “We will protect our time like any other critical investment,” and her matter-of-fact, “I have extrapolated possible promotion timelines so we don’t get blindsided,” something inside his chest gave way.
God.
She wasn’t just choosing him. She was planning for him, for their life together. Before she could move to what looked like a five-year emotional sustainability model, he reached forward, shut the laptop with a soft but decisive click, and pulled her straight into his lap.
“Daksh-”
He kissed her before she could finish, deep and certain, like a man who had just realised he was the luckiest bastard alive. Which he was, in this lifetime and every one to follow because he was never letting her go.
“You planned all that?” he murmured against her mouth.
“Obviously,” she said, slightly breathless but still indignant. “Someone has to be the strategic thinker in this relationship.”
His mouth curved.
“Mouse,” he said softly, pulling her closer, “I was already all in. You didn’t have to prepare a board presentation.”
Vedika melted into his arms. “Maybe we’ll leave the strategy for another time,” she murmured.
Daksh rubbed the tip of his nose against hers. “I love you,” he whispered.
“I know, idiot,” she said, breathlessly. “I’ve always known. Do you know that I love you too?”
“Yeah Mouse,” he said, his voice rough with emotion. “I know. Mine,” he whispered, stealing another kiss.
“Yours,” she promised and then proceeded to show him in every way possible.