Chapter Twelve #3
hand he’d dealt her with deliberately placed fingers, each card perfectly spaced apart.
“And if I beat you?”
Her smile was broad. “Oh, man, you are funny. Okay, if you win, I’ll answer a question.”
“Very well.”
Sejal preened when she easily won the first hand. “What did your mom—”
“Are you sure you want to waste your question on my mother?” Krish leaned back in his chair. Someone had switched the television
off, and lo-fi music filled the air.
Sejal rubbed her hands together. “You better believe it. You and your family are like an onion, Krish. I’d like to peel some
layers off you, and I don’t know when we’ll have a break in our trip again to do it.”
Peeling things off was a terrible image when he was still thinking about playing this game by strip rules, but he nodded.
“Besides, this is just my first win. So. What is the deal with your mom? Was she intelligence? An assassin? I’d believe either.”
He motioned her closer, and then closer still, until she was a few inches away from him, and he could smell the soap his mom
always kept stocked. On Sejal, the scent was delicious instead of practical. “She was a florist.”
Sejal rolled her eyes. “You have to answer honestly.”
“I am.” His mother had indeed done a brief stint as a florist. Mostly to create a believable cover.
“Okay. Different question, Krish. Why did you guys move to America?”
He liked the way she said his name, the way it sounded in her low, deep voice. Maybe it was that voice, or maybe it was that
silly salad she’d bought him, or maybe it was his admiration for how handily she’d figured out his mom, but he found himself
opening his mouth and answering honestly. “My mom needed a change of scenery. Like I told you, my dad passed away when I was
young.”
“So that part of your story when we met was true.”
He dipped his head. Funny how their childhoods were oddly similar, losing a parent around the same age, both of them with siblings to take care of. “He was a detective. He was investigating a drug smuggling ring.”
Her eyes widened. “Oh no. It wasn’t . . . was it a Cobra ring?”
“That would make things between us extra messy, wouldn’t it?” he asked dryly. “But, no. Not Cobra, but still vicious. He was
off-duty. They ran our car off the road. He didn’t make it.”
He couldn’t stop himself from brushing the raised linear scar on his face, the living reminder his whole family had of his
father’s death.
Her gaze went to his cheek. “My God. Were you in the car?”
“Yes. Him and I. I don’t remember it,” he added, as he always did when someone found out about this tragic part of his past.
The main reason he hated to tell people, because he had to rush to comfort them. “I was really young.”
“You were injured, though.”
The scar was never discussed in his home. He didn’t much discuss it outside of his home, either. Oddly, he didn’t feel quite
so reticent to talk about it with Sejal. “It was a pretty deep cut, from some glass, and it didn’t heal as well as it could
have. It used to be much bigger. My mom took me to all sorts of specialists.”
“It’s not so bad.” She surprised him by brushing her cool fingers over the injury. “Does it make you self-conscious?”
“Not anymore. And I never really cared how I looked. I mostly hated the immediate curiosity people had about it.”
“Because to explain how you got it, you had to pry open a deep, dark trauma.”
He cocked his finger at her. “Bingo.”
“I get that. No wonder you have such strong older sibling vibes. You probably had to grow up faster than normal, for your little brother’s sake.” Her hand dropped away from his face. “I suppose that explains why you went into law enforcement.”
Actually, his father was the reason Krish hadn’t gone into law enforcement, despite his mother’s best efforts.
He took a sip of his Coke. He couldn’t really recall what his dad looked like anymore, only the face he’d seen in photos.
But Krish remembered what he’d smelled like, and his big arms around him. He remembered that his father had had a mustache
that tickled when he kissed him.
He’d had to hear about his father, the hero, his whole life, and, yes, he was in awe of what the man had done. But as a kid
and even as an adult, he was also mad, unreasonable as it might be. Mad that his father’s work had needlessly taken him away from his wife and kids. All sorts
of terrible things could befall a person, but Krish never wanted his career to be the reason he wasn’t around for his family.
“I respect the work he did, and the hero he was. And we did have our mom. She tried not to parentify me too much.”
Sejal was silent for a moment. “You’re lucky. My mom sucks.”
“Indeed she does,” Krish agreed, which brought a smile to her lips. Since she’d opened the door, he walked through it, curious
to know more about her, too. “Or at least, that’s what I’ve gathered. You thought she was dead for most of your life, right?”
Her lips twisted. “Yeah. I woke up one morning when I was like five, and my dad told me she was gone. Then he left me and
my sister with my aunt for days while he went on a bender.”
Krish leaned forward, hating the hollow look in her eyes. “I’m sorry. What a horrible way to be told something like that.”
“Luckily I was a very hardy kid.”
“It must have been a shock when she turned up alive a couple years ago.”
Sejal took another sip of her Coke, then put it down. “Not really. I knew she was alive before she was arrested.”
He mentally ran through the timeline of events that he’d put together from Avi’s notes. “You did?”
“Yeah. She kidnapped me.”
He paused mid-sip. She’d said the words so casually it took a second for them to sink in. “Like, kidnap kidnap?”
“Like, two men pulled up in a van, threw a bag over my head, and dragged me off to a hotel room for a few days.”
“What?”
She huffed out a humorless laugh. “Never mind.”
“How soon before her arrest—”
“Speaking of digging into deep, dark wounds, I’d rather not talk about it.”
He thought of how blank Sejal’s eyes had been when she’d thrown that knife at him in her apartment in New York. His stomach
clenched. Of course she’d been panicked. Anyone would be, but he’d also exacerbated her existing trauma.
At the time, he’d been under the assumption that she was a hardened career criminal. He had been wrong.
He leaned closer to her. He placed his hand on top of hers on the table and looked down at the top of her head. “I don’t like
this wig,” he blurted out, which was odd, because he wasn’t a blurter.
She tilted her chin up. “No?”
It was like he’d taken a step outside his own body. That was why it felt so natural to brush his hand over her cheek, pushing
the fake strands back. They did feel waxy, not like the soft silk he’d touched earlier. “I like your own hair.”
“Oh.” She breathed out a little sigh, like he’d said something profound instead of a clumsy compliment.
Her lashes were so long. As far as he could tell, she hadn’t put on makeup during her little shopping spree, so those must be her natural lashes.
He hadn’t properly noticed before how they framed her dark eyes.
Eyes that were endless dark brown pools he could sink into.
Beautiful. That was right, that’s what she’d called him. How ridiculous. She was beautiful. And warm. Her breasts rose and fell under
her wine-colored dress, and he thought about stripping that dress away and cradling them in his hands, pushing them up, and
then bending over to taste them. He bet she tasted perfect, like the first blackberries on a summer day.
“Burgers and fries, and a Caesar salad to share. Sorry to interrupt you two lovebirds.”
Krish blinked, the bartender’s words the equivalent of cold water thrown on him. Slowly, the sounds of the pub came back to
him, creating a roaring in his ears. Had he almost . . . kissed her? In public? Sejal turned to face the other woman, her
smile looking as wooden as his felt. “Thank you.”
Suzy deposited the plates on the table. “Thanks,” said Krish.
As Suzy left, he shuffled the playing cards. “One more game.” Because his curiosity was definitely piqued now.
She hesitated, which was odd for someone who had been chomping at the bit to grill him. “We should eat.”
“It won’t take long.”
She nodded. He won the game in a few minutes flat, tricks stacking up next to him. Sejal crossed her arms over her chest.
“Did you just hustle me?”
“I’m good at this game.”
She nibbled on her lip. “Damn. Okay, fine. I pay my debts. What do you want to ask me?”
Everything.
If he was an onion, she was the ocean, with greater depths than he’d accounted for.
Tell me about your childhood.
Why did your mom kidnap you?
Do you ever think you could get a normal job?
Why did you get me that salad while you went hungry?
Why do you taste so good?
Will your aunt be kind to you?
Will you understand when this is over, and I’ve used you, why I lied to you?
And why do I care so deeply now if you understand?
“Well?”
He forced a smile. He’d asked for this chance to grill her, but now that it was upon him, he didn’t really know what to ask.
So instead, he gestured to the food. “Let’s eat first. I’ll collect later.”