CHAPTER 17 #2
Bruno's head swiveled instantly toward Kabir.
The teeth appeared.
Not a growl. Just teeth. Patient. Promising.
Kabir went very still.
"Shaurya," Nimisha said mildly. "Stop causing incidents at dinner."
"I'm not causing anything. I'm just facilitating Bruno's natural instincts."
Samarth had been watching his wife through the entire exchange—the ease of her interaction with his dog, the way she navigated the hostility around the table without rising to meet it, the quiet dignity she maintained while Tanisha treated her with contempt.
She'd changed in the past week.
Or perhaps she hadn't changed at all. Perhaps he'd simply started seeing her clearly.
"Bruno goes back to his wing after dinner," Saroj said, though her voice lacked its usual authority.
"Bruno goes where Bruno wants," Samarth said without looking away from Nimisha. "He always has."
Saroj looked at her son. Then at her daughter-in-law. Then back at her son.
Something shifted in her expression.
Dinner resumed. Conversation moved carefully around the fault lines in the room—Raghbir directing topics with practiced authority, Shaurya filling silences, Kritika helping with the food.
Tanisha didn't speak again.
Bruno stayed exactly where he was.
And when Kabir reached past the bread basket in Nimisha's direction, Bruno's head lifted with quiet, absolute warning.
Kabir's hand returned to his own side of the table.
Nobody commented.
Master Bedroom - 10:52 PM
Samarth closed the bedroom door behind him and found Nimisha at the vanity, removing her earrings with practiced movements, her face reflected in the mirror.
She met his eyes in the glass.
"How are you?" he asked.
"I'm—" She caught herself. Something in his expression made her stop. "I'm tired," she said instead. "Genuinely tired. Not fine-tired. Actually tired."
"Of what?"
"Of walking into rooms where I'm not wanted. Of smiling through silences that are designed to make me feel small." She set down her earring and looked at her own reflection. "Of waiting for this house to feel like home."
He crossed to her and stood behind her, their eyes meeting in the mirror.
"What would make it feel like home?" he asked.
She was quiet for a long moment. "You."
The word was soft. Undefended.
"Not the version of you that has rules for who I'm allowed to be," she continued.
"Not the version who touches me in darkness and ignores me in daylight.
The real you." Her eyes held his steadily in the mirror.
"The one who read my book and called the hero an idiot.
The one who sends Shaurya across the estate with chocolates during meetings.
The one who held me in his office all night without needing anything from me. "
He reached out and turned her gently to face him.
"I'm trying," he said. The words were harder to say than he expected. "I don't know how to do this—any of this—without being afraid I'm doing it wrong."
"You're doing it wrong constantly," she said simply. "You keep waiting until you're certain before you let yourself feel anything. But feeling doesn't work that way."
"How does it work?"
"You just feel it. Even when you're terrified. Even when it makes no sense. Even when—" She stopped.
"Even when what?"
"Even when the person you're feeling it for has no guarantee of feeling it back." Her voice was steady. Honest. "That's the risk. You take it anyway."
He pulled her up from the stool, his hands gentle on her waist.
"I read something in your book," he said. "The part where Vihaan says he's afraid that if he lets her in, she'll see the monster underneath."
"I remember writing it."
"He was wrong." His hands moved to her face, tilting it up toward his. "She'd already seen the monster. She was there anyway. That was the point."
Her eyes softened. "Yes."
"You've seen mine. You've been watching me operate for a year." His thumb traced her cheekbone gently. "And you're still here."
"Yes."
"Why?"
She held his gaze. "You know why."
He kissed her then—slow, deliberate, without urgency. Like he had all the time in the world and intended to use it. Like she was worth taking time for.
She made a small sound against his mouth and wrapped her arms around his neck, and he felt her relax completely against him. Not the tense, guarded submission he'd been accepting for a year. Real surrender. Real trust.
He walked her backward toward the bed, his mouth never leaving hers.
When the backs of her knees hit the mattress, he laid her down carefully and stretched out beside her, propped on one arm, looking at her face.
"Hi," she said softly.
"Hi." The word felt strange and right simultaneously.
He traced her features with one finger—her brow, her nose, the curve of her lips, her jaw.
"Tell me something," he said.
"What?"
"Anything. Something I don't know about you."
Her expression shifted with surprise, then something warmer. "I was terrified of dogs until I was sixteen. A neighbor's dog bit me when I was small. I had a scar on my ankle for years."
"And now you have the most dangerous dog in Mumbai eating from your hand."
"Boo Berry isn't dangerous. He's dramatic."
"He tore a man's arm out last year."
"That was a professional context. We don't discuss it." She smiled, and it reached all the way to her eyes. "Your turn. Tell me something."
He thought about deflecting. About keeping the wall. Then he thought about her voice reading to him in his office, about what it had cost her to trust him with her words.
"I've slept better this past week than I have in years," he said. "Since we started—" He paused. "Since I stopped leaving after."
Her expression went very still, then very soft. "I didn't know that."
"I didn't tell you." He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "I'm telling you now."
She turned toward him, closing the small distance between them, her hand pressing flat against his chest over his heart.
He covered her hand with his.
They stayed like that for a moment—just breathing. Just existing in the same space without performance or pretense.
Then she kissed him, and it was different from every kiss before it.
Not desperate. Not punishing. Not two people using each other for relief from loneliness.
Just two people choosing each other in the quiet dark.
He moved over her, and she welcomed him with open arms and honest eyes, and when he entered her it was slow and deep and unhurried.
"Look at me," he murmured.
She did. Eyes open. Present. Unguarded.
They moved together with the ease of people who'd finally stopped fighting the current—who'd let themselves be carried where they were always going to end up.
When she came, her eyes stayed on his. Her hands framed his face. His name left her lips like a prayer and an answer simultaneously.
He followed her with his forehead pressed to hers, breathing her name into the space between them.
Afterward, he stayed.
He pulled her against his side and she settled there like she belonged—which, he was slowly accepting, she did.
"Samarth?" she said eventually, her voice already soft with approaching sleep.
"Hmm."
"Thank you."
"For what?"
"For trying." A pause. "Even when you're afraid of doing it wrong."
His arms tightened around her.
"I'll keep trying," he said.
It wasn't I love you.
But it was the truest thing he'd said in years.
And she was asleep before he could say more.
He lay in the dark, her breathing steady against his chest, Bruno a warm weight across their feet from where he'd apparently decided to sleep, and thought:
I love her.
He was going to have to figure out how to say it out loud.
Soon.
Before he ran out of time to deserve it.