CHAPTER 21
Elysium - Upper Floor, Private Balcony - Three Weeks Later
The city spread below them like a scattered constellation—Mumbai's relentless, gorgeous, indifferent sprawl of light and darkness, traffic and shadow, ambition and despair all pressed together in the particular way of cities that never sleep.
Nimisha stood at the railing with her hands curled around the cool metal, looking out.
She'd been surprised when Samarth had appeared in her study that evening and said, simply, come with me. No explanation. No context. Just the quiet authority of a man who'd learned, over the past weeks, to ask differently.
She'd come.
The balcony was private—accessible only through his personal office on the upper floor, invisible from below, above the reach of anyone who hadn't been specifically invited. The railing was thick glass and black steel, the furniture minimal and expensive, the view unobstructed.
He stood beside her, not touching, looking out at the same city.
"I wanted to show you my world," he said.
She looked around—at the club below them, at the city beyond, at the quiet evidence of everything he'd built.
"It's impressive," she said.
"It's lonely."
She turned to look at him.
He was still looking at the city, his jaw set, his hands in his pockets. The profile of a man saying something that cost him.
"I built all of it," he said. "The club. The empire. The reputation." A pause. "The walls."
"I know."
"Power, money, respect." He said the words like they'd lost their meaning. "Everything my father built and everything I added. Everything this city fears me for."
"And?" she said softly.
He turned to look at her then. "It meant nothing. All of it." His eyes were very direct, very dark, very certain. "Until you."
The Mumbai night went quiet around them.
Her breath caught in her throat.
"Samarth—"
"Let me finish." He turned fully toward her, and she saw it then—the thing beneath the composure, the thing he'd been carrying for months, finally finding its way to the surface.
"I've been trying to say this properly. I've been practicing, which is—" He laughed, short and self-deprecating.
"I've never practiced anything in my life. I don't practice. I act."
"So act," she said.
He took her hands.
Both of them, in both of his, the way he'd done the night of the gala and a dozen times since—like holding her hands was something he'd been deprived of and intended to make up for.
"I was cruel to you," he said. "From the beginning."
"You were honest—"
"I was a coward." The words were firm. Not self-flagellating.
Just true, and he knew the difference. "Honesty was the excuse I used for cowardice.
I told myself I was being fair—giving you clear expectations, not leading you on.
But what I was actually doing was protecting myself.
Keeping you at a distance so that if you ever decided to leave, if you ever looked at me and saw the monster clearly and walked away—it wouldn't destroy me. "
Her eyes were filling.
She blinked, trying to hold it back.
"I told myself this marriage was duty," he continued.
"That you were just there. A political necessity.
Someone to manage, to keep at arm's length, to—" He stopped.
Pressed his lips together. "But you weren't just there.
You were everywhere. In my office when I was trying to work.
In my head when I was trying not to think.
In every room you walked into, and then in every room after you left.
" He squeezed her hands. "You became everything.
Without asking permission. Without trying.
You just—became everything, and one day I woke up and realized I didn't know how to exist without you in it. "
A tear escaped. She let it.
"I don't understand," she whispered. "How. When I was so—I tried to be invisible. I tried not to want anything from you. I tried to be fine."
"I know." Something pained moved across his face. "I know you did. And that was the most devastating thing of all—watching you try so hard to take up less space when what I wanted, what I needed, was for you to fill the whole room."
She made a sound she couldn't quite suppress.
"I love you," he said.
Silence.
She stared at him.
The city lights reflected in his eyes, and he looked at her with the absolute steadiness of a man who had stopped running.
"What?" she said. The word barely had a voice.
"I love you, Nimisha." He stepped closer, and she felt the warmth of him even through the cool evening air. "I'm in love with you. Completely. Entirely. In the way that means I can't remember what I was before it."
"You—" She shook her head. "You can't."
"Why not?"
"Because you were so certain. You said—you told me from the beginning—"
"I know what I said." His voice was gentle. "I was wrong. It took me a year to admit it and I'm sorry it took that long, but I'm telling you now. I love you."
"When?" she asked, needing to understand it. "When did it—"
"I don't know." He lifted one of her hands and pressed his lips to her knuckles.
"Somewhere between your quiet strength and your loud absence.
Between your words on a page and the way you talk to my dog like he's a colleague you find exasperating.
" He moved to the next knuckle. "Between the night I found you in the kitchen with chocolate on your lips and the night I left you alone on our anniversary and drove back to my office and sat in the dark for three hours hating myself.
" Another press of lips. "You consumed me without trying.
That's the honest answer. I don't have a specific moment because it wasn't a moment. It was everything. All of it. You."
She was crying properly now—not the contained, disciplined tears she'd perfected over the past year, but real ones, the kind that came from a place too deep for composure to reach.
"I've loved you for months," she said. "Silently. So quietly I thought it wasn't going to survive. I kept waiting for you to give me a reason to stop."
"I know." His voice was rough. "I gave you many."
"You did."
"You didn't stop."
"I tried." She laughed, wet and broken and honest. "I really did try."
"I know." He stepped close enough that she had to tilt her head to look at him. "Then why didn't you tell me? When you knew—when you suspected how I felt—"
"Because I was terrified," she said. "Of being wrong. Of hoping and then losing it. Of—" She stopped. "Of being too much for a man who'd told me from the beginning that he didn't want this."
"You weren't too much." His hands framed her face, his thumbs gentle on her wet cheeks. "You were never too much. You were exactly enough. I was too small for it. I'm trying to grow into it."
"Samarth—"
"I'm not terrified anymore," he said. "I was.
For months I was completely terrified of what you made me feel, and I kept choosing the fear over the feeling.
I'm done choosing that." His forehead dropped to hers.
"You're my wife. You're my home. You are—you are the only thing in my entire life that I would not survive losing. "
She closed her eyes.
Felt his breath against her face. The city noise far below. The cool air around them and the warmth of his hands.
"I love you," she said. "I love you. I have been loving you through everything, the good and the terrible, and I would do it again. I would do all of it again if this is where it ended up."
He kissed her.
Deep and claiming and different from every kiss that had come before—because those had been need and possession and hunger, and this was all of those things and also something else. Something that had a future built into it. Something that knew it wasn't going anywhere.
She kissed him back with everything she had.
When they pulled apart, they were both breathing unevenly, her hands fisted in his lapels, his arms fully around her.
"I want to show you something," he murmured, and before she could ask, he'd lifted her and set her on the thick railing, his body between her and the drop, his arms bracketing her completely.
"Someone could see—" She glanced down at the city.
"Let them." His mouth found her jaw, her throat, the place below her ear that made her shiver. "Let them see I love you. Let all of Mumbai see."
"You're insane."
"About you? Completely." His hands slid up her thighs, pushing the fabric of her dress up. "I've been insane about you for months. I'm done being quiet about it."
Private Balcony - Later
The city was spread below them, indifferent and vast and beautiful, and she was in his arms with her face against his neck and she could feel his heartbeat.
He held her like she was the most important thing he'd ever held.
"I'm sorry I made you wait," he murmured against her hair.
"You're worth waiting for." She pressed her lips to his throat. "Every terrible, stubborn, infuriating part of you."
His arms tightened. "I'll spend my life making it up to you."
"I'll hold you to that."
He pulled back enough to look at her face—to see what she looked like now, after all of it, after the confession and the tears and the love that had finally found its words.
She looked like the answer to a question he'd been asking without knowing it.
"What are you thinking?" she asked.
"That I should have done this a year ago." He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "That I wasted a year being afraid."
"We needed the year," she said, and she meant it. "We needed to learn each other. Even badly. Even painfully." She met his eyes. "I wouldn't know how much this means if I hadn't spent a year waiting for it."
He kissed her again, slower now, like he had all the time in the world.
He did, he was realizing.
He had the rest of their lives.