41. Painfully uted #2
The man she almost married was kind. I wonder what word she'd use for me now. Ronan opens his mouth, but Rithy speaks first.
“And the guy you’re here with?”
Radhika glances toward the bar. Her companion is still watching.
“He’s a close friend.”
Ronan makes a doubtful sound.
“A friend who looks like he wants to challenge Kiri to a duel,” Rafe says.
I nearly choke on my drink. Radhika’s gaze snaps toward me, then immediately away.
“He doesn’t know of Kiri.”
“That’s why he still thinks a duel is a reasonable plan,” Ronan says.
Rithy laughs. Radhika doesn’t.
“He’s been very supportive,” she says, her tone cooling enough to warn them away. “We’ve worked together several times.”
“Does he want to be more than supportive?” Rithy asks.
“Rithy.” I snap his name because I know exactly where he’s taking this, and the ending he has in mind isn’t happening. This isn’t some fairytale where ten years of damage disappear beneath twinkling lights and we fall back into each other’s arms. This isn’t Hollywood or Bollywood.
This is Hong Kong with ten years of unfinished business sitting between us.
“What? I’m catching up.”
“You’re acting worse than TMZ.”
“He’s a good man,” she interjects between us.
I nod into my glass as though she told me directly.
She deserves someone good. Someone who stays when she asks him to stay.
Someone who can hear the word future without trying to claw his way out of the room.
Someone who won’t turn her love into a weapon because he’s afraid.
Her eyes land on me again. This time, neither of us looks away immediately.
“How have you been, Kiri?” she asks.
The table goes quiet. Ronan picks up his drink. Rafe leans back. Rithy suddenly finds the bottle fascinating. But they’re listening. I rub my thumb along the condensation on my glass.
“Good.”
Radhika studies me. I lied to her hundreds of times by the end. She still recognizes one when it comes out of my mouth.
“That’s good,” she says.
Nothing in her voice suggests she believes me. I search for something else to add. Congratulations on not marrying that man sounds insane. Sorry I broke you badly enough that kindness became the top notable quality in anyone who came after me sounds worse.
“You look…” I stop.
Her expression braces for impact. I swallow.
“You look well.”
Rithy looks between us, then suddenly checks his phone with all the subtlety of a man about to fake his own death.
“Oh,” he says. “Shit.”
Ronan glances at him. “What?”
“We have to go.”
Rafe’s eyebrows pull together. “Where?”
Rithy stares at him. Rafe stares back.
Then understanding moves across his face.
“Right,” he says. “The thing.”
“What thing?” Ronan asks.
“The thing we discussed.”
“We didn’t discuss a thing.”
Rithy kicks him beneath the table.
Ronan jolts. “Jesus Christ.”
Radhika watches them with growing suspicion.
Rithy slides out of the booth. “Band business. Music never sleeps.”
Ronan gets to his feet, still rubbing his shin. “It was good seeing you, Radhi.” Rafe nods, apparently satisfied, then follows Ronan. Rithy lingers beside the table. Then, he reaches down, grips my shoulder, and squeezes hard enough to make the message clear.
Don’t fuck this up.
Then he’s gone.
The three of them move across the club with the stiff, unnatural speed of men pretending they haven’t just abandoned me. Radhika watches them disappear.
“That was painfully executed.”
“They’ve never been subtle.”
“No.” She looks back at me. “They haven’t.”
Silence settles into the booth. Radhika sits across from me with her hands folded around her glass. I stare at mine. There are a thousand things I could say. None of them feel right.
“I’m sorry.”
Her expression doesn’t change. Then she lets out a quiet breath.
“Sorry is what a child says after breaking something. You had ten years, Kiri. Ten years to decide what you were sorry for.”
She looks at me for a long moment. Then she sets down her glass.
“This was a mistake.”
She starts to stand. My hand moves before I think better of it.
I catch her wrist gently. The second my fingers close around her, everything comes back.
Hotel rooms with blackout curtains and luggage abandoned by the door.
Her bare feet beneath white sheets. Her sari gathered around her waist while she fought not to make a sound.
Blue powder across her cheeks. Pink in my hair.
Flowers falling from the balconies while she laughed in my arms.
I love you.
The memory hits so hard my grip almost loosens.
Radhika stops and her breath catches. I know she feels it too.
I see it in the way her shoulders go rigid, then soften by a degree.
In the way her eyes drop to my hand around her wrist before lifting slowly to my face.
She doesn’t pull away. I stand without meaning to.
Now we’re close enough for me to catch the jasmine in her perfume beneath the whiskey and the club.
Close enough to see the pulse moving quickly in her throat.
Radhika leans in slightly. Enough to search my face.
I don’t know whether the apology is only for her anymore. Natalia’s voice still lives somewhere inside my head, accusing me of doing the same thing all over again. Pulling someone close, promising something real, then cutting it apart before they can leave me first.
Maybe I’m apologizing to both of them. Maybe I’m finally apologizing to every person I’ve punished for getting too close. But Radhika is the one standing in front of me. So I make myself say it properly.
“I know what I’m sorry for. For not telling you I was afraid,” I continue. “For letting you think I didn’t want a future with you when the truth was I was terrified you’d see where I came from and realize you didn’t want one with me.”
Her lips part.
“My family was a fucking disaster, Radhi. The house was falling apart. My father drank everything we had and beat the shit out of whoever was close enough when he was angry. My mother kept pretending she was fine because she didn’t know how to leave.
Still doesn't. Rithy and I spent half our childhood hiding from him. Every scar you felt in the dark came from him. Every time you touched one and I pulled away, that was why.”
Her breathing changes.
“I thought if I brought you home, you’d see him and see me. You’d look at the man who made me and start wondering whether he was waiting inside me somewhere. Whether that was your future if you stayed.”
“Kiri—”
“I thought you’d run.” The words scrape on the way out. “I thought if you were going to leave eventually, I needed to make you do it before you had the chance to decide I wasn’t worth it.”
Her eyes shine, but she doesn’t blink.
“So I made you think it was you. That you wanted too much. That marriage and children and meeting my family were unreasonable. I made you feel ashamed for loving me because I was too scared to admit I didn’t know how to be loved that way. The way the Malhotra's love.”
My fingers loosen around her wrist.
“That’s what I’m sorry for. I let you believe you weren’t enough when the truth was I never believed I was.”
Her face crumples for half a second before she pulls it back under control. I release her. She’s breathing hard now, chest rising beneath the blue silk. Her eyes move over my face as though she’s trying to find the lie and can’t.
For one insane moment, she looks like she might forgive everything. Like she might close the last inch between us, as if ten years could collapse beneath one honest answer.
Was it always that simple? Could I have stood in that hotel room while she cried and said my father hurt us, and I’m afraid I’ll hurt you too? Would she have stayed? The question nearly breaks me.
Over her shoulder, the man at the bar has stopped pretending not to watch. His whole body is turned toward us now, expression dark enough that I can practically see him deciding whether to come over and reclaim his place beside her.
Radhika notices my gaze. She looks back at him, then closes her eyes briefly. When she opens them again, the distance returns. She takes one careful step back.
“Thank you,” she says.
Her voice trembles on the first word. She clears her throat.
“I should’ve said it years ago.”
“It was real.”
I nod.
“And honest.” She draws in a slow breath. “It wasn’t anything like I imagined.”
“What did you imagine?”
She looks down, then back at me.
“A speech.” Her mouth twists faintly. “Something charming. Carefully rehearsed.”
“That sounds like me.”
“It sounds like who you were.”
I don’t know what to do with that. We stand there nodding at each other like strangers trying to end a business meeting neither of us prepared for. Her companion shifts near the bar.
I can feel the time between us is closing.
“Do you still spend half your time in L.A.?” I ask.
Radhika hesitates, then nods.
“Most of it, when I’m not filming.”
“Right.”
Another silence. I rub my palm against my thigh.
“Maybe I’ll see you there after the tour wraps up.”
Her eyes search mine again. I don’t know what I’m asking for. Coffee. A conversation. Another chance to apologize without whiskey being involved and ten years staring over our shoulders. Maybe something I have no right to want. Radhika looks toward the man waiting for her, then back at me.
“Maybe,” she says.
It isn’t forgiveness or a promise.
But it isn’t no.