TALKING
ANAMIKA
The car is parked beneath the old gulmohar trees behind the palace, the engine long switched off.
Yuvaan sent the driver home for the night the moment we left the gala, telling him he wouldn't be needed again.
Now the windows are dark mirrors around us, the city moving somewhere beyond them in distant headlights and occasional horns, but inside the car everything feels strangely still.
I'm curled against Yuvaan's side, my cheek resting against his shoulder, and for the first time in seven years, the secret doesn't feel like something lodged beneath my ribs.
It doesn't feel gone. I don't think something like this ever simply goes away. It just feels . . . shared.
My body is exhausted in a way I can't explain. Every muscle feels heavy, my eyes burn, and there is a strange emptiness where the constant vigilance used to sit. I've spent so long guarding every detail of my past that I don't know what to do with myself now that someone else knows it too.
"I filed a complaint." The words come quietly. Yuvaan's arm tightens around me, but he doesn't interrupt. "Two days after it happened."
I stare through the window at nothing in particular. "I remember sitting outside the police station for almost twenty minutes because I couldn't make myself walk through the door. I kept thinking that if I stood up and went inside, I'd have to say everything out loud. I'd have to make it real."
My fingers twist together in my lap. "But eventually I went in.
" I swallow. "I gave them my statement." I can still see the room.
The dusty fan turning overhead. The chipped edge of the desk.
The officer barely looking at me while I spoke, as though I was describing something that had happened to somebody else.
"He didn't even look up properly." My voice catches. "I remember thinking . . . is this really all this is worth? I'm sitting here trying to explain the worst thing that's ever happened to me, and he's checking something on his desk like I'm wasting his time."
Yuvaan's jaw tightens beside me. "A week later, they called." I laugh once, but there is nothing amused in it. "They told me the case was closed." His hand stills in my hair. "No investigation. No questions. Nobody came to see me again. Nothing."
I take a slow breath. "I found out later that his father was a state minister.
Someone made a phone call, and that was apparently enough.
" I look down at my hands. "That's it. One phone call, and the thing that had completely destroyed my life became a closed file.
" My throat burns. "Seven years of my life changed in one night.
And according to them, it was over in a week. " Yuvaan doesn't say anything.
He doesn't need to.
I can feel the anger in the way his fingers have curled against my arm, the effort it takes for him to keep it contained. But he doesn't turn this into his fury. He doesn't make me comfort him for what I'm telling him.
He just stays. So I keep going. "I didn't tell anyone at college." My voice gets quieter. "I couldn't." I remember those days more clearly than I want to.
The corridors.
The classrooms.
His friends laughing outside the cafeteria. Every familiar face suddenly feeling like a possible threat. "Some of my friends knew him. Not closely, maybe, but enough. And I was terrified that if I told the wrong person, he'd find out."
I rub my thumb over the edge of my wedding ring. "So I went to class." I let out a shaky breath. "I submitted assignments. I sat through lectures. I came home to that tiny room and shut the door behind me."
My eyes sting. "And then I did it again the next day." I don't know why I remember that part so vividly.
Maybe because surviving something enormous is rarely dramatic. Sometimes it's just getting out of bed. Sometimes it's washing your face. Sometimes it's forcing yourself to eat half a piece of toast because you haven't eaten since yesterday.
"I don't think I was really living then," I whisper. "I was just moving." Yuvaan's hand finds mine. His fingers slip between mine and hold on. "And then I found out I was pregnant."
The words hang between us. "I didn't know for almost two months." I close my eyes. "Part of me was in denial. Part of me just didn't want to look too closely at what my body was telling me." My voice becomes smaller. "When I finally found out, I went to a clinic."
I can still see the waiting room. The pale walls. The plastic chairs. The woman beside me filling out a form while I sat there staring at my own hands.
"I sat there for four hours."
"Four?"
I nod. "I couldn't make the appointment." I give a tiny, helpless shrug. "I don't know why. Even now, I don't have any beautiful explanation for it. I went there intending to end the pregnancy, and then I just . . . couldn't." My eyes fill. "I left."
Yuvaan squeezes my hand. "You don't have to understand why," he says quietly.
I look at him. "Maybe I should."
"No. You were scared," he continues. "You don't owe anyone a perfectly explained decision you made while you were hurting."
I look away before he can see how much that sentence affects me. "The pregnancy was difficult." I rest my head back against his shoulder. "Physically, yes. But that wasn't even the worst part."
My fingers tighten around his. "I was alone.
" The words come more slowly now. "I was sick at three in the morning with no one to call.
There were days I couldn't afford to miss work, so I'd go anyway.
I'd come home exhausted and lie down in that tiny room and stare at the ceiling.
" My voice breaks slightly. "And every day I had this baby growing inside me, and I didn't know what I was supposed to feel about it. "
I swallow.
"I was terrified I wouldn't love her." Yuvaan's thumb moves over my knuckles. "I hated myself for even thinking that." I look down. "Because she hadn't done anything." My eyes blur. "She was just a baby." A tear falls onto our joined hands. "She didn't ask for any of it."
Yuvaan lifts our hands and presses his lips against my knuckles.
I close my eyes. "The delivery was worse." I take a breath. "I . . . don’t know how I made through it." He goes very still. "There was a nurse." My mouth trembles. "She held my hand because there was nobody else."
I remember the ceiling above the hospital bed. The fluorescent lights. The pain. The strange feeling of knowing that something enormous was happening and having absolutely no one to turn toward when I was frightened.
"I remember thinking that I had never felt so alone in my life." My voice cracks. "And then they put her in my arms." For the first time tonight, my expression changes without me forcing it. "I looked at her." A small smile touches my mouth through the tears. "And she didn't look like him."
Yuvaan's eyes soften. "She looked like my mother." I laugh weakly. "She had this tiny little face and this ridiculous amount of hair, and I remember staring at her and thinking . . . oh." My voice disappears for a second. "She's mine."
I touch my chest. "Something just . . . happened here." I shake my head. "I didn't stop being scared. I didn't forget what had happened. But I loved her." A tear slips down my cheek. "I loved her so much it frightened me."
Yuvaan pulls me closer. "I remember looking at her and thinking I'd burn the whole world down before I let anyone hurt her." I let out a shaky breath. "And I've felt that way every day since."
We sit quietly for a while. His fingers move through my hair, slow and absent-minded. The city lights pass across the windshield in brief flashes, illuminating his face and then leaving it shadowed again.
For the first time, the silence doesn't feel like something I have to fill. It feels safe. "Yuvaan."
He looks down. I sit up. I need to see his face for this. "Will you always love her?" His expression changes immediately.
"Sara?" He asks.
I nod. "Even now?" I hate how frightened I sound. "Knowing everything?" He doesn't answer immediately, and those two seconds are enough for every old fear I've ever carried to crawl back up my throat. "Knowing where she came from," I whisper. "Knowing whose blood runs through her."
His hands come up to my face. "Anamika." I meet his eyes. "Sara is Sara." His voice is quiet. "So simple."He whispers, certainty audible in his voice, "There is nothing of him in the way I see her."
My eyes burn.
"I've never looked at her and thought of anyone except you. Not once." He brushes his thumb beneath my eye. "I remember the first time she met me. She tapped my leg and told me it was rude to listen to conversations that weren't mine."
A broken laugh escapes me. "That sounds like her."
"It is completely her." He smiles faintly. "She's stubborn. She's nosy. She's dramatic. She cheats at games and then insists she won fairly."
"She does not cheat."
"She absolutely cheats and got that from you too." Despite everything, I laugh. He smiles when he hears it. "She's yours," he says. "All the best parts of you, and a few terrifying ones you've apparently decided to pass down."
My smile disappears slowly. "She isn't his."
"No." His answer is immediate. "She isn't." He takes both my hands. "She is our little girl who deserves to grow up knowing she was loved from the moment she came into this world."
My throat tightens. "Promise me."
"I promise."
"Yuvaan—"
"I promise you, Daisy." His voice is firmer now.
"She will never have to earn anyone’s love, especially not mine.
" I stare at him. "She will never have to apologize for being born.
Not to me. Not to anyone." My eyes fill again.
"And if she ever asks me where she came from, I'll tell her the truth in whatever way is right for her age.
I'll never make her carry the shame of something she had absolutely no part in. "
His thumb brushes over my cheek. "She did nothing wrong." I nod, tears slipping freely now. "Nothing." He leans forward and presses his forehead against mine. "And neither did you."
I close my eyes. For a few seconds, I simply breathe.
Then a thought comes to me, one I've been afraid to ask since the moment I saw that man's face.
"Do you still want me?" His expression changes.
I almost regret asking. But I need the answer.
"Now that you know everything?" My voice drops to a whisper.
"The whole thing. The ugly parts. The parts I don't even know how to look at myself. "
He doesn't hesitate. Not even for a heartbeat.
His hands frame my face. "Daisy." I open my eyes.
"Nothing you told me tonight made me want you less.
" His thumbs brush away my tears. "Nothing.
" I search his face, looking for pity. I don't find it.
I look for hesitation. There isn't any. "I've wanted you for most of my life," he says quietly.
"You think hearing what happened to you could somehow erase that? "
I shake my head, crying silently. "You are not that night." His voice softens. "You're not what he did to you." He strokes his thumb along my cheek. "You're Anamika."
My breath catches.
"The woman who came back here after seven years and somehow built a life while carrying things nobody else could see. The woman who raised Sara. The woman who still laughs at terrible jokes and gets angry when someone underestimates her and steals the crispy edges from my plate."
A wet laugh escapes me. "You noticed that?"
"I notice everything you do." He smiles.
"Unfortunately." I shake my head, but I'm smiling now too.
Then his expression turns serious again.
"I don't love you because you survived perfectly.
" His voice is softer. "I love you because you're you.
" My eyes close. "Loving you is like breathing for me. If I don’t love you .
. . that means I am dead. I love the parts of you that are still healing.
I love the parts that are angry. I love the parts that don't know what they need yet. "
His forehead rests against mine. "And if there are parts of you that never heal completely, I'll learn how to live beside them."
My breath catches.
"You don't have to become easier to love.
" A tear slips down my cheek. "You don't have to become someone else.
" His hands remain warm against my face.
"And you never have to let me touch you just because I'm your husband.
If you don't want something, you tell me.
If you need space, you take it. If something frightens you, you stop me.
" His eyes hold mine. "I will listen." Something inside me finally gives way. “Always.” He says firmly.
Not painfully. Not like breaking. More like unclenching.
For seven years, I've been terrified that if anyone ever knew the whole story, they'd look at me differently.
That they'd see the girl who was raped before they saw the woman standing in front of them.
That they'd see Sara's father in her face before they saw Sara.
That Yuvaan, of all people, would look at me and somehow find me damaged beyond wanting.
Instead, he is sitting here with my face between his hands like I'm something precious.
And he stayed.
He knows.
And he stayed.
I close my eyes and lean into him, letting his forehead rest against mine, listening to the steady rhythm of his breathing.
For the first time in seven years, I don't feel like I am hiding from my own life. I feel seen. And somehow, impossibly, I feel safe here.