Chapter Fifteen
Priya's Real Motive
Priya asked to meet at the park instead of the coffee shop, and said she needed somewhere quiet, somewhere without other people close enough to overhear.
I almost said no. Some part of me still wasn't ready to sit across from her again.
But another part of me, the part that had spent six years being someone's best friend before any of this happened, wanted to hear whatever she had left to say.
She was already on the bench when I got there, wrapped in a cardigan even though the weather didn't call for one, her hands twisting together in her lap.
"Thank you for coming," she said.
"I almost didn't."
"I know. I don't blame you." She looked out at the pond in front of us, ducks gliding across still water, and took a long breath before continuing. "I need to tell you the truth. All of it. Not the version Vivian fed me. Not the version I fed you either."
"I already know about the emails, Priya."
"I know you do. But you don't know why I went along with any of it.
" She turned to face me finally, and I saw something in her eyes I hadn't let myself really look for before, something exhausted and frightened underneath all the careful composure.
"I'm in love with Nikhil. I have been for almost a year.
It wasn't ever about Damon, not for one single second. I need you to believe that."
I sat with that for a moment, watching a duck settle onto the water, feeling the shape of a truth I'd suspected but never quite let myself fully believe.
"Then why let everyone think it was Damon?"
"Because Vivian offered me a way to protect Nikhil, and I was desperate enough to take it.
" Her voice cracked slightly. "After Marcus died, I had nothing, Elena.
No income, no plan, a shop lease I couldn't afford, and grief so heavy I couldn't think straight most days.
Nikhil found me at my lowest point. He was kind to me when I needed it most, and somewhere in all that kindness, it turned into something neither of us expected. "
"And Vivian found out."
"She found out fast. She always finds out fast, you know that better than anyone by now.
And instead of exposing us, she offered a different deal.
Let the family believe it was Damon and me instead of Nikhil and me.
Keep the real affair hidden, protect Nikhil's marriage and Reema's pregnancy from the truth, and in exchange, she'd fund my shop, quietly, generously, no questions asked. "
"So you agreed to let me think my husband was cheating on me. To protect your own relationship with his brother."
"I know how it sounds." She wiped at her eyes, and for the first time, the tears looked real instead of staged.
"I told myself it wasn't hurting you the way it actually was, because I convinced myself Damon would clear it up eventually, that he'd tell you the truth before it went too far.
I didn't understand how deep Vivian's plan actually went until it was already happening, the auction, the staged moments, all of it.
By the time I understood the full scope, I felt trapped.
Like pulling out would destroy Nikhil's marriage and expose the truth I'd been protecting all along. "
"You could have told me yourself. Any point along the way."
"I know. I should have. I keep telling myself that every single day since this all fell apart, and it doesn't make it any less true, or any less unforgivable.
" She looked at me directly then, something steady finally settling into her voice.
"I'm not asking you to forgive me today.
I don't think I've earned that. I just needed you to know the real reason, not the version Vivian built for both of us to hide behind. "
I sat quietly for a long moment, watching the water, letting the whole shape of it settle into place.
Not love for Damon at all. Fear for herself, love for Nikhil, and a desperate, complicated choice made by a woman drowning in grief who'd been offered a lifeline by someone who knew exactly how to make that lifeline cost more than it was worth.
"Does Reema know? The whole truth, I mean, not just the affair itself."
"She knows now. Nikhil told her everything, the real timeline, my part in it, all of it. She hasn't decided what she wants to do about their marriage yet." Priya's voice dropped lower. "There's something else you should know, Elena. Something that changes things even more."
"What?"
"I'm pregnant."
The park went very quiet around me for a moment, the ducks and the distant sound of traffic fading into something far away.
"Nikhil's?"
She nodded, tears falling freely now. "Almost three months along.
I haven't told anyone except Nikhil and Vivian.
I don't even know what I'm going to do yet.
Reema's pregnant too, due only a few months after me.
This whole family is about to fall apart in ways none of us are prepared for, and it's mostly my fault for letting it get this far without saying anything sooner. "
I thought about Reema, sitting in her living room handing me that folder of printed emails, her own pregnancy visible beneath her cardigan, already carrying the weight of a husband's betrayal without knowing this particular piece of it yet.
"She deserves to know that too," I said quietly. "All of it, Priya. Not managed, not staged, not handed to her in careful pieces the way Vivian handed things to me. The whole truth, at once, so she can actually decide what she wants to do with real information instead of half of it."
"I know. I'm going to tell her. I just needed to tell you first, since you were the one Vivian used the most directly to protect all of this."
I looked at her, this woman who'd been my best friend since we were nine years old, who'd held my hand through every hard thing my whole life until this last year, when grief and fear had led her somewhere I didn't recognize.
"I'm not going to pretend this doesn't change things between us," I said. "It does. Trust doesn't come back just because the truth finally does."
"I know."
"But I understand it better now. Why did you do what you did? That doesn't make it right. It just makes it human, in a way I can at least start to make sense of."
She nodded, wiping her face again, and for a long moment neither of us said anything else, just sat there together on that park bench the way we had a thousand times before, except everything underneath the silence had changed completely.
"For what it's worth," she said finally, "Damon really did just try to protect his brother.
That part was true, even inside all the lies.
He wasn't perfect in how he handled it, God knows, but he wasn't the villain you thought he was for those first few months.
Neither was I, not entirely. We were all just scared people making bad choices to protect people we loved, and somewhere in the middle of all that protecting, you ended up paying the price none of us wanted to pay ourselves. "
I sat with that for a long moment, watching the ducks glide across the water, feeling the whole shape of the last several months settle into something clearer than it had ever been before.
Not a simple love triangle after all. Not a husband choosing another woman over his wife.
A tangled, desperate web of people protecting each other from consequences they were too afraid to face honestly, and me standing outside all of it, absorbing the cost of secrets that were never really mine to carry in the first place.
"I hope you tell Reema soon," I said, standing up from the bench finally. "She's carried enough weight not knowing. She deserves to carry whatever comes next with the full truth in her hands instead of half of it."
"I will. I promise."
I walked away from that park bench feeling lighter in one way and heavier in another, the anger I'd been carrying toward Priya specifically softening into something more complicated, something closer to grief for a friendship that had survived so much and still might not survive this.
But underneath all of it, something clearer than I'd felt in months.
This had never really been about Damon choosing someone else. It had been about an entire family choosing secrets over honesty, again and again, until the weight of all those secrets became too heavy for any one person to carry quietly anymore.
I wasn't the only one who'd been drowning in this family's careful management of the truth.
We all had been. Every single one of us, in our own separate, silent ways.