“That’s bullshit.” He lifted her hand and flipped it over. With one finger, he traced the vein in her forearm, right to her wrist, where her steady pulse reassured him. “Blood pumps through your veins, same as mine. Your family may have given you DNA, but who you are is up to you.”
Her eyes turned glassy, and a single tear squeezed out. Knowing how little she cried, the tiny tear moved him. “What if I’m not a good person? And one day you see all my messiness, all my ugliest parts, and you hate me? And then you leave, and I’m heartbroken?”
He considered that. “That’s a risk, yes. One that everyone in a relationship has to deal with.”
She sniffed. “Of course.”
“What you said before, though, about thinking I won’t love you, that’s bullshit. All that stuff about us being compatible, I was only trying to appeal to your pragmatism. I was nearly in love with you when you left, and I’m almost all the way there now.”
“You are?”
“Yeah. If it helps, I’ve already seen some messy parts of you, and all it did was allow me to understand you better. Like the puzzle pieces fit together better now than they ever did.” He took her hand in his, linking their fingers together. “And you’ve seen more of the messy parts of me. I hope they haven’t scared you off.”
“Not at all. I feel the same. Like I know you better now than I ever did before.”
He kissed her knuckles, and got under the covers with her, adjusting the sheets so they were cocooned in high thread count. “When that gun was on you, I realized that my feelings already ran deeper for you than I could have imagined. I can’t stand the thought of losing you.” The fear he’d felt then had been bone-deep. He didn’t think he’d ever known fear like that, and he hoped he never would. “That’s my main request, Mira, if we get back together. No more bolting in the middle of the night if you get scared again, or cryptic texts. You can talk to me.” He’d had to deal with two rough rejections in a row. No more, please.
“I absolutely understand. I’ll never do that again.” Her eyes were very big as she looked up at him. “Emi said that it’s better to run toward something you want than it is to run away from something you don’t.”
“Emi is an extremely smart friend and we should listen to her.”
Her smile was faint. “I didn’t think I was a romantic, but I very badly want to try with you again. And if I start to get cold feet . . .”
He tucked her feet between his thighs, and winced at her icy appendages. “You always have cold feet, but I’ll warm them up.”
They kissed for a long time, and he pulled back to whisper. “I don’t care about your past. Just your future.”
She brought his head down to hers and kissed him. “Same,” she murmured against his lips. “Okay. We’ll try. As a team.”
“As a team.”
Chapter Twenty-One
One Year Later
I thought we were a fucking team.”
Naveen ran the back of his hand over his brow. The room wasn’t too warm, but sweat had dripped down his back, making his shirt stick to his skin. “We are.”
“Then help me.”
“I am helping you!” He held up the books he was perusing from the shelf above the jail cell’s sink. “I’m searching for clues.”
Mira sighed dramatically. She reserved her poker face for poker these days. Around him, she was quite emotive. “We’re never going to get out of here. The clock is running out.”
“We got this.”
Mira blew a curl out of her eyes and rattled the bars of the cell. “You created this room, Naveen. Tell me the combination to this lock before I beat you with a wrench.”
Naveen clicked his tongue. He’d discovered that Mira was both fiercely competitive and quickly frustrated with escape rooms, which was why they didn’t do the activity very much with other people. It was hard to explain to his friends that his girlfriend’s loving threat to beat him with a wrench was an inside joke left over from the time they’d had to run for their lives in Las Vegas. “I’m only an investor. I don’t create the escape rooms.”
“Bull. You and Alan have stayed up late for the last six months working on plans for Who-Dinis. There’s no way you don’t know how to get out of here.”
That was true. When his friend Alan had come to him with the idea of taking over an existing escape room business a few months ago, Naveen had been hesitant. Until Mira had asked if he was hesitant because he didn’t want to do it, or because people might tease him for it.
Once he’d realized that it was the latter, he’d decided to go for it, pooling his savings with Alan to buy the place. Investing in this business had been his second biggest joy this past year, notwithstanding his blossoming relationship with Mira. Though he was still only a silent partner, Who-Dinis was his. He wasn’t Ravi Ambedkar’s grandson or Shweta Desai’s child here. He was himself.
Mira bent over and double checked the numbers on the loose tile on the floor. He tilted his head, admiring the way her jeans clung to her ass.
“Are you checking out my butt or finding the combination?”
He jumped and cast a guilty glance at the eye in the sky, mindful that they were being watched. “I can do both,” he muttered, and riffled through the pages of the book.
The problem was, she was so beautiful and so distracting. Even when she was frustrated, her cheeks glowed with a light those days that told him she was happy and satisfied. He took pride in knowing that he was a part of that happiness.
They’d gone on so many adventures. Up and down the coast of California, to New York, to New Orleans, to Vancouver, and Europe next year. His desire to show her all his favorite things trumped his desire to hide out. He trusted himself to venture further and keep the balance and peace he’d worked so hard to find within himself over the last few years. In the process, their partnership had grown rock solid. As solid as a diamond.
Of course, they’d had challenges, too. Mira was still dealing with PTSD and nightmares around shooting Burberry, though she was working it out in therapy, amongst other issues. His grandfather wasn’t doing very well lately. Mira had sold her tidy condo so they could purchase a home large enough for both of them near Ravi, in Artesia.
And of course, there was her family.
It had been radio silence from Sejal and Rhea, which he knew hurt Mira. Her mother, on the other hand, had not been silent, at least in the press. When she’d gotten arrested, the police had uncovered a web of crime spanning continents and decades. Media coverage had been intense.
Rushali had already sold her life story to Netflix. Mira and Naveen were running bets on which Bollywood actress would play her.
Ironically, the arrest of his former wife had made Mira’s father into something of a posthumous legend. From what he knew of the man, Naveen thought Vassar might have preferred that to living out his life as a billionaire.
All of the attention meant that he and Mira did have to deal with some extra scrutiny that neither of them really wanted. It was one of the topics they covered in their couples counseling sessions.
“Naveen.” Mira rattled the bars again. “Come on.”