Aloha, page 4
I couldn’t wait to try it when she had far less clothes on, and I could do something about it.
“Behave!” Mili sighed and batted my face away. “Is there a way to block you in real life like I can on the text app?”
I was affronted. “Why would you want to block me anywhere?”
“Because you’re too much sometimes,” Mili grumbled. But she twined our fingers together again and continued softly, “This last week…I realized I was being unfair to mom. Holding her responsible for a decision she thought was best at the time. Holding her responsible for Appa dying so suddenly.” Her husky voice cracked; her golden eyes shone with tears.
She took a deep breath, squeezing my hand tight.
I held on and held my tongue. I knew enough about Mili to know when she needed to collect herself.
“I want to make up with her, Nihaal. And with Krivi and Ziya. My family.” She mentioned the seriously scary dude with the blackest eyes she was related to and his svelte and sweet wife. “I want…” Mili hesitated. “I want you to love them like I do.” Hope was bright and beautiful in her night-black eyes, giving it the same luminescence as the tears.
But I couldn’t believe what she was asking of me.
“I cannot possibly love your government-sanctioned murderer cousin, Mili.” I stared at her incredulously.
“Allegedly,” she whispered fiercely. “He’s a hotel owner now.”
“And I’m a GoKart champion,” I shot back. “Krivi threatened me with dismemberment if I ever hurt you, right before the wedding. Did he tell you that?” I stopped short of shuddering at the memory of the man telling me casually what he’d do to me if I broke Mili’s trust.
And I had, for a little bit. Before I fixed it. And she loved me forever.
It was a different thing that maybe Krivi Karthik Iyer, alleged MI5 spy, would not see it like that.
Mili shrugged casually. “He’s insanely protective of me. I am an only child, you see. So Krivi took over big brother duties.” She looked like she wanted to laugh.
“Now I feel like blocking you IRL,” I grumbled.
“No, you don’t. You love me far too much. You even took a bullet for me.” She was smug in her declaration.
I shook my head. “I should never have done that.”
“Really?”
I kissed the tips of her fingers. “It’s given you ideas that you can make me do impossible things. Things I don’t want to do.”
She opened her mouth, as if to say something. Guilt and chagrin flitted across her normally cool face.
I caught the expression because I spent most of my time learning the ways of my Firecracker. It was endlessly entertaining and made the time spent in rehab instead of prepping for next year’s F1 season bearable.
“What?” I asked slowly. “What did you do?”
Mili slid her gaze away. “Why would you say that?”
“Because I do know you. What did you do, Mili?” I spaced the words out evenly.
She muttered something under her breath and said, “I engineered it so your sister could have some time alone to sort out her situation with her…Ben and…” Mili bit her lip. “I think, Nashit.”
I looked at her, disbelieving. “What are you talking about?”
My younger sister, okay, she was a competent surgeon in Edinburgh and young was just a number, would not have complications in her love life. She was far too level-headed for that. Especially considering the shitshow her life was about to become because of our dearly departed father.
And especially not with Nashit, who was like a son to my father and Pehel’s fiercest champion since we were kids.
“I knew you’d go all protective big brother on her, if you knew about Ben and Nashit,” Mili said quickly. “And she is in a terrible situation with Krishna Uncle’s will conditions and I just…wanted to give her some space to figure things out. For herself.”
“Is she into Ben and Nashit?” I gritted out. “Is my younger sister interested in two men?” My gut burned at the idea of her being interested in even one man. At the very idea of any man putting a hand on her, even a filthy rich and smart bastard like Ben Everton but…
“She has been ordered to marry a man and save a billion-dollar inheritance, Nihaal. Do not judge her for what she’s thinking or feeling, okay?” Mili said quietly, with dignity.
I huffed out an injured breath. “I wasn’t…
“Look, we began the same way, didn’t we?” she said placatingly. “I..”
“We were different,” I growled. “I wanted you from the second I saw you. And you…”
“Really?” Her eyes brightened with soft pleasure at my gruff admission. Then she straightened and continued, “It can’t be different for us and for her, Nihaal. That’s not fair. Plus, Pehel’s a functional adult. Way more than you or I have been the last year, and don’t you deny it.”
I couldn’t, even if it bugged the fuck out of me. “Still…”
“She gets to choose whoever or whatever she wants,” Mili emphasized. With the steely look I was intimately familiar with.
It was the look that began our…relationship. Was the bane of my existence till I decided to say fuck it, and just loved her with all my heart.
“You could have told me, you know. You didn’t have to keep it a secret from me,” I said slowly.
A pinprick of hurt entered the bubble of adrenalin, sheer happiness, and lusty love I was enclosed in. Not enough to fully burst it but the shield sure was penetrated.
“I was going to. As soon as we landed,” Mili murmured.
Just then, the pilot announced, “Ladies and gentlemen, this is your pilot speaking. We’re beginning our descent into Chandigarh now. The temperature’s a balmy twenty-five degrees and we are very much on time today. We hope you have a pleasant stay…”
He droned on about flight instructions.
I gave a stricken Mili a muted look. “You should have told me before we left. We can talk about it after we land. In private.”
Chapter 2
Mili
Being in love was a pain in the ass.
No one ever told me that. Not one of the books I read on the sly (about three times a year) told me what came after ‘happy ever after’. How difficult it was to consider another person’s feelings and navigate day to day life with a man, especially a man like Nihaal Keziah Bhatnagar. My husband, who I was insanely in love with but who still surprised me with his reactions to things.
Like, the way his eyes heated up and gleamed when he talked dirty to me, without knowing what it was he was telling me. I was instantly slick in my core at his clipped British accent asking me to shut the fuck up and take…
Or the offended and hurt look he’d given me before the pilot’s announcement severed our conversation.
I knew Nihaal cared about Pehel. That, in his own rebellious son way, he’d exiled himself so he could show his sibling they were more than Bhatnagars – heirs to a vast, horse-racing legacy and fortune. Of course, he’d also been criminally selfish when he’d left her at his father’s mercy, but I knew what had driven him then, and what drove him now.
Ambition.
The need to be the best, the only in a world full of mediocrity. A champion.
Only the criminally selfish could achieve this kind of brightness. And while I admired him for what he’d done, I could also understand why Pehel blamed him and didn’t want him around as she chose a man to marry over the next few days. If Nihaal hadn’t left, Krishna Bhatnagar would not have created the iron-clad monstrosity of a will that drew me into Nihaal’s orbit and changed the course of my whole life.
It was a pain, being in love and having to explain all of this to him. When I knew I was right.
But, because I loved him, I didn’t want to hurt him, even unintentionally. And I had promised him I’d not try to fix things alone anymore.
And yet…
“I’m sorry, Nihaal,” I said mournfully, quietly, as we disembarked. “I should have told you this before we left Alipur. I’m sorry,” I repeated.
He held on to the bag he carried on his good side, his other shoulder was still healing, and waited for the doors to be opened.
We were the first to get off, considering Nihaal was a celebrity even if he wasn’t recognized today. Because he had on gray sweatpants, a slouchy hoodie, had grown a beard with sunglasses that covered his face, and his arm was in a sling.
The outside world did not know the real reason why Nihaal did not race at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, almost two weeks ago. Ending his career-best season without a Driver’s Championship. And we’d made sure he kept out of the public eye as we both recuperated.
“Thank you for flying with us, sir, ma’am.” The flight attendant smiled graciously. “Have a pleasant stay.”
When we were almost out the door, the flight attendant gasped. Fuck. She’d recognized him.
“We will. Thanks.” Nihaal grinned at her, his full-wattage, champion-out-of- bed-and-in-it smile.
A flash of unwanted jealousy writhed in my chest, green and poisonous. This woman needed to be put in her place.
I smiled sweetly at her and grabbed his hand with more force than necessary. “Yes, we will.”
I made sure to flash my engagement and wedding rings as I waved at her like a princess would and practically dragged Nihaal out. My arm throbbed from the flesh wound I’d sustained when a deranged man had tried to fucking--
I practically thundered down the flight stairs.
“Hey. Hey. Slow down, Firecracker,” Nihaal muttered, trying to keep up with me, even though we were evenly matched in height and gait. “You’ll open the stitches on your arm. Mili!”
I gave him a forbidding look. “Were you flirting with her as payback for me not telling you about Pehel?”
“Was I flirt…”
Nihaal took a deep breath and gave me an inscrutable look. Then, he strode ahead of me to the waiting Range Rover parked on the tarmac itself. One of the perks of being a world-famous athlete was the tarmac to road service. We figured the pint-sized Chandigarh International Airport would not be able to handle the frenzy of a mob hounding Nihaal if they knew he was here.
We usually chartered a flight or opted for odd times – when the flights would be almost empty – to travel. But in my haste of hustling Nihaal away from his sister, I had booked us on a full flight. In daylight.
My fixing abilities needed a tune up, clearly.
A special attendant was already loading our bags into the car as we swiftly made our way to it.
I took a moment to covertly admire Nihaal’s lithe butt in the gray sweatpants. Familiar heat filled me when I saw his long strides eating up the tarmac, confident and just the right kind of arrogant.
Eighty-one days ago, I saw this man’s naked ass in a shower while he whistled tunelessly and began my descent into the most delicious madness. Love.
Nihaal held the door open for me. My courteous husband, with the Grim Reaper cast to his handsome face. I climbed in and took the bag from him.
He helped to buckle me into the seat belt because my arm was slightly non-functional, and I did the same for him.
He still didn’t say a word.
“Nihaal…” I began hesitantly, dread forming in the pit of my stomach.
Were we having a fight or was it something more? It was so hard to tell, sometimes. Before, our issues were black and white – he was black, and I was white – so I could righteously fight with him knowing I was right. I could win.
Now, I loved him, I didn’t want to win with him, and everything was so gray and murky…
“I smiled at the woman and said thanks, Mils,” he said calmly. “I wasn’t flirting with her. As payback or otherwise.”
I flinched internally with every word he spoke.
He looked out the window, clearly rejecting me as the driver gunned the car out of the tarmac through a private route.
And, for once, I didn’t say anything either. I was in the wrong. I had no righteous defense here.
As I looked at Nihaal’s marble-hard profile – the straight line of his nose running to the fluffy beard covering his dimpled chin and sculpted jaw - I wondered how to fix this.
There was the word again. Fix. I was genetically incapable of not solving a problem. Whether it was through words or actions. And I knew this was a huge sore point for Nihaal because it fell to him to worry about me when I did something I figured I could handle but that was, sometimes, a bit too dangerous.
To his credit, my husband was actually doing much better in the communication department than me – the fixer whose job it was to talk people into doing whatever it was I wanted.
I did something then that felt unfamiliar to me.
I texted my first, maybe my only, girlfriend Anya Fallahil. The wife of my first and only boss, Caleb Drake Fallahil, the apex predator of the venture capital world.
I checked the time. It was four-thirty pm in India. So, it was about nine pm in Singapore where Drake and Anya were staying for the time being, since Anya was extremely pregnant and preferred to be near her mother, Swati, maker of delicious butter naans and chicken Chettinaad stew.
You there?
Her reply was instantaneous. For you. Always. Or at least till I have to go pee. Again. For the hundredth time today.
I smiled a little. Anya was a few years younger than me, but she was an old soul. It wasn’t justification for the way Drake basically blackmailed her into marrying him for reasons that still escaped my rational brain, but she reminded me of my sister-in-law, Pehel. They were both calm, seemingly happy people. But with storms swirling underneath.
Certainly, Anya had to be a little bit insane to fall in love with Drake. And breed.
Before I lost my nerve, I asked the question.
How do you make it up to Drake when you screw up?
She replied cheekily with a series of emojis - the peach, eggplant, and rain drops ones. AKA code for sex.
I snuck a glance at Nihaal. He was now occupied with his phone. Jumping his bones and fucking his brains out without communicating seemed a bit excessive. And set a bad precedent. For the health of our relationship.
And what if you have to talk about things?
Her answer was impossible to execute and completely simple.
Then you talk.
Three dots appeared under the text chain.
And she sent a video of Drake in his silk monogrammed pajamas now that he was on paternity leave for the baby’s birth, sitting hunched on his laptop, glasses on his nose, completely lost to the world. He was stunningly, clinically handsome. In the way the David was – a living, breathing statue come to life.
“Drake, honey?” Anya called out from behind the camera.
I lowered the volume on my phone, mindful of Nihaal.
Drake grunted. But didn’t look up from the screen.
“Husband mine, can you answer me, please?” she asked sweetly.
Drake looked up, eyes blinking like an owl. He looked at the camera. “Anya. Who’s that?”
“Say hi to Mili. She misses you.”
Drake smiled, immediately and affectionately, like the big brother he was to only two women in the whole world. “Hi, Mili. I miss you too.”
The video ended.
Anya sent another text after that.
You talk until he listens.
I was afraid this would be the answer. And it required something from me, complete and total vulnerability with Nihaal.
Something I’d avoided till now.
“I wanted you,” I said almost soundlessly.
I spoke looking out the window, watching the tarmacked national highway give way to the planned roads of Chandigarh city. After which we’d be on our way to the Himalayas and the mountain town of Manali, where Ziya was currently overseeing the creation of yet another homestay in the Goonj Homestay chain.
“I wanted you so badly I was willing to marry you for it,” I confessed. “When I swore to myself, I’d never marry anyone. I’d never even fall in love.”
Nihaal stilled but didn’t look up from his phone.
I knew I had his attention. A thick ball rose up in my throat and lodged there. But I swallowed past the shame and the secret desire to stay alone so I didn’t have to do this – be this naked with anyone – and told him everything.
“I thought I was doing it to satisfy the conditions of your father’s will, Nihaal. That I was solving your problem for you. And I was. But that wasn’t why I did it. Not in here.” I fisted a hand to my chest. Where my heart beat uncommonly fast.
I finally looked at him.
He was grave faced, thin-lipped. But he was looking at me. Progress.
“I…It’s difficult for me to not make life easy for you. For your family. I am not built like that.”
“I wasn’t asking you to stop, Mils,” Nihaal offered coolly. “I’d never ask you to change who you are.”
My heart twisted at his words. “I know but…” I whispered my secret out loud. “I’m changed by you, Nihaal. You don’t know how much I’m changed by you. I’m…” I searched for the right words to make him understand how important he was to me.
“Altered. Forever. By you,” I said softly. “But it doesn’t mean I’m not still me.”
Our marriage, our relationship was fast becoming the lodestone of my existence. It wasn’t the only important thing, of course. I was still highly ambitious too but…I wanted to see what we’d build together more than anything.
Nihaal removed his glasses.
I sucked a breath in at the force of feeling in his golden ichor eyes. I was blasted by the heat in them, the sheer depth of what shone from him.
“You blew into my life like inverted G-forces, Mili. I stood no chance against you. Not one. And I wasn’t…” Now he searched for the right words so we could communicate and not sulk separately. “Trying to make you feel bad, much.” He smiled wryly. “For trying to help Pehel.”
