“Rahul,” she whispered. “Come on.”
He blinked. “Come where?”
“Outside.”
Ah. This probably wasn’t a hallucination after all. If it were, she’d be crawling into bed with him, not yanking him out of it.
Reality rushed in like liquid concrete, solidifying in seconds and depressingly grey. He dragged himself up into a sitting position, and the thin sheet covering his chest fell into his lap. Then he remembered he was naked and pulled the sheet up. “Close your eyes.”
She smirked, and he could’ve sworn she was about to say something. Something about the day they didn’t talk about. Something about the fact that she’d seen it all before. But she didn’t. She just gave him one of those impossible smiles and turned with over-dramatic flare.
Rahul snatched a pair of shorts from the end of the bed and put them on, because he knew she was impatient when she got an idea in her head. “Okay. Ready.”
She faced him with a grin and took his hand. His heart stuttered.
Control.
As she pulled him through the maze-like marble hallways, he whispered, “Why are we doing this in the middle of the night?”
“For maximum adventure points,” she whispered back. Which made no fucking sense, but he enjoyed the confidence with which she wielded her nonsense.
It was summer-cool outside, refreshing and mild with a begonia-scented breeze. They ran barefoot through the grass, even though they had no reason to be barefoot and no reason to run. He had no idea where they were or which way they were headed, but he trusted her.
When they turned into the corner of the mammoth garden that she called hers, he stopped in his tracks.
She hadn’t been wrong. It was something. It was more than something.
Tiny fairy-lights were wound through every tree branch, along every stalk and by every bloom. The flowers that closed under the moonlight were transformed, and those that remained open were enhanced. In the star-dusted shadows, the garden seemed like something other than reality.
He looked at Jasmine and found her watching him with a quiet smile.
“You were right,” he said.
“I always am.” She pulled him down onto the grass, and he shouldn’t have allowed it—and he certainly shouldn’t have thought about the last time she’d pushed him to the ground—but it was Jasmine, so he did, he did, he did.
They lay side by side, and he didn’t even think about the fact that a thousand midnight bugs could be eating them both alive right now. When she pointed a finger at the deep velvet of the sky, he looked.
“Let’s make constellations,” she said.
“I don’t really know any.”
“Neither do I.” There was laughter in her voice. “That’s why we make them up. See that?” She raised a hand. He squinted, tried to figure out exactly which of the stars she was pointing at, and failed.
But still, he said, “Yeah.”
“And that one… and that one…” She pointed twice more.
He murmured agreeably.
“Take it back to the first one anddd… It’s a tea cup!”
Rahul stared. He stared some more. Then he said, “You’re full of shit.”
“Where’s your imagination?” She propped herself up on one elbow and turned to grin at him. “You try.”
So he did.
He wasn’t sure how long they wasted pointing at patterns only they could see, or how they moved closer, or when she slid into his lap. It was easier to follow her line of sight if he pushed her hair out of the way and pressed his cheek to hers, so he did. And it was easier for her to show him exactly what she meant if she held his hand and used his finger to point, so she did.
In-between stargazing they spoke about her house, about her dad, about the things they’d done that day. Rahul was leaving in a week, going to his own home. Jasmine lived on the outskirts of the county, and his family lived on the other side of the city, and this felt something like a holiday.
“You should come to mine,” he said. “I mean, our house isn’t big like yours. You’d have to share a room. I don’t know if you’d want to do that.”
She snorted. He felt the sound as much as he heard it, because her back was pressed against his chest. “You think I’m too good to share a room?”
“Not exactly what I meant.” But he couldn’t stop the humour from creeping into his voice. “You are kind of a princess, though.”
“True,” she quipped. Then her tone grew slightly more serious. “We weren’t always rich, you know.”
That was interesting—not in itself, but because Jasmine didn’t talk about the past. She didn’t even hint about it. Ever. He tried to remain relaxed, tried not to push. “Oh?”
“Mm. When I was little, my dad had already started his business, but it hadn’t taken off. So we still lived in a council house in Bulwell.”
He didn’t react at the name of one of the city’s rougher boroughs. But he did wonder about her accent. “Was it always just the two of you?”
She stilled for a moment. Everything about her seemed to hesitate. If he put a hand over her heart, would he feel it pause?
Then she shrugged. “No. I had, you know, a mother.”
Had.
“Is she…?”
“She’s not dead,” Jasmine said bluntly, her tone somewhere between amusement and impatience. “She’s in Malaga, I believe.”
“Malaga?”
“Yes. With lots and lots of Dad’s money, thanks to the magic of divorce and his soft and mushy heart.”
“I see.”
She turned to look at him, her hair brushing his face. “Do you? Do you see?”
Rahul shrugged. “I might see more, if you wanted to explain it.”
She’d been ready to argue. He could see all the signs. Sometimes, she didn’t want to tease and laugh and flirt with anything that moved; sometimes she wanted to lash out. He understood that. He didn’t mind that. He’d try to give her that, when it seemed necessary. But not right now.
She sighed, and the tension drained out of her. She relaxed back into his arms and said, “I always thought, maybe my mum shouldn’t have had me. Like, not that I shouldn’t exist! Just that she shouldn’t have had me. I don’t think she wanted to. It was probably an accident. And then every time she saw me she just felt pissed off and fed up and trapped. I know she wanted to leave, but she liked Dad’s money. In the end, he made her go anyway.”
Rahul’s throat felt tight. The matter-of-fact way in which she recited the words made him want to punch something. He tried to imagine feeling like his mother—his mother, who had always loved him and cleaned his scraped knees and read him bedtime stories—didn’t want him. He failed. It was unimaginable.
“So then what?” He asked. “Your parents divorced, and she… went to live in Malaga?”
“Not exactly. They were separated for a while. She used to come and pick me up on weekends. But then she got this boyfriend…”
He did not like the sound of this.
Jasmine swallowed. He wanted to say something comforting, but he had a feeling she’d react badly. So he caught her hand and held it tight, and buried his face in her hair, and waited.
“She got this boyfriend, and she kind of just… lost interest. In me, I mean. She wasn’t that interested to start with, but at least she pretended to be, sometimes. For a while. Then…” Her voice trailed off. She shrugged. “Nothing. She ended up telling Dad that she didn’t want to see me anymore. But he didn’t tell me that until…Well, until I was fifteen, and I asked him about it. I don’t think he wanted to tell me at all, but he has this thing about lying.”
This thing about lying—presumably, preferring to tell the truth. What an utterly Jasmine way of phrasing it.
Rahul looked down at the woman in his arms, barefoot and barely dressed, and achingly vulnerable in a way he’d never seen before. He had no idea how to tell her that she was perfect. How to tell her that just because some woman—admitte
dly, a woman who was ‘supposed’ to love her—hadn’t, it didn’t mean she had to be afraid all the time.
Because she was. He hadn’t realised until this very moment, but now things were clicking into place. She was.
“Jas,” he said softly.
She huffed. “Don’t start feeling sorry for me. Maybe my mother didn’t want me or whatever, but my dad’s a doll, right?”
He couldn’t help but laugh at that. “Succinct.”
“I know.” She looked up at him, and the sadness in her eyes was suffocating, but she was still smiling. Always, she was smiling. He liked that about her, but he didn’t like it in this minute.
“You know it’s okay sometimes, to…” He trailed off, searched for the right words, and came up with something woefully inaccurate. “It’s okay not to be okay.”
For a moment, he thought they might maintain this openness, this raw, electric connection. It felt slightly dangerous, but it also felt necessary. He wanted her to feel things and he wanted her to tell him all about it.
But in the end, she didn’t, and he wasn’t surprised. She rolled her eyes and deadpanned, “Deep, man.”
Well. He knew not to push. She didn’t respond well to pushing. So he laughed and pinched her arm and said, “Shut up.”
She laughed too, and he could almost believe in it.
6
Now
“You,” Jasmine declared, “will die of boredom—or accelerated old age.”
Rahul didn’t look up from his tub of protein powder. Infuriating man. He tossed a scoop of pink whey into his plastic shaker and murmured, “You have a crystal ball over there?”
She raised her almost-empty bowl of cereal. “Does this count?”
“How would that count?” He finally looked up. He was standing at the kitchen counter and she was lounging on the sofa. She could practically feel his exasperation.
“I’m reading the dregs of milk,” she said, “like tea leaves.”
He sighed and shook his head.
It was barely ten o’clock on a Saturday morning, and judging by the sweat gilding his biceps, he’d already been to the gym. All he fucking did was work and work out. Honestly, he was lucky to be friends with her. She appeared to be his only entertainment.
Well, except for his other friend, her secret rival. Mitch. But Mitch was a different sort of friend, she told herself. Totally didn’t count. She was definitely the supreme.
Jasmine, childish? Never.
“You’re always doing something,” she said. Then, clarifying: “Something useful. The gym, the office, whatever.”
“You know why I go to the gym,” he said. Avoiding the question.
Wait—she hadn’t actually asked a question. She wasn’t sure how to phrase it. She wasn’t sure what she was getting at.
“And I like work,” he added, as if that was that.
She mumbled a vague reply and decided to return to the issue at a later date. Recently, she’d found herself accidentally stumbling into emotional conversations with her friends. Something about Rahul’s stiffness told her this might turn out to be one of those conversations.
If her instincts were correct, she needed tea first.
He poured water into his little plastic shaker, then came into the living room as he screwed on the lid. He was wearing basketball shorts and one of those T-shirts with ripped off sleeves. He should’ve looked vaguely ridiculous, especially since he was also wearing his silver-framed glasses and had scraped his lovely hair back with that awful pomade.
But he was a painfully handsome man, the kind of handsome that pulled anything off. Thick, black brows that always slashed into a frown, a strong nose, a square jaw permanently shadowed by stubble—no matter how often he shaved. Plus, he was kind of ripped. Her gaze hovered over his broad shoulders, focused on the beads of sweat decorating his brown skin.
“By the way,” he said, “don’t forget about your surprise.”
Jasmine blinked. Had she missed something? It was entirely possible that she had. Her brain felt slightly fuzzy. Too much gin last night. She frowned up at him. “Surprise?”
“Yeah.” He shook his watery, pink concoction. “I won last night, remember?”
No, Jasmine didn’t remember. She didn’t remember anything beyond going home after a rather boring argument with Paul—or possibly Peter. Something beginning with a P. Her brain hadn’t seen fit to show her anything after that, and she hadn’t bothered to go looking. Now she cast her mind back, and found…
Oh. Oh dear.
Jasmine’s mouth felt oddly dry.
Rahul grinned. “Yeah, you remember.” He took a sip of his protein shake.
She found herself staring at his biceps. Specifically, at the way the muscle shifted under his gleaming, brown skin as he raised the protein shake to his lips. And then, like a hummingbird, her focus flitted from his biceps to those lips. To the way they pursed around the plastic. They looked… soft.
Thinking about Rahul’s lips was definitely preferable to thinking about how pathetic she’d been last night, right?
Actually, she wasn’t sure. It was a very close call.
“You still up for it?” He said.
Up for it? She was still trying to process the fact that she’d practically begged him for attention last night. Like a child. Holy shit. Was it possible for embarrassment to cause vomiting? Because her cereal was sitting in her stomach like ashes right now. Not even good, crisp ashes, like the ones burnt paper made. More like the thick, white fluff in a chainsmoker’s ashtray.
Her mother’s ashtray used to look like that.
Yeah, she was definitely going to be sick.
“Jas. You okay?”
When she surged to her feet, Rahul reached for her. She jerked away.
That didn’t appear to perturb him.
“Hey,” he said, his voice firmer now. He came to stand in front of her, put his hands on her shoulders, and said, “Look at me.”
She dragged her gaze from the floor up to his eyes, the living room light gleaming off the corner of his glasses.
“What the fuck?” He said, but while the words were harsh, his voice was achingly gentle. “What was that? You just went all… pale.”
She managed to choke out a laugh. “Pale? Are you sure?”
“It’s a relative term.” He smiled slightly, and she could see relief on his face. “Seriously, Jas, are you okay?”
What was the appropriate answer? I just had heart palpitations through sheer embarrassment, and my skin feels too tight for my body, but I’m better than I was thirty seconds ago?
No, that wouldn’t do.
She forced herself to shrug. “I’m fine. Hung over.”
He looked skeptical, but he didn’t push. Somehow, Rahul knew when he shouldn’t push.
“Are you… busy today?” He asked carefully. Giving her an out.
But she set her shoulders and shook her head. “No. Of course not. Let the surprises commence.”
“Don’t get overexcited,” he murmured dryly. “It’s a surprise, singular.”
“Oh, dear,” she said. “I’m disappointed already.”
He snorted and tweaked her nose. She flicked his ear. He pinched her cheek. And she turned her head and bit the heel of his hand, and then wondered what the fuck she was doing, and almost passed out in relief when he just laughed and pulled away.
She was going to have to watch herself. After all, Rahul was the only person who’d ever crossed over her carefully curated social categories. He’d gone from I’d fuck you to Let’s be friends, completely bypassing I hate your guts, you can choke.
Those were all the categories she had. He’d exhausted her options. But sometimes she thought that, if he asked, she’d build a whole new one, just for him.
Rahul bit back a smile as she breathed, “You can’t be serious!”
She didn’t say it as if she were pissed, or outraged, or even amused. No; she was happy. Really happy.
For all her ai
rs and graces, Jas was pretty easy. All he had to do was take her to IKEA.
He parked up and gave her a smile. “Surprise.”
“You’re the worst.” Still grinning. “I hate you.”
“Mmhm. I thought you’d want to do that thing you do with your room.”
She arched her brows, amusement dancing in her eyes. “That thing I do?”
“Yeah. Cover it in girly shit. Let’s go.” He grabbed his keys and got out before she could whack him.
Truthfully, Rahul was not an IKEA fan. In fact, he considered it the fourth circle of hell.
When he’d found out about Jasmine’s weird love of the place, he’d been more than a little confused. But, for some reason, she liked wandering through the enormous building, looking at all the fake rooms. And she liked buying useless, pretty knick-knacks and covering her space in them.
The room he’d given her wasn’t very Jasmine. She was only there temporarily, but something in him rebelled at the idea of Jas laying down to sleep in a room that was all dull and boring and him, instead of bright and vibrant and her.
He wasn’t doing too much, he told himself. He was just trying to cheer her up. He was making up for his behaviour this week.
And not just because the fact that he’d upset her cut through his gut like a knife.
Anyway, she’d need new crap for her room at Tilly’s. Apparently, they’d given her a solid four week return date. All was on track.
Rahul ignored the way that information squeezed at his heart.
“Look at this!” Jas appeared at his elbow with a gold table clock in her hand. She had a thing for clocks.
He nodded with what he hoped was enthusiasm. “That’s nice.”
“Right? Don’t you think it goes with the dome?”
He looked dubiously at the little glass dome she’d already put in her basket. He had no idea what it could possibly be for, or how it went with the clock in any way. He looked back at her face, alive with excitement, and said, “Yeah. For sure.”
Wanna Bet?: An Interracial Romance Page 6
