by Sonali Dev
“I hope you know how to, because I kinda suck at it,” he said.
She hadn’t skated since she was seven when they still lived in Kathmandu. But some things you never forgot. He didn’t suck. He was just a little shaky on his feet at first. Nothing she couldn’t fix. She took his hand and together they found their rhythm, within themselves first, then together, and then with the mass of the more deft skaters that traced the inner circle of the rink, moving as one to the music pumping out of the speakers.
Time spun away from them, lost meaning. Their bodies danced. Gripping and releasing as they moved in each other’s arms. Their fingers locked together one moment, his hands circling her waist the next. Her cheeks flamed. Their hearts danced. Dimples slashed down his cheeks and stayed there as they traced the rink in orbit after orbit after orbit.
A few teenagers with chains and links hanging from their clothes, and tattoos and piercings gleaming in the sunlight, started to spin at the center of the swirling orbits. Taking turns, then spinning as one to see who lasted the longest. The entire group started spinning together, going like tops until one by one they dropped out and only one remained. A contest. The rest of the skaters slowed down around them, watching, cheering. In the span of a breath, the mass of strangers turned into a community.
She didn’t know how it happened, but she let Nikhil’s hand go and found herself spinning. They opened up their circle and took her in. It took a few tries. Balancing on the blade was different from balancing on her toes, but soon she was spinning and spinning, her world thrown wide-open, her axis the center of the universe. Nothing but her and energy and movement. She let it all go. She threw it into the air, letting herself burst into particles, into a tornado.
Her only indication that there was a world around her was the cresting and ebbing applause as one by one the other spinners fell away, and still she spun. She didn’t care. She could have gone on forever. The clapping and cheering got deafening, whipping around her with the wind. It felt like the passing of ages, it felt like a held breath, it felt like breaking and forming in an infinitely swirling loop, until finally she found Nikhil’s eyes, stars trapped in the deepest chocolate, and she let him take her in his arms as hands thumped her shoulders and hoots followed them off the rink.
She wasn’t laughing, but she felt like she had laughed until she could laugh no more.
“That was insane,” he said, the stars in his eyes so bright they lit up her insides.
She wanted to tell him it had been the opposite of that. It was all that was sane about her. All that was real.
Just like his hand in hers. Just like his eyes.
His grip on her hand was tight as they walked back to the building, as they rode up the elevator. Not the desperate, clinging tightness from before, but a possessive, comforting lightness that spoke a resolve, a choice made. Their hand holding had turned into a language, and it spoke more than any words between them ever had.
Even as they ate at the glossy-as-glass concrete countertop in that lifeless kitchen with no dirty pots or uncooked food, his fingers sought hers out. You’re still here, right? they asked. I’m here, they reassured as they ate in silence.
When their sandwiches were gone, he moved closer. “Your eyes are looking better, not so swollen anymore,” he said, running the pad of his thumb over the skin that no longer felt quite as sore beneath her eyes.
All she could do was blink. But even that involuntary action was a risk, a possibility of breaking the connection those fingers, those eyes, had spoken, of collapsing this pathway she had opened up in that moment of weakness last night. It had grown through the day and nudged them into an alternate world all their own.
His thumb continued to caress her skin. The look in his eyes half concern, half plea.
Without realizing what she was doing, her fingers touched her own lips, the memory of the burning softness of his kisses suddenly fresh on them.
When he had kissed her yesterday, it had been a mindless act. A man desperate for escape. Now his eyes were mindful. A man meditating. Rooted where he stood. Steadying himself on a tightrope. Studying what he was touching, contemplating its meaning.
He reached out and touched the fingers she was pressing against her mouth. “Can I kiss you?” he asked.
She must’ve looked startled, because his eyes turned kind. Kind and hot eyes that were going to ruin her. Only, in this moment, she felt the opposite of ruined.
Suddenly, all she wanted was to feel that hot, yielding press of his mouth again. Needed it. She nodded quickly.
He leaned forward, his hands trailing to the nape of her neck and cupping her head. Sensation skittered down her spine, vertebra after vertebra tingling.
There was no pressure in his fingers, just a caress and enough time for her to pull away. If the pleasure of his touch wasn’t enough, the space he gave her again and again melted her. It wrapped around her and erased all the normal responses of her body. All that remained was the memory of his lips from yesterday, the memory of his body wrapped around her last night, the closeness and comfort of today.
Those memories met the reality of his lips, firm and soft, infinitely gentle. He probed slowly, softly. So this is you. God, this is you. He lingered and waited and labored over the whisper-soft touch until she pressed into him. Only then did he part his lips to pluck at her lower lip, tasting her before sucking it in.
She fell, her body boneless. Somewhere on her body his hands tightened and held her up and he stopped being tentative.
His mouth parted her open. Her own hunger scrambled her brains.
The last time he had kissed her, it had been the shock that kept her from pulling away. This time the idea of pulling away elicited a groan from the deepest part of her. She pushed into the kiss, climbed into it, reached into his crazy-making touch. The thick, sharp stubble on his scalp brushed between her fingers. The cords of his neck pushed against her palms, filling her hands and her mouth, filling her entire body with the zinging of a million sparklers.
Another groan mingled with hers. The world spun around her as he stood and swirled her bar stool around, spreading her knees and wedging his hips between her legs. The cold concrete edge pressed into her back for a moment before he pulled her closer and angled her head to better leverage her mouth, plunder her soul. Do things to her that turned her to mist and fire, longing and heat. The sensations of spinning on the ice nothing to this.
She was panting when he pulled away and pressed his face into her hair, his breath blowing a rhythm into her ears.
“I want you. God help me, but I want you so bad.”
Her response was a sob. Her brain stopped at the feel of his body against her, at the way he held her up, at how the air cooled the wet his lips left behind. She knew there were terrible things beyond his arms, beyond his breath in her ear. Terrible things that waited for her if she kept going. But this thing she was feeling made her mad with the need to push past it. Because just beyond the madness was something she had to feel. No matter the pain and horror, he made her want to push past it.
With no words at all, his eyes made a promise—yes, she could push past it; he’d push past it with her. Maybe together they could leave it behind.
He cupped her cheeks, and in his magic eyes, she found need and compassion the color of liquid hope. “Please tell me I’m not scaring you. Please tell me I’m not doing something you don’t want.”
She fisted his shirt and nodded against his chest. Nothing had ever felt so right. But she couldn’t speak it; the sound of her own voice would break the spell. Her voice was what made the screams that night.
“Jess.”
Jess.
She was Jess. With him she was Jess. And Jess could feel the things he was making her feel without drowning her in screams.
“Hey, look at me.”
Again he gave her time to look up and meet his gaze. It took her ages, she did it in steps, and when she fell into the molten brown, she wondered why it had taken h
er so long. So long as he looked at her with those eyes she could do anything.
“Please tell me that you want this.”
She nodded.
“No. Say the words.”
“I . . . I want this.”
“Thank you, God,” he said and scooped her up in his arms.
In the span of one breath, they were on a bed. The same bed where he had held her all night, the smell in the room a mix of the two of them. Sweetness of hope and leftover pain.
His lips dragged kisses across her skin, suckled at her lips, nipped at her jaw. It was like being worshiped. It was like having life infused into her. It was like giving life, because this was not Jen’s Nic. This man here was hers. All hers.
* * *
Nikhil had never felt anything softer than her skin. He was wrapped up in it. He was breathing. The water filling his lungs had dried, and air—warm, lush, sweet-smelling air—filled him and spread life to every part of his body.
He was alive.
He wanted to go on living.
Sadness singed at the edges of his consciousness. All day he had felt removed from himself. He’d been in a dream. Focused so wholly on the incredibly beautiful woman someone had hurt. Hurt but not broken. The will to make her see it, to gather her against him until she did, had been wanton. Was wanton now.
Nothing else mattered but her. The need to strip away the pain that she bore with strength that brought him to his knees was an inferno in his heart. He hadn’t been able to keep his hands off her since she had let him hold her all night, trusting him at her most vulnerable, letting him see what no one else would ever see. Then on that skating rink, she had stolen his breath. With her strength, her fearlessness. Watching her had sewn him up and torn him open all at once. It had made him desperate to hold her, to taste her.
He kissed down her neck. Her sweet taste seeping through him so fast and fierce he had to remind himself to slow down. His hands slipped around her, under that bulky cotton, and touched skin over delicate bone, her waist dipping in, her hips curving outward. A belly that sank under his touch and trembled.
He dragged his hands up toward the softness that pressed against his chest. It sent a spark down his center straight to his dick. It had not stirred for so long, the thickening against her yielding thighs dragged a long, pained moan from him.
Her fingers tightened in his shirt. She pushed into him. Her body, her soft, healing body, was alive with response. It was alive.
In the space of that one thought, all the blood, all that feeling sank to the hardness rising and pushing from him. He was fully erect, turgid from starvation. For the first time in two years his body wanted and his brain wasn’t screaming.
He tugged at her pants and pressed her into the thick layer of pillows, heat pumping through him. Then just like that, her pliant body stilled. It was slightest thing, but her sudden quiet turned her brittle. She went silent as a lamb to the slaughter. Silent and shaking. Fuck, she was shaking.
He scooted back and away from her. “Jess, what’s wrong?”
She didn’t answer. Her eyes were wild, terror filled. Not her eyes at all. Jen’s eyes from that day when life had stopped.
Stop, I’m pregnant. Please stop.
He jumped off the bed, his stomach muscles clenching as if he’d been kicked.
She didn’t follow him with her eyes. She didn’t even know he was in the room. She just trembled and wrapped her arms around herself and squeezed those terrified eyes shut.
The pants he had pulled halfway down her thighs bound her legs together. He had to be back on the ship because the floor did a horrible rocking and pitching. He gulped down the vomit that rose in his throat.
For an endless moment, he forced air down his windpipe and fought to feel his feet pressed against the carpet of the home he had shared with his wife.
This wasn’t his wife. This wasn’t an alley in Dharavi.
He wasn’t them.
And Jess was shaking. Because he had gone full force at her body after swearing he wouldn’t hurt her.
“Jess?” He laid the lightest hand on her shoulder. She jumped, her trembling body scampering sideways and away from him. But all those pillows held her in place, trapped her, eyes wild, teeth chattering, as if he had pushed her out into a blizzard with no clothes.
“Jess, it’s me, Nikhil. Nikhil.” He knelt down next to the bed. “I’m not going to hurt you.” He put his hands up as if she were pressing a gun to his belly. “Sweetheart, can you hear me?”
Her eyes hitched on his hands. Then very slowly met his gaze. “Nikhil?” Some of the panic cleared from her eyes.
Relief washed through him. “Yes, sweetheart, it’s me. Did I hurt you?”
She squeezed her eyes shut, mortification suffusing her cheeks. She pulled her pants back in place and shook her head. “No.”
He sat back onto the bed. It sank beneath his weight, tilting her closer to him.
Instead of scooting away from him again, she continued to lean toward him as if she needed the comfort of his closeness. He expelled the breath trapped in his lungs.
They sat there, their knees touching, their axes tilted toward each other. The silence between them heavy, the intimacy from moments ago diluted but still here.
“Did I?” Her voice was a whisper. That wasn’t fear he saw in her eyes but worry. Worry and shame. “Did I do anything to hurt you?” She stared at the fingers she was twisting together in her lap.
He took her hands in his, stopping the wretched twisting and untwisting of those long, delicate fingers and shook his head. Of course she hadn’t hurt him.
She closed her eyes again, and the long spikes of her lashes kissed her flushed cheeks. “What did I do?”
“You started shaking, as if I . . . You don’t remember any of it?”
Her throat worked. “I remember you kissing me. And carrying me here.”
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have . . .”
She met his eyes. “No. No, Nikhil, when you . . . when you kissed me, I actually . . .” She blushed so deep, her incredibly high cheekbones looked almost bruised. She had to have the most flawless skin he had ever seen; you had to almost touch it to make sure it was real.
“You what?”
“I thought . . . I didn’t realize . . . I actually . . .”
“You liked it,” he said as gently as he could. No way was he going to smile. This was the absolute wrong time to go all caveman.
She nodded, without meeting his eyes.
“And then I did something you didn’t like.”
She grabbed the strand she had just pushed behind her ear and tucked it back again, even though it hadn’t moved. “No. It wasn’t you. It wasn’t what you did.”
Moisture rose in a sheen across her wide, upturned eyes and gathered into two miniature waterfalls. She batted them away before they spilled onto her cheeks, and stood.
He stood too, instinctively taking a few steps back so he wasn’t crowding her. She wrapped her arms around herself in a gesture that was becoming too familiar.
She had fallen back into the horrors that trapped her just as he had.
What a pair they made.
“It was . . .” Her head fell forward, defeated. She wanted to say something, but she didn’t know how. He knew the feeling.
He wished he could touch her again. Do something to comfort her. He pushed his hands deep in his pockets and held them there.
“Listen, Jess. I’m . . .” She looked up at him then, and he knew she didn’t want him to apologize. But how could he not? After last night. After she’d opened up to him, let him close, how had he pushed her like that? He fisted his hands inside his pockets, squeezing out the insane feel of her on his hands. Touching her had felt just—God, where were the words for how touching her had felt?
She took a trembling breath. She was hurting, and here he was thinking about how good touching her felt. “I should never have done that. I won’t touch you like that again. I swear.”
Yes, that thing burning in her eyes, it had to be relief.
32
I’ve decided not to be afraid.
—Dr. Jen Joshi
What kind of idiot was she? First, she’d told him. Then, she’d allowed herself to be comforted by him, craved his touch. Then she’d gone mad when he’d touched her. No wonder he never wanted to touch her again. The one time in all her life something had felt so good, so right, and she had ruined it.
How long was it going to tie her up? How long was she going to let those bastards keep her from feeling things? From living.
She wanted to live. She wanted to feel what he made her feel. Even though she knew exactly why he wanted her. Even though she had no delusions. She wanted him. The Nikhil in the pictures at his parents’ house, the surgeon who could rattle off the names of diseases as if they were foods he ate every day, the man whose need to comfort others trumped everything, that man was only reaching for her because she was broken and he needed to fix things. At long last, he could bear to fix things.
Whatever it was, it was like nothing she had felt before, and it made her greedy. And she wanted it. Whatever part of him she could have, she wanted.
She watched him pack all those CDs back into their boxes and panic bubbled inside her. They couldn’t leave. They hadn’t found the evidence.
She followed him and started helping, but what she wanted was to reach for him and take him back to before she had let her past take everything away from her again. To where they still had time.
“You okay?” he asked.
Or maybe he didn’t say it, just looked at her as if the question was all he cared about.
His eyes, they hooked into her, and she couldn’t look away.
Say something. Please, just tell him you want to try again.
“Nikhil, I—”
“This is it. This is the last of Jen’s stuff, our stuff. There’s nothing more. Two years of being with her, and in two days we’ve trudged through it all.”
