A Change of Heart

by Sonali Dev

  “We’ll find it. It has to be somewhere.” Somehow she knew they were going to find it. She knew it was close. So close she could feel it.

  “What kind of asshole waits two years? What kind of asshole doesn’t know where his wife might have hidden something she wanted him to find?”

  He picked up a box and turned it over. Then another, then another. Dumping out the CDs they’d just put away, watching them spread across the bed. His hands sweeping through them.

  “Nikhil, stop, we’ve looked in all these boxes and it’s not here. Stop.”

  “I asked her if anything was wrong, and she looked me in the eye and lied to me. And then she was gone and it all felt like a lie. Everything. All those people we had treated. All those places, all our faith and enthusiasm, it all felt like a joke. What kind of man spends two years wallowing in self-pity when he should’ve been going after the fuckers who did this to her?”

  The kind of man who knew he couldn’t bring her back. The kind of man who knew nothing could change what had happened. Nothing could reverse it. “You want to now. You can get them now.” For you, it’s not too late.

  “Yes, but how, if I can’t find it?” He threw a desperate glance at the mess on the bed. “I let them get away with it. I let more people die, because I was too much of a coward.”

  “Nikhil, you were not a coward.”

  “Not a coward? The cop told me. He told me they were killing people. And all I could think about was how nothing I did would change anything. I let them go.”

  At least he hadn’t sold his soul to let them go. Sold himself. She slid closer to him and stroked his dry cheek. They had reversed roles. His tears were gone, leaving only anger. Her anger was gone, leaving only tears.

  He grabbed her hand, clung to it as if it were a lifeline. “I should have gone after them. I should have fought for justice.”

  A laugh escaped her and it stopped him. For the hundredth time, she watched his focus moved outward, away from his own hurt and into hers. “What about you? Didn’t you care about catching those men, punishing them?”

  She took her hand back. “Justice wasn’t a luxury I could afford.”

  He held her face in both hands and pulled her close, his forehead touching hers.

  “Stop calling it that. Don’t call it a luxury. Don’t.”

  She hated that her tears spilled into his hands. “You didn’t do anything because you were in too much pain. I didn’t do anything because they bought me off.” She tried to pull away. But he didn’t let her go.

  “I sold myself. I sold my justice. I took their money and I negotiated for more. For a job in Mumbai. In return for silence.”

  She had been the girl who kneed that shopkeeper in the balls for feeling her up. She’d been the girl who lured the whore dealer her uncle had sold her to into the bathroom at Siliguri bus station and locked him in there and helped four girls escape. But they had broken her. In every way it was possible to break a person, those two had broken her in that car.

  They’d finally turned her into the powerless, spineless whore they saw her as. And here she was, whoring herself again. Selling herself to the bastard who would take away any chance Nikhil had left at retribution.

  “Jess. You were alone. You had to take care of yourself.”

  “Don’t, Nikhil. Please don’t.” She couldn’t bear for him to forgive her before he even knew the extent of her crime. To absolve her. To make excuses for her. She pushed herself away from him. Stepped away. Why couldn’t she stop shaking? Why did she want to tell him everything? Because she couldn’t. Not when they had Joy.

  The weight of her secrets swelled in her chest, pushing at the damned scar as if they could rip past it. Escape and set her free.

  He stepped closer. “You had the strength to start over. To make a decision to get past what they did.”

  This time her laugh edged hysteria. It was laced with such self-loathing that she sounded just as insane as she felt. “Strength? Decision?” As if weakness had been a choice. As if anything in her life had ever been a bloody choice. “Yes, so much strength, two men could push me into a car, and it took only one to hold me down.” More of that maniacal laughter spilled from her. “One of them drove. Can you believe that? I was so bloody strong that it took one man in a driving car to tear me in half?”

  “I’m going to break my promise to you,” he said, stepping closer behind her and wrapping his arms around her.

  Instead of stepping away she leaned into his touch. Those bastards were closing in around her, and Nikhil touched her, and instead of screaming and kicking at him she sank into him.

  Finally, when he spoke, his voice was as gentle as his touch. “Jess, you got past it. Look at you, you’re this great mother. You’re here fighting for Jen. You didn’t even know her.”

  She slid out of his arms and twisted around. “That, what happened back there.” She jabbed a finger at the bed. “How is that being past it?”

  His eyes saw so much she wanted to cover up. She wanted to cower. But with her gaze locked with his she couldn’t.

  “They’re everywhere, Nikhil. They’re still inside me.”

  But she didn’t want them to be. No more. She couldn’t breathe. She wanted to breathe. Just one breath. Please. “I can’t even let anyone touch me. I’m twenty-five years old and I’m dead. Unable to feel.”

  He cupped her cheek. “I know you feel this.” He dropped the whisper of a kiss on her lips. “I know you feel this.”

  She slammed her lips into him.

  She grabbed his head, his face, hunted him with her mouth, tried to take it, hoard it, but she couldn’t reach what she wanted.

  He let her go at it, not pulling away. Finally, the exhaustion of it, the futility, made her stumble back. He kept one hand cupped around the nape of her neck, his fingers on her telling her where she was.

  “I don’t want to feel them between us. They’re still here. I don’t want them here.”

  * * *

  After she gouged out the words from what had to be the deepest place inside her, she just stood there, her eyes gleaming windows that looked out into nothing but darkness, her gaze pinned to a spot on the floor where she still seemed to see long-ago things.

  Pain rolled around inside him, old hard pain, new fresh pain.

  She shifted her stare to her hands, but the horrors of what they had done to her moved with her gaze and seemed to dance on her palms. Open, face-up palms, a universal plea.

  He squeezed his eyes shut. Before him was Jess’s helplessness. Behind his closed lids, Jen lay bleeding beneath the murderous thrusts.

  He looked back at Jess. She met his gaze, her effort in meeting his eyes Herculean.

  The moment danced before him. Life. He could reach for it, or he could curl back into himself and continue to die.

  Then just like that, she was inches from him. Her own pain put away. She took his hand. Movement meant existence. She laid his hand on her chest. On the braided scar that sliced her in half.

  The puckered skin nudged into his palm through the cotton of her shirt. The living reminder of Jen that had brought him back to the pain of his existence. Her heartbeat was warm and steady under his touch. Under the dead scar, she was alive. She was here. He could do nothing for Jen. But Jess, her? He could make the life she had survived count, help her take it back. Suddenly, he needed to do that more than anything else.

  He pulled her close. Their breaths threaded like insidious mists, magic spells intertwining to soothe what he had never hoped to soothe. Her living breath reverberated in his ears and filled his senses. He dove into it, stealing it with his lips. The taste of her was sweet and hot and new, her gasp of arousal already familiar and all her own.

  When he pulled away, her entire coiled-up strength was fierce in her gaze. He threaded the fingers of one hand in her hair, and laid his other hand flat against her scar. His past in one hand, the present in the other.

  “Nikhil.” His name on her lips was at once
an affirmation and a prayer. Deep furrows sank between her brows.

  He kissed them away. “I won’t hurt you. I swear.”

  She nodded. A hint of a nod. But all her trust propelled the movement.

  He pressed his lips to the delicate shell of her ear. “You tell me to stop and I’ll stop.”

  Her only response was stillness.

  “Do you want me to stop?”

  Fear trembled in her silence, in her dancer’s stillness, wound tight around awareness, her entire being suspended between newborn faith and ancient hopelessness.

  He removed his hands from her. She blinked up at him. Her eyes naked. Stripped of every defense. For a moment he thought she would pull away.

  But she didn’t.

  His tigress. His dancer. His healer.

  Her hands traced up his chest and wrapped around his jaw. His stubble pricked into his own skin. “What if I can’t feel anything?”

  Warmth tore at his heart. Tenderness uncoiled in his belly. “Didn’t you feel anything just now?”

  A blush crested her cheeks. She, like him, had felt too much.

  He made his voice light. “So, you don’t feel anything. So we’ll try again. I’m okay with that.”

  She smiled. And he realized he was smiling too.

  “In fact, even if you do feel something, we’ll have to try again, you know, just to make sure.”

  This time her shoulders shook in an entirely different language. Laughter. She pressed her forehead into his chest and her sweet laughter fell against his heart.

  He laid his chin on her head. “Because, you know, I’m a man of science, and you know what they say about hypothesis?” Her shoulders shook a little more. “It’s all in how much you test it. We would have to be sure you felt something. We can’t just make assumptions.”

  Her laughter tickled his chest. He never wanted it to stop.

  “It’s no laughing matter. We have to be very thorough.”

  She laid the sweetest kiss at the center of his chest. His breastbone. Tentative lips pressed into his heart.

  “Yes. Yes, that’s the perfect place to start your test.”

  She looked up at him. “Will you help me? Tell me what to do?”

  “No. I want you to do what you want.”

  She went up on the tips of her toes, and this time she pulled his lips down to hers with such deliberate consciousness he forgot what he wanted. Forgot everything but the raw need in her lips as she gathered the scattered remains of him and pressed them together.

  “Like this?” she asked against his lips, as her hand stroked his hair.

  Yes.

  Her breasts pressed into his chest, her nipples darts aimed straight at his heart but also at the thickening in his pants.

  As soon as the insistent hardness jabbed into her, she pulled back.

  He wanted to pull her back to him, kiss all that uncertainty off her face. But he fisted his hands at his sides and waited, knowing she would find him again.

  Her eyes took in the action, then she looked in his eyes, and he knew she saw something in there that brought her back to him. She reached out and unfisted his hands for him and threaded her fingers through his.

  * * *

  I love you.

  That’s what she wanted to say to him. She wanted to whisper it into his mouth. For all the razor sharpness of his jaw, for the rough, stubbly dents of his dimples, his lips were so very soft, she couldn’t stop wanting to touch them.

  I love you.

  Just a little bit.

  She didn’t know in what moment of madness she had let it happen. But there it was wrapped up in her heart. She trapped it there in that tiny space because she could never let it get bigger than that.

  He watched her with those molten-chocolate eyes. Love wasn’t what this was about for him. It wasn’t about lust either, that much she knew. Healing maybe, living maybe, moving on maybe. Just not love. She knew he was done with that.

  But for this moment she had him, and it was enough. What she could take of him now she would hold on to forever. With her fingers threaded through his, she led him to the bed. He followed her. His eyes lit with so much she had never expected to see there.

  She sat down on the bed. Scooted back. That made him smile, those deep, deep dimples balm on her tattered soul. She tugged at his hand, shyness a nervous spark across her belly. He reached for her, cupping her face. His eyes held hers, beautiful, generous eyes. “We don’t have to do this if you’re not ready.”

  She pushed her cheek into his hand. This time felt different. This time there was purpose in them both. She was ready. Her body was definitely ready, the alien tingling between her legs so hot she clenched her inner muscles in response. His thumb caressed her flaming cheek. Her heart was definitely ready.

  Maybe he wanted an out. “You don’t have to do this if you’re not ready either.”

  He laid a knee on the mattress. It sank under his weight as he came to kneel in front of her. He brought his lips to hers, dropping the lightest kiss there, then stopping as if to savor it. “I never expected to want anyone like this again. But you . . .” The heat in his eyes made her skin sparkle with response. His hands caressed her arms. “You are so damn beautiful.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut. Her body. It was always her body.

  You’re built like a whore. This is what whores get.

  No. She would not start shaking again. No. Don’t tremble. Don’t. Nikhil was not them.

  Yes, he wanted her body, but he . . . No. She didn’t care what he wanted. She wanted him. Him. She reached up and grabbed his face and pressed her lips against his again. Focus on his lips. His amazing lips, soft and warm. For a moment he seemed to sense something and made to pull away, but she pressed her lips into his, sucked on them. Her tongue, her teeth, her entire mouth drinking him in.

  Maybe this wasn’t the way you were supposed to kiss, she had no idea what she was supposed to do, but this felt so good it made all the noise in her head stop. Warmth burned between her legs and licked up her belly and took everything over. It made her want him to thrust his tongue into her mouth, thrust his hands all over her. Erase everything. She grabbed at his shirt, fisting the cotton, needing purchase, needing to hold on.

  He groaned a rough-edged groan and threaded his fingers in her hair, tugging her head back, angling her hungry lips so their positions were reversed. Then he fed her hunger, joined it, opening her mouth wide with his own and entering her with a wet, hot slide that wiped her clean.

  She gasped. This time he didn’t back away. He pulled her closer, pressed her aching breasts into his hard chest. His tongue stroked hers, the friction so intimate she moaned and thrust her pelvis into the air between them. He slipped a hand between them and cupped her. She almost screamed into his mouth, but it came out a sob. How did he know where to touch her, how to touch her?

  How were his hands so hot? One finger pressed through the fabric into the bud that throbbed between her legs, engorged in a way that was entirely unfamiliar. It pulsed under his hand. She pushed away the embarrassment and tightened her grip on his shoulders.

  “Nikhil.” She spoke his name into his mouth.

  “Yes. Say my name,” he whispered into the edge of her mouth. “It makes me sane.”

  “Nikhil.” She pressed into his lips. “Nikhil.”

  “Tell me what you want.”

  “This. I want this.”

  He nipped at her lip. “I want to be inside you.” He pressed his finger into the wet dent between her legs. “Right here.”

  She sucked in a breath, and he kissed her again. She nodded.

  “Say it.”

  “I want that too.”

  “You want what?” His hands slid under the hem of her shirt and stayed there. “You have to say it. You have to tell me what you want.”

  She couldn’t.

  He dropped the tiniest kiss on her mouth. “Not going to do any more unless you ask for it.”

  A sob escaped her.
“I can’t.”

  “Do you want me to take off your clothes?”

  Sparks flitted down her belly.

  His hands started to play with the skin at her waist, the back of his fingers stroking under the elastic waistband. Sensation zinged from his fingers up to her breasts and down to where the imprint of his hands still burned. All these sensations, new and sweeping.

  She gulped air, her throat bobbing against his nipping teeth. “Yes.”

  “Yes, what?” Teeth and tongue, rough and soft, grazed her throat.

  “Yes, I want you to take off my—” Another swallow.

  “Clothes,” he prompted.

  “Clothes,” she repeated.

  He gripped the edge of her shirt and eased it up her body, his hands skimming her as he went. His eyes hitched on hers, picking up every nuance as gooseflesh prickled under his touch. She lifted her arms and lost him for a moment as the black fabric went over her head.

  “So beautiful.” His whisper jabbed like spikes into her chest. She squeezed her eyes shut in the darkness of the shirt around her head and focused on the burning in her body.

  In less than the span of a breath, she broke back into light. But he kept her arms over her head. Before he bent to her breasts, she saw the hunger in his eyes.

  He was hypnotized by her body.

  He pressed his lips to her breasts, where they rose and pressed together. She always wore sports bras, tried to flatten the too-large globes that had brought her nothing but pain.

  The body of a whore.

  Tears rose in her eyes. She pushed them back, her body starting to lose heat so fast, she struggled to hold on. He freed her arms and dragged his fingers down their length, his lips and tongue teasing her breasts through the fabric. She hated herself as warmth sparked across her skin again.

  Whore. Whore.

  Despite the storm in her heart, her nipples peaked and pressed into his mouth. He undid her bra and pulled the tightly stretched fabric over her head with almost desperate speed. Her bra soaked up the tears as it brushed up her cheeks.

  “God, Jess,” he said as the heavy weight of her breasts popped free. He reached out and touched her. Hot fingers on cold skin. His gaze moved from his hand and met hers.