Chapter Twenty-Nine: Not Hers to Keep
Geet made it to her room before her hands began to shake.
Not on the terrace. Not while she was walking away from Maan with her phone clutched too tightly in one hand and the strange, unsteady sensation that her knees had temporarily forgotten what they were for. Not in the upper corridor, where two cousins had been standing beneath a ladder arguing about strings of lights and one of them had stepped aside for her with an absent, cheerful, "Sorry, Geet." She had smiled. Actually smiled — some reflexive little social thing that apparently survived emotional catastrophe. She had made it past the staircase, past the half-open door of the room Tara had converted into engagement headquarters, past the distant sound of Kavita demanding to know whether anyone had confirmed the sweet boxes for the second time.
Only when the bedroom door closed behind her did her body seem to understand that nobody was looking anymore.
Geet crossed half the room before stopping. Her watch felt suddenly too tight around her wrist. She reached for the clasp. Missed it. Tried again. Her thumb slipped against the metal. Geet frowned and looked down. Her fingers were trembling. For a second she simply stared at them, then lifted her gaze to the mirror.
The woman reflected there did not look devastated. That irritated her. Her hair was slightly disordered around her face, her cheeks flushed, her mouth still red from anger and the way she had kept biting the inside of it. Her eyes were too bright, but otherwise she looked almost offensively functional. Nobody seeing her now would know she had spent the better part of an hour telling the man she had once loved that he was a liar.
Selfish. Greedy. Cruel.
Geet's fingers stopped on the clasp.
Evil.
Her eyes closed. There — that one. She had known even as she said it. The others had come from somewhere old and stored and ugly but recognizable; she had thought them before, in fragments, in sleepless rooms in New York, during the first year when a memory could still ruin the shape of an entire day. Liar — that was factual enough. Selfish — she could defend that. Greedy — yes. Cruel — perhaps not always intentionally, but intention had not saved her. But evil —
Geet opened her eyes. She had wanted that word to hurt. That was the part she could not edit now that there was nobody in the room to argue with. She had seen his face change and continued anyway. A small, brutal satisfaction had existed for perhaps half a second — not because she believed he was evil, but because she had finally discovered a place words could reach him. Then the satisfaction had vanished, leaving only the knowledge of what she had done.
Geet yanked the watch free and dropped it onto the dressing table. It landed with a sharp little crack. She flinched.
"For God's sake."
Her own voice sounded strange. She walked into the bathroom, turned on the tap and splashed cold water over her face. Once. Twice. The heat remained beneath her skin. So did the terrace. Maan against the wall. His shoulders meeting stone because she had kept advancing and he had kept yielding space without ever quite retreating from her. His hands at his sides. Her own hand rising. Fingers stopping a breath from his collar.
Geet gripped the edge of the sink. No. That was not where her mind was going. There were approximately seven hundred more respectable things to think about. The betrayal. His silence. The fact that he had overheard a private conversation and then had the unbelievable arrogance to begin with that is not the point. She could remain angry about that for at least another decade if necessary.
Instead her mind supplied the exact moment his gaze had fallen to her mouth.
Geet stared furiously at the basin. "Absolutely not."
The empty bathroom remained unimpressed. She reached for the towel and pressed it against her face.
It had been five years. Five. Not five weeks, not one miserable winter — five entire years in which she had earned another degree, built a life in a city that had known nothing about her except what she chose to tell it, learned unfamiliar streets until they became ordinary, made friends who had never once called her Mrs. Khurana or asked what had happened in Delhi. Five years should have done something useful. Apparently they had done nothing whatsoever to erase the memory of Maan standing too close.
Not the Maan she remembered at twenty-six. That would have been humiliating enough. This one. Thirty-one. Broader through the shoulders, harder through the face, dark stubble along a jaw that had once been smoother more often than not, eyes that had somehow become quieter without becoming easier to look at. Still Maan. Still capable of making some stupid, ancient part of her body recognize him before her mind had decided whether recognition was permitted.
She lowered the towel. There was another problem, worse than the attraction: his face when she had said none of it had been real. That had not been controlled. For almost the entire confrontation, Maan had let her throw whatever she wanted at him without reaching for the words that would protect him. Then she had told him the husband had been convincing — the looking, the wanting. She had said perhaps none of it had been real. And something almost like alarm had broken straight through him.
No. Immediate. Too fast to be strategic. Then again, rougher. No. That part was never—
He had stopped. He had not needed to finish.
Geet shut her eyes again. That had been the worst discovery of the night. Not that Maan had used her — she already knew that. Not that the land had mattered — she knew that too. The worst part was realizing that he had not needed to fake loving her in order to betray her.
He had loved her. And still done it.
The desire had been real. The tenderness had been real. The mornings had been real. The ridiculous conversations in bed, the way he used to look for her automatically when he entered a room, the ease with which his hand found the small of her back, the thousand little domestic things she had spent years questioning after the truth came out —
Real. And none of it had stopped him.
Geet walked back into the bedroom and opened her laptop. Work. Good. Work was sensible. Work had definitions. A bad analysis could be corrected. A weak assumption could be challenged. Data did not look lovingly into your eyes while quietly rearranging your legal life behind your back.
She opened the document she had been working on earlier. Read the first paragraph. Nothing. Again. Her eyes moved through the same sentence without absorbing a word.
You wanted me and still did it.
Geet's throat tightened. She scrolled down.
You loved me and still did it.
She closed the laptop. Hard. The sound cracked through the room. The first tear came immediately afterward, which only made her angry.
"No." She wiped it away. Another followed. Geet laughed once, breathlessly, because apparently her own body had decided to become insulting. "Oh, brilliant."
The third did not give her time to object. She sat down on the edge of the bed. And then whatever had been holding for five years simply stopped holding.
Geet bent forward, palms over her face. The tears came ugly and hot and entirely without dignity. Not because she wanted Maan back — she refused that neat little explanation even inside the privacy of her own room. She cried because she had finally said things she had once been too shattered to say. Because some of them had been true. Because some had been deliberately cruel. Because she had seen the moment evil struck and hated herself for being capable of wanting it to. Because he had stood there and taken everything. Because she had asked him what wrong she had done to deserve what he had done to her, and in that one unfinished question she had heard the younger Geet she had spent five years trying not to pity. Because he had loved her. Because he had betrayed her. Because apparently those facts were capable of existing in the same universe without canceling each other out.
And because —
Geet's shoulders shook harder.
Because he had not touched her. The thought came out of nowhere and made her cry harder. Of all the things to matter. He had not touched her. Not when she crowded him backward. Not when her hand rose toward his collar. Not when her fingers stopped close enough to feel the heat coming off his body. Not when she looked at his mouth and knew, with humiliating certainty, that he had noticed. Not even when her voice broke on What wrong had I done to you—
His hand had moved then. Barely. She had seen it.
The old Maan would have reached. The man who once believed knowing her meant understanding what she needed before she said it would have caught her. Held her. Perhaps even believed holding her was kindness.
This Maan had stopped his own hand before it became anything. He had let her decide every inch between them.
Geet dragged her palms down her face. She hated him for that too. Not rationally — but anger did not always have the courtesy to be rational. It would have been easier if he had crossed some present boundary. If he had tried to comfort her because he could not bear seeing her cry. If he had caught her wrist. If he had taken the desire in that impossible little space between them and treated it as permission. Something. Anything she could point at and say: There. Same man.
Instead he had let her scream. Let her come closer. Let her leave. And when she had told him not to speak to Neil unless she asked, he had simply said he wouldn't. As though her instruction required no negotiation.
Geet lay backward across the bed and stared at the ceiling. His other sentence came back.
I thought staying away was the one thing I could do that wasn't for me.
Her mouth tightened. "You thought."
Anger returned quickly enough to steady her. Yes. He had thought. That was still the problem. Maan thought brilliantly enough to mistake intelligence for permission. He understood patterns, anticipated consequences, saw three steps ahead of everyone else and then somehow forgot that other people had the right to walk those steps themselves. He had decided what she could bear. What she would eventually understand. What outcome justified what omission. He had loved her and still believed he knew enough to choose for her.
Regret did not make that beautiful. Silence did not make it noble. Five years did not erase it.
Geet breathed slowly until the tears stopped. Nothing had been solved tonight. That was perhaps the only thing she trusted. She had not forgiven him. He had not asked. She was still angry. He was still the man who had broken the safest thing she had ever believed she possessed.
Whatever else remained beneath that — her mind approached something she did not want named. Geet turned onto her side and shut her eyes. Not tonight.
Eventually exhaustion pulled her under before thought could circle back.
By late morning the next day, Tara's mehndi had taken over the east veranda. It was not the formal bridal mehndi yet, Tara explained three times to three different people, merely a smaller family session that had somehow acquired almost as many women, twice as much food and enough henna cones to decorate half of Delhi.
Geet sat at the edge of the long arrangement with one hand extended while a young artist drew a fine vine from the base of her palm toward her wrist. She had slept badly. Cold water and concealer had repaired most of the evidence. Tara had looked at her once over breakfast and asked, "Were you working late?" Geet had answered, "Something like that" — which was technically close enough to truth to survive inspection.
Now conversation moved around her with the peculiar freedom of women who had known one another long enough to stop formally selecting subjects. Someone's daughter's school admission. A caterer who had raised his rate after agreeing to a price. An argument about whether Tara's second outfit needed different earrings. Kavita accusing Anjali of having personally approved something she was now criticizing.
Geet listened in fragments. Until Anjali said, "Did you hear what happened with Reema?"
Geet did not know Reema. That should have let the name pass.
Kavita looked up. "Which Reema?"
"Prakash's niece. Married into that family in Vasant Vihar."
Recognition moved through two of the older women.
"The divorce came through?"
"Last month."
"Eleven years," someone murmured. "What a waste."
Geet kept watching the mehndi cone. The artist drew a leaf. Then another.
Anjali lowered her voice slightly, although there was nothing genuinely secret about the conversation. "They didn't even let her take some of the jewelry her mother-in-law gave her at the wedding. Said it belonged to the family."
Kavita made an irritated sound. "As if the earrings are going to continue the bloodline."
A few women laughed. Someone else said, "Her children still go there, apparently."
"Of course they do. They're grandchildren."
"And Reema?"
"Not welcome."
Rhea, sitting farther down the veranda with Tara's cousin's hand resting carefully across her lap, frowned. "Rakesh is fine with that?"
Anjali shrugged. "His mother runs the house."
"That isn't what I asked."
"He doesn't say anything."
Kavita, who had begun examining one of the mehndi designs as though she had personally been appointed quality control, said absently, "He didn't have to tell her not to."
Geet's gaze lifted.
Kavita continued. "He just went quiet and let it happen."
The mehndi artist's cone paused. "Ma'am, please keep your fingers still."
Geet looked down. "Sorry." Her hand became motionless. The conversation did not. Someone defended Rakesh. Someone else said divorce made families ugly. Within another minute, Reema's eleven-year marriage had been folded away and replaced by a complaint about the caterer's appetizers.
Geet heard none of it.
He didn't have to tell her not to. He just went quiet and let it happen.
The sentence belonged to another woman. A stranger. A marriage that had nothing to do with Geet's. And still it moved through her as if somebody had placed it carefully in her path.
Because Maan had gone quiet too. Then he had gone farther than quiet. He had gone away.
Geet stared at the dark wet line curling across her palm. Last night she had screamed at him for it. You disappeared. You stopped coming. You stopped existing anywhere I could accidentally find you. Every word had been true. But the Reema story handed her a second truth she had never properly looked at.
Maan had never removed her from his family. He had removed himself. Not completely — he still came home, called, turned up when something mattered. Daadi could apparently summon him across international borders using nothing but disappointment. But he had stopped occupying Khurana House as though it were the center of his life. Visits instead of residence. Obligation instead of routine. A family event, a health scare, something significant — and then Dubai again. Five years of making himself temporary in a place where he had every right not to be.
And in all that time, Geet had never once received a call from Devika saying, This is becoming difficult. Tara had never said, Maan is coming home, maybe don't call this week. Daadi had never asked her to understand that blood had to come first. No one had ever made her affection for them into something that had to negotiate around him.
Maan could have accomplished that without saying a cruel word. He could simply have remained. Come home more often. Filled the rooms that belonged to him. Let every visit from Geet become an arrangement. Enough awkwardness and Geet would have done the rest herself. A missed festival. An excuse for somebody's anniversary. Shorter calls. Less frequent messages. Eventually everyone would have adapted to the easier version.
He had never forced that choice into existence.
Geet's chest tightened. None of them needed Maan's permission to love her. That wasn't what frightened her. Daadi loved her because Daadi loved with the terrifying certainty of a woman who had survived enough life to stop asking whether she was allowed. Devika's affection belonged to Devika. Tara had inserted herself into Geet's life so thoroughly over the years that extracting her would probably require legal intervention. Maan had not created any of that. They were not his to give.
But he could have made loving Geet inconvenient. He had not. Instead he had made himself scarce enough that nobody had needed to choose.
And suddenly, irrationally perhaps, Geet's entire place here felt as though it had been living on loan from his decency.
The thought turned cold inside her. On loan. She hated it instantly.
She looked around the veranda. Tara was arguing about the darkness of her mehndi. Anjali leaned across Geet without thinking to move a bowl before it touched her wet hand. Kavita was telling somebody to stop interfering with the sweets. Rhea had somehow acquired a second cup of tea after declaring the first one too strong.
Nobody looked at Geet as though she were temporary. That almost made it worse. Because what exactly secured any of it? Blood? No. Birth? No. She had come into this family through Maan, through a marriage that had lasted eleven days before the truth split it open. Yes, legally the paperwork still existed, absurdly, stubbornly, because neither of them had ever completed the final administrative death of something that had already ended in every way that mattered. But emotionally? Five years apart. Different countries. Different lives. And still Khurana House opened for her as though no one remembered to ask what category she belonged in.
Geet had affection. So much of it that sometimes it embarrassed her. What she did not possess was a right she understood how to enforce. That distinction mattered to some old frightened part of her more than she wanted to admit. Love had always been the least reliable form of ownership. People died. People changed. People loved you and still left. People loved you and still betrayed you. A contract at least told you when it ended. Affection could simply stop being enough.
The next thought arrived so cleanly that Geet's breath caught.
What happened when Maan married someone else?
Her fingers twitched again. This time the mehndi artist gave her a resigned look. "Sorry," Geet murmured.
Of course Maan could marry again. Eventually the ridiculous legal tie between them would have to end on paper too. He was thirty-one. Successful. Wealthy. Handsome enough that acknowledging it still annoyed her. He could fall in love next year. Next month. Tomorrow, theoretically.
Geet's mind did not supply some convenient villain. That would have made the fear easier. Instead she imagined a perfectly decent woman. Kind. Intelligent. Secure. A woman who had done nothing wrong except love Maan after Geet. A woman who married him openly, with the whole family around them, and stepped into his life not as history but as present. A woman with an actual, current claim.
What would Geet be then? The first wife from an eleven-day marriage who still called his mother? The woman his grandmother still treated like a granddaughter? The person who arrived at Khurana House and was given a bedroom without asking? Would a future wife be unreasonable for finding that strange? Would Geet?
The last question hurt more. Suppose nobody asked her to leave. Suppose Daadi still demanded she visit. Suppose Devika still called. Suppose Tara still sent flight details with instructions rather than invitations. Would Geet herself begin stepping away? Would she stop coming because she could not bear to make another woman negotiate around a marriage that had already died? Would she do exactly what Maan had done? Remove herself. Not because anyone rejected her. Because someone else finally had more right to remain.
Geet swallowed. There it was. The part she hated most. Nobody had threatened this future. Nobody had even mentioned Maan marrying. And yet one stranger's divorce had made the whole architecture of Geet's belonging feel suddenly provisional.
Not fake. That was almost worse. Real enough to love. Not hers enough to trust.
"Geet?"
She looked up. Rhea was watching her. "What?"
"You've been staring at your own thumb like it insulted you."
Geet looked down. "I'm processing something."
"Your thumb?"
"Yes."
Rhea's mouth twitched. "Should I give you two privacy?"
A laugh escaped Geet before she could prevent it. The mehndi artist smiled politely. Conversation folded over the moment. Geet smiled too.
But the words remained. On loan.
Later that afternoon, the smaller sitting room had become another engagement work zone. Return-gift boxes were stacked along one wall. Ribbon had invaded most of the carpet. Tara sat cross-legged in the middle of it with a handwritten list she had already crossed out and rewritten enough times to qualify as historical evidence.
Geet sat beside Rhea on the floor, attempting to fold gold ribbon neatly around a small ivory box. Attempting being the important word.
"That's wrong," Tara announced without looking up.
Geet looked at her. "You didn't even see it."
"I can sense it."
"Very useful bridal power."
"Thank you."
Rhea took one glance at Geet's box. "It is actually wrong."
"Traitor."
"I have standards."
"You married Samar."
Rhea looked offended. "Selective standards."
Geet smiled and started the fold again. For nearly a minute she managed to pay attention. Then Neil entered her head. Not dramatically — that was the problem. A sentence here. A look there.
I was there when you left. The nights you couldn't sleep. Being useful. Being safe. And then when it comes to actually being chosen…
Geet's fingers slowed. He had been there. That part was true. When New York felt less like liberation and more like a city that had not noticed she existed, Neil had answered. When she had called at ridiculous hours because the time difference had become convenient cover for loneliness, he had picked up when he could. He had never once said, You owe me. Not then.
So what exactly was Geet accusing him of now? Being hurt? Wanting more than she did? Having misunderstood the intimacy of a friendship that she herself had depended on?
Her stomach tightened. What if she had been careless? Not deliberately — that word still made her uncomfortable. But accidentally? What if somewhere in five years of calls and jokes and leaning on him because he felt safe, she had allowed Neil to build a meaning she had never intended? She knew what it was to discover that another person had understood the relationship differently. Maan's betrayal had poisoned even that question. Geet would not knowingly do a smaller version of it to someone else.
"Geet."
She blinked. Rhea's hand had settled lightly over the ribbon between Geet's fingers. "You've been folding the same corner for two minutes."
Geet looked down. The ribbon was creased almost white where she had pressed it repeatedly. "Sorry."
Rhea took it from her and began again. "Where did you go?"
"Nowhere."
"Impressive. You looked miserable there."
Geet glanced toward Tara. Tara was counting boxes under her breath. Four cousins occupied the far end of the room, arguing about labels. Nobody was listening. Probably.
Geet lowered her voice. "Can I ask you something?"
Rhea's hands continued working. "Of course."
"About Neil."
Rhea's attention sharpened. Not dramatically. Enough. Unfortunately, Tara's did too.
"What about Neil?"
Geet froze. Tara looked up from the list, open curiosity on her face. And suddenly Geet saw the conversation traveling. Not because Tara was malicious. Because families talked. Something said to one person became concern in another room, clarification in a third, a question to Meenal, perhaps eventually Neil himself being asked what had happened.
And what would Geet even say? Neil told me he likes me. That was not wrongdoing. I don't feel the same way. That was not his fault. He reminded me of everything he'd done for me and I ended up feeling guilty. Would that sound different once it left her mouth? Would it sound as though she were accusing him of keeping score? Was he? She did not know. She only knew that when she had gone into the conversation, she had felt certain. When she left, she had felt cruel. And even now, part of her was wondering whether cruelty was exactly what saying no to him amounted to after everything he had done.
Geet became acutely conscious of where she was sitting. Khurana House. Neil's family home as surely as Maan's. Naren's son. Meenal's son. Daadi's family. A man who had belonged here long before Geet crossed the gate.
And what was she? Loved, yes. Included. Wanted. But the morning's thought returned before she could stop it. On loan.
She was not going to walk into Tara's engagement week and create a fracture in this family because she could not manage a man's feelings gracefully. Especially when she wasn't even sure there was anything to accuse him of.
"Nothing," Geet said.
Tara's brows rose. "You said—"
"I know. It was stupid."
Rhea glanced at her. Geet picked up another box. "He mentioned something yesterday and I…" She forced a shrug. "I don't know. I think I misunderstood what he meant."
That was vague enough to be useless. Good.
Tara studied her for half a second longer, then somebody called her name from across the room and she turned. The moment broke.
Rhea did not immediately return to the ribbon. Geet could feel her looking.
"Don't," she murmured.
"I haven't said anything."
"You were going to."
"I was considering breathing."
"Very aggressively."
That got the corner of Rhea's mouth. Then she became serious again. "Did he upset you?"
The question was simple. Geet almost said no. Then stopped. Had Neil upset her? Yes. But that felt unfair too.
"He's been very good to me."
Rhea waited.
"For years," Geet added. "I know." "Especially after I left." Her voice softened despite herself. "When I first moved, there were days…" She shook her head. "It doesn't matter."
"It probably does if you're bringing it up."
Geet frowned at the box in her hands. "He was there. That's all."
"And now?"
Geet looked at her. There were too many answers. Now he wants something I don't. Too harsh. Now he thinks I might want it later. Closer. Now saying no feels like I am rewriting five years of friendship into something he did for nothing. That was the one she could not say.
Instead she whispered, "I don't want to make him look bad."
Rhea's expression changed. "Did he do something bad?"
"No." Immediate. Too immediate. Geet heard it herself. Rhea did too.
Geet sighed. "I don't know." That was more honest. "He told me how he feels."
Rhea remained quiet. "And?"
"I don't feel that way." No hesitation. No confusion. That truth, at least, stayed clean.
Rhea nodded. Geet's thumb rubbed the edge of the box. "But he…" She stopped. Started again. "He's been there for me. A lot."
Rhea understood enough that something shifted in her face. Geet saw it and immediately shook her head. "Don't."
"I'm not doing anything."
"You have an opinion."
"I have several. I'm not giving you any."
"Thank you."
A pause. Then Rhea asked, "What are you worried will happen if you tell him no?"
Geet stared at her. "I did tell him no."
There. The sentence came before she could edit it.
Rhea's brows drew together slightly. Geet looked away. "And?"
Geet's throat tightened. "And nothing."
That wasn't true. She had said no. Neil had heard not yet somewhere inside it. But explaining that would mean making it real.
Geet lowered her voice. "I just don't want this becoming a thing here."
Rhea's gaze sharpened. "Here?"
"In the family."
Geet heard it too late. Not our family. The family.
Rhea did not correct her. For that alone, Geet loved her a little.
Instead Rhea said, "Okay."
Geet looked at her suspiciously. "Okay?"
"Yes."
"You're not going to tell me I'm being ridiculous?"
"No."
"Or that I belong here?"
Rhea's expression softened. "No."
That almost hurt. Because Geet had expected the reassurance enough to resent it before it came.
Rhea picked up the next ribbon. "You don't want to talk about it yet."
Geet swallowed. "No."
"Then don't."
Simple. No lesson attached. No grand declaration of what Geet was entitled to. The relief that moved through her was embarrassingly large.
"Thank you."
Rhea shrugged. "I reserve the right to become intrusive later."
"That sounds more like you."
"I thought so."
Across the room Tara demanded help with the label count. Rhea leaned forward to answer.
Geet stared down at the box in her hands. She had told Rhea more than she intended. And still not the part that frightened her most. Not Neil. Not yet. The fact that some part of Geet still believed being loved by this family required her to be easy to keep. Undemanding. Grateful. Never the reason anyone had to choose.
Meenal found Neil in the small sitting room shortly before dinner. He was alone at the writing table with a file open in front of him. She had passed the doorway ten minutes earlier. The file had been open to the same page then.
She leaned against the frame. "Neil."
Neil looked up. "Yes, Mumma."
"Where are you lost in your thoughts?"
"Nothing like that."
"You haven't turned that page."
He closed the file. Meenal walked in and sat opposite him. Neil watched her. She watched him. After approximately seven seconds, he sighed. "Ma."
"There is someone. Isn't it?"
His expression changed. Just enough. Meenal's entire face brightened.
Neil shut his eyes briefly. "Oh, no."
"Oh, yes."
"I didn't say anything."
"You didn't have to."
"I looked at you."
"You looked guilty."
"I am apparently not allowed facial expressions in this house."
"Not interesting ones."
He rubbed the back of his neck. It was an unexpectedly boyish gesture. Meenal softened immediately. "There really is someone."
Neil looked away. That was answer enough.
"How long?"
"A while."
"Do I know her?"
His pause was fractional. Meenal caught it anyway. Her eyes widened. "I do."
"I'm not telling you who."
"Why?"
"Because you'll turn it into an event."
"I will do no such thing."
Neil stared. Meenal amended, "Not immediately."
He laughed despite himself. There — she saw it. Not merely affection. Something shy underneath. Something he was trying not to expose because exposing it made the thing vulnerable.
Her voice softened. "Have you told her?"
Neil looked down at the closed file. "She knows."
"And?"
A small smile appeared. Private. Almost embarrassed. "Not yet."
Meenal tilted her head. "Not yet what?"
"She hasn't said yes yet."
The phrase came so naturally that neither of them stopped to examine it.
Meenal leaned forward. "Have you asked her properly?"
"Not exactly."
"Neil."
"Ma."
"What does that mean?"
He exhaled. "She knows how I feel."
"And how does she feel?"
Another pause. "She needs time."
Meenal studied him. "Did she say that?"
Neil smiled slightly. "Not in those words."
Her eyebrows rose. "Then what words?"
"It's complicated."
Meenal's expression became more thoughtful. "Did she say no?"
Neil's eyes shifted. Not away. Just enough. "She said she hadn't thought about it that way yet."
"Did she say yet?"
Neil hesitated. "Not exactly."
Meenal studied him a moment. Then, quietly: "But you know her."
"Yes."
That settled it, the way it always did. Neil smiled patiently. "That was the first thing she said."
Meenal watched him. "And then?"
"She got upset."
"Because you told her?"
"Because…" He leaned back. "Because there's history there. A lot of it. Things she still hasn't really dealt with."
Meenal's expression softened. "And what do you think?"
"I think people change."
Neil looked down at his hands. "I know her." There was no swagger in it. That was what made the certainty harder to question. "I know when she's shutting something down because she genuinely doesn't want it."
A beat. "And?"
"And this isn't that."
Meenal remained still. Neil gave a faint, almost sheepish smile. "I know her better than she thinks I do sometimes."
The sentence landed softly. In another room, spoken to another woman, it had sounded different. Here, between mother and son, it sounded intimate. Tender. The confidence of a man who believed years of friendship had earned him insight rather than entitlement.
Meenal's face softened again. "She has been through a lot?"
Neil's jaw shifted. "Yes."
"With…?"
He didn't answer. He didn't need to. Meenal knew enough of the family history to fill the blank.
Neil continued. "She spent years learning how not to need anything from anyone. So now if something asks her to trust again, of course her first instinct is going to be no."
Meenal watched him. There was love in his voice. Or what he understood as love. That distinction existed nowhere in the room.
"And you are going to wait."
Neil looked almost surprised by the question. "For her?"
"Yes."
"Of course."
"How long?"
He laughed softly. "As long as she needs."
"Neil."
"What?"
"I'm serious."
"So am I."
Meenal studied him. "You could wait a long time for someone who has already made up her mind."
His expression changed. Not anger. Not irritation. Something quieter. A certainty settling into place. "She hasn't."
"You're sure."
"Yes."
"How?"
Neil smiled. The answer seemed almost embarrassingly simple to him. "Because if she'd made up her mind, she wouldn't be this scared of making the wrong decision."
Meenal's brows drew together. "Did she tell you she was scared?"
Another tiny hesitation. "No."
"Neil."
"I know." He lifted a hand before she could say more. "I know what you're going to say."
"Do you?"
"Don't decide for her."
Meenal's mouth closed. He smiled. "I'm not." He believed that completely. "I'm not asking her for an answer tomorrow. I'm not asking her to change anything for me. I'm not going to corner her into some conversation every day until she gets tired and gives me what I want." He shook his head. "I can wait."
Meenal looked at him. The distinction satisfied him. Patience, in Neil's mind, was proof that pressure could not possibly exist. A man willing to wait forever could not be taking anything. He was giving. Time. Space. Loyalty. Himself.
"I just don't want her to close the door because she's afraid of what opening it might cost."
His mother sighed. "You make it sound very noble."
Neil looked embarrassed. "It isn't."
"No?"
"No. I want her." Simple. Honest. That pleased Meenal more than the nobility had.
Neil gave a small laugh. "I'd obviously prefer not to wait forever."
"Good. You are human."
"Occasionally."
She reached over and touched his hand. "But if she needs time?"
His expression softened immediately. "I'll give her time."
"All of it?"
"All of it."
"Forever?"
He looked at her. And smiled. "For her?" The question seemed almost absurd. "If that's what it takes."
Meenal's eyes warmed. "You've always been patient."
"Kavita aunt says pathologically."
"Your aunt says many things."
"Most of them loudly."
Meenal squeezed his hand. "Have you at least proposed?"
Neil laughed. "No."
"Why is that funny?"
"Because I'm not proposing marriage to someone who hasn't even agreed to date me."
"Very sensible."
"I try."
"But you think she will."
That smile again. Quiet. Private. Certain. "Yes."
"Soon?"
Neil considered it. "I don't know about soon." Then, after a beat: "But yes."
Meenal's smile became almost unbearably fond. "And you are so sure because?"
Neil lowered his gaze. For once, embarrassment genuinely colored his expression. "Because what we have isn't nothing."
Meenal waited.
"Five years isn't nothing." His voice had gone quieter. "She trusted me when she didn't trust many people. She reached for me. She let me know parts of her life she didn't show everyone." His thumb moved once against the edge of the file. "I don't believe that becomes meaningless because she's frightened of naming what it could be."
There it was. The entire story as Neil understood it. Not manipulation. Not debt. Evidence. Every call Geet had made because she believed she was calling a friend. Every night he had answered because he believed he was becoming more. Every intimate confidence quietly transferred, in retrospect, into proof of a future Geet had never agreed to.
Meenal heard devotion. Because devotion was what it looked like from this side.
"You love her."
Neil looked up. The question stripped the remaining humor from his face. "Yes." No hesitation.
Meenal's eyes filled. "Then don't rush her."
"I won't."
"Don't make your waiting something she has to repay."
For the first time, Neil frowned. "I wouldn't." He sounded genuinely wounded by the idea.
Meenal immediately softened. "I know."
She had asked because mothers were supposed to ask such questions. Neil's answer settled it, the way his answers always did, because she knew her son. He could be stubborn. He could be too patient for his own good. But cruel? Manipulative? The thought did not survive contact with the boy she had raised.
"Whoever she is," Meenal said, squeezing his hand again, "she is lucky to be loved like this."
Neil smiled. Almost shyly. "I hope she thinks so eventually."
"She will."
His eyes lifted. His mother's certainty met his own. For a moment they simply sat there together, two people looking at the same story and seeing something beautiful.
Neither of them knew that the woman Neil was prepared to wait forever for believed she had already given him an answer.
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