Page 76 of The Rules of Playing with Fire

“I love aloo paratha!” I squealed with delight. “Do you make it spicy, Mihir?”

“Extremely,” he said through clenched teeth. “Only the bravest can survive them.”

“Then I bet Grant enjoys them a lot,” I said to anger him further, and it did.

He threatened me with another fiery glare through his narrowed eyes.

“How did you know that, Sona?” Aunty cried in surprise. “Grant does love spicy parathas.”

“He looks like someone who can handle spice. Unlike other people.”

Obviously, I was goading him into a conversation, but he continued to ignore me.

Aunty clapped her hands. “They are way too spicy for a white boy, but then, Grant has been our child since he was little. He’s an honorary desi, isn’t he, Arvind?” she asked her husband, who had been sitting quietly, reveling in his sugar coma.

“Indeed! So is Mike,” Uncle said with a grin, but his wife wasn’t smiling.

“Absolutely. And if you think I don’t know how many sweets Mihir snuck in your plate, you’re grossly underestimating me, my dear,” she threatened with love. She was so Mihir’s mom!

When we arrived at my hotel, Aunty said, “Walk her to the room, Mihir.”

Mihir had already put the gear into park under the portico and was half way out of the car before she finished the sentence. Grateful that I’d get a moment alone with Mihir, I bid his parents goodbye.

“I hope to see you soon, beta,” Aunty said with love.

“Me too, Aunty,” I said before I stepped out of the car and closed the door with a soft slam.

“Are you not going to talk to me at all?” I asked in a quiet voice as Mihir and I walked in through the automatic doors.

“Isn’t this what you wanted?” He stunned me with his curt reply. “Do you have the key?”

I nodded.

The hotel lobby was deserted and quiet, barring the gentle sound of the indoor fountain. I watched him, looking regal in his green sherwani, like a king sauntering through his kingdom, as if he owned every piece of land that he was treading on. We took the elevator, its soft roar gliding us up to the fifth floor.

Mihir was adamant about holding his silence, and I gave him no pleasure by trying to initiate another conversation. As we neared my room, I pulled out the keycard from my clutch.

He waited until I had stepped in and flipped the master switch. Multiple dim lights illuminated the room all the way to the balcony beyond the bed.

“Thank you,” I said, trying to avoid looking at his grumpy face.

“You don’t need to. I did it for Mom,” he retorted.

“Enough with the sulking. I apologized, didn’t I? And may I remind you that we both agreed to reassess the relationship if it got messy? In fact, you were the one who suggested it. It doesn’t get more unwieldy than your ex calling me names, does it?”

“Again, if you had stayed, you would have heard my response.”

“So I don’t even get the benefit of walking away with a bit of my dignity intact?”

“But you did walk away. Without giving me a chance to prove that you didn’t need to in the first place.”

This conversation was going nowhere, except hurting us both.

“Mihir—”

He stepped closer, leaving but a few inches between us. “One thing you should know, Sona,” he said, the warmth from his body catching me off guard. “I will allow nothing and no one in this world to hurt you, and that includes me. So if this is what you want, you’ll have it.”

What I wanted was for him to stay, hold me in his arms, and tell me that I meant just as much to him as he did to me. If I allowed him to walk away today, I knew I would never have him back. I couldn’t let him walk away. If he wasn’t accepting my apologies, maybe there was one chip I could cash in.

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