Page 38 of Born in Grief

“Well not me personally,” Amay replied. “Ishaan knows nothing. But Virat? Yeah, he kind of is a know-it-all.”

Dhrithi laughed, a watery chuckle and finally pulled her head back far enough to look at him. Amay moved one wet lock of hair away from her damp, tear-soaked cheek. And for a moment, time stood still.

She stared up at him, those big, dark eyes somehow bigger and more luminous in her thin, pale face. She’d lost so much weight with her recent ordeal that her skin stretched tight over her bones.

“Dhriths-“

She reached up, her fingers coming to rest on his parted lips, silencing whatever he’d been about to say. His heart stopped before starting again, a shuddering beat that threatened to crack through his rib cage. One touch and she’d erased the years they’d lived without each other, one touch and she’d wiped out their tortured history, one touch and she’d made him believe again; in hope, in redemption, in second chances.

His head dipped instinctively, drawn toward her like a magnet, and hers tilted in response. For a breathless moment, they hovered, lips a whisper apart. Shock filtered through him, mirrored on her own face and they shoved away from each other, ending up on opposite ends of the kitchen.

“We, umm.” Amay shoved a hand through his hair. “Should ask the guys to come back in.”

Dhrithi nodded dumbly, apparently completely at a loss for words. Amay tapped out a message on their group and a few minutes later, Virat and Ishaan sauntered in. Both came to a dead halt in the middle of the hall, their eyes darting from Amay to Dhrithi and back.

“What’s going on?” Ishaan frowned. “Did you two make out or fight? Either way, the energy is off.”

Virat sighed. “Is there ever a time you don’t just say whatever is on your mind?”

“Nope.” Ishaan hopped onto the counter beside Amay, his grin cocky and unrepentant.

Amay rolled his eyes, but Dhrithi’s voice pulled his attention back to her.

“Amay says you can help me,” Dhrithi said, her voice low and steady as she looked at Virat. “But I don’t even know why I need help.”

Virat smiled reassuringly. “Let’s start there, shall we?”

Chapter Twenty-Three

DHRITHI

Dhrithi sat down in a solo chair in the drawing room, facing the three men. She was a writhing mass of anxiety and stress, her heart setting an unsteady, rapid rhythm that did nothing to help.

“Virat Jha,” she said, her mind still spinning over the fact that she was sitting across from them, The Three Musketeers. It’s what she’d called them in her head back in school. Always together, always each other’s fiercest defenders, and they’d needed to be because they’d needed a lot of defending back then. And look at them now…

Virat inclined his head, a small smile on that ridiculously good-looking face of his.

“You’ve had work done, haven’t you?” she asked, her brain still feeling like it was riding its own personal rollercoaster.

A loud hoot of laughter drew her gaze from Virat’s startled face to Ishaan’s amused one.

“No, I haven’t.” Virat sounded monumentally offended.

“Really?” Surprise darkened her tone as she looked back at him. “You just naturally look like this? That’s pretty unreal.”

Virat darted a sideways glance at Amay who was fighting a smile. “Exactly what drugs are you pumping her with?”

Amay shook his head. “None that could account for this.”

“It’s all you my friend,” Ishaan said, snorting with laughter. “Your animal magnetism is the best drug there is.”

“Shut up Ish,” Amay and Virat chorused.

“So, Dhrithi.” Virat turned to her, his smile disappearing. “Do you know what Varun was into?”

Her heart did its little hiccupping gallop in her chest again. She’d spent so many years keeping Varun’s secrets and hiding his many flaws, that she didn’t know how to stop. She opened her mouth, but no sound came out.

“If I’m going to help you, we can’t have secrets between us,” Virat told her. “I need the truth. Your truth. What was Varun into?”

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