Page 52 of Born in Grief

“Your building is called Sea View Manor,” she said, clearly having heard him walk up since she hadn’t turned to look at him.

“It is,” he confirmed, holding one mug out to her. She turned slowly, taking the steaming hot mug from his hand, her fingers grazing his, an accidental touch but one that had them both holding their breath for a fraction of a second.

“Where’s the sea view Aatre?” she asked, a small smile teasing her full lips, the still healing scar in the bottom one pulling a little at the movement. His gut clenched at the sight.

“Well,” he forced himself to speak normally. “If you stand on your tip toes, lean at a forty five degree angle to the right and then dip only your head by twenty degrees, you can see a sliver of the ocean.”

A laugh escaped her, a full bodied, deep throated laugh that had his gut unclenching. “So, it’s actually Sea Sliver Manor.”

Amay grinned, taking a sip of his own coffee. “It is what it is, Princess. Ishaan has a brilliant view from the penthouse.”

“So what made you buy a flat with a glimpse of a sliver of the ocean?” She leaned back in her chair, her hair dancing in the humid breeze that wafted over them.

“My friends are here,” he said simply. “They are here and there is nowhere else I want to be.”

She looked over at him, pushing her sunglasses up to the top of her head, her eyes bright with emotion he couldn’t quite decipher. “You’re a lucky man, Dr. Aatre.”

He thought of his friends and everything they’d gone through together. He thought of the battles they’d fought, the ones they’d lost and the ones they’d won. And he thought of the price it had all come at.

“Yes,” he said quietly. “I am a very lucky man.”

He’d walked through fire with his friends at his side and he’d do it again a hundred times over, no questions asked, if it meant Virat and Ishaan being a part of his life.

“Do you ever wonder…” her words trailed off as her gaze snagged with his.

He swallowed, wanting to but unable to look away. “Wonder what?” he asked huskily.

“Do you ever wonder what life would have been like if we’d ended up together?”

The breeze stilled, sound receding from the world, almost like a bubble had ensconced them. A bubble that kept everyone out, that gave them a world that was only theirs. A sliver of the ocean, just for them.

“Do you ever wonder, Amay, what life would have been like if we lived in a world in which you were mine?”

He stared at her, unable to find the words that could form a response to her question. Instead, he asked one of his own.

“Do you ever wonder?”

“Always. From the day I left to today.” She held his gaze, let him see her truth. “Every day. Every minute. Every second. I have done nothing but wonder.”

Chapter Thirty-One

DHRITHI

“There isn’t any point in dwelling on what ifs.”

His matter-of-fact words slammed through her, shattering the hope she hadn’t known she’d carried in her heart, so deeply buried that it had required almost dying to bring it to the light.

“Of course.” She took a sip of her coffee trying to hide her devastation from his astute gaze. She thought she heard him sigh but she didn’t look up, keeping her eyes on that sliver of supposed ocean.

Amay sat down beside her, his long legs resting on the metal railing that hemmed in the balcony.

“We were children,” he said after a beat of silence.

She turned to look at him now. “Does that mean our feelings didn’t matter?”

“Of course it mattered.” He met her gaze. “It mattered then. It just doesn’t matter now.”

She wondered why that hurt so much. Her husband, the man who was supposed to love her above all else, had hurt her in ways she couldn’t have even imagined. And yet, he’d never hurt her heart. For she’d never felt this ache before. This anguished yearning for a life she could have had, one she’d shoved away with her own hands.

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