Page 77 of Born in Grief

“No, you didn’t! Liar!” Virat was full out laughing, chortling even as he held his sides. “If you’d kissed her, Ish and I would have heard all about it at that time, not all these years later.”

“I did,” Amay snapped. “In the baingan section.”

The minute the words left his mouth, the sheer ridiculousness of the situation hit him.

“The baingan section?” Virat wiggled his eyebrows at him, helpless laughter spilling out of him. “That seems very apt.”

Amay started to laugh, burying his face in his hands. “Shit. I’m an idiot.”

“You are,” Virat agreed good naturedly. “But that’s okay. You’re rarely one and sometimes Ishaan needs a break from being the idiot in the group.”

That set them off again, laughter filling the room and spreading through the air until finally, they calmed enough to talk again.

“What’s going on in that overthinking brain of yours?” Virat asked him.

Amay sighed. “I don’t know. My father came by the hospital and it triggered a bunch of memories. He never paid for what he did, Vir.”

“Yet.”

A single word, hard and uncompromising.

“Yet,” Amay agreed. “He’s all I have left in the world. My single, living blood relative. A murderer, a debaucherous megalomaniac, who would have killed me too if he’d managed to produce another child. Those are my genes. They should die with me.”

Virat said nothing, waiting patiently for him to excise the festering wound and lance the blistering pus inside.

“Dhrithi deserves better.”

Virat made a noncommittal noise.

“She does,” Amay insisted. “She’s been through hell already. She doesn’t need someone like me.”

“Someone like you?”

“Bad blood,” Amay said flatly. “Bad blood always outs.”

“Jeez. You’re like something out of a melodramatic Victorian novel.”

Amay stared at him. “I wouldn’t know. I’ve never read a melodramatic Victorian novel but clearly you have.”

“You don’t get to decide what Dhrithi needs,” Virat snapped, undeterred by his mockery. “She does. And she seems to have decided she needs, no, she wants you.”

“She’s confused and probably suffering from PTSD.”

“You are insufferable!” Virat groaned. “And yes, she probably is but don’t presume to know her feelings better than she herself does, you pompous dickhead.”

“But-“

“If anybody is suffering from PTSD here, it’s you, Amay. You heard your mother being murdered at the age of ten! Did you think that was something you’d just quietly heal from? Like magic?”

Amay stayed silent, his mind churning in a million different directions.

“She has scars, Ams. So do you. Do you both want to deal with each other’s shit? Or not? That’s the only question here. But get of your noble high horse, pull the poker out of your arse, and seethe situation for what it is. You have a shot with the love of your fucking life. Are you going to take it?”

Chapter Forty-Five

DHRITHI

There were ghosts in this house, alive and dead. Hushed whispers, vivid memories, and a silence that seemed to bite followed her through the house. She’d asked Ishaan if he’d like to come in and he’d flashed her his irreverent grin as he said, “Sorry Goody. You couldn’t pay me enough to set foot over the threshold of that monstrosity.”

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