Page 35 of The Surprise Bollywood Baby

Without answering her, Virat leaped from the bed, as if she’d caged him for too long. His sweatpants hung low on his lean lips as he turned away from her.

And Zara knew then. Two things hit her in the face. Hard and fast. Almost crushing her under their weight. “You don’t trust me at all, do you? After everything we’ve said and done the past few weeks? After all this time? At least have the guts to say it to my face, Virat.”

He turned then and she saw the truth in his eyes. “Let’s talk about the scene, Zara.”

Zara threw away the pages in her hand, with a fervor that her character, Mayavati, would have admired. “No, Virat. Let’s talk about the one thing we’ve both avoided for long enough. Let’s talk about why it’s so hard to fathom for your brilliant brain that you’re one of only two men I can absolutely trust in this world? That my friendship with your brother has eaten away at you for ten long years?”

“Don’t, Zara,” he said, a slow fury awakening in his eyes. It etched itself onto his features, and even then, Zara’s heart only marveled at how beautiful he was in the moment. How so very breathtaking he was, how deeply he could feel...how much she wanted to hold him and press her face into that warm chest. How much she never wanted to let him go.

“Don’t what, Virat?”

“Don’t talk about trust as if this was a remotely normal relationship. As if this is anything more than a convenient fling for both of us,” he gritted out.

“It started as that, yes, but I was just kidding myself. This is the first relationship I’ve had in ten years. Ten long years where I didn’t lack for interest from men. Good men, even. I’ve already made my peace with the fact that you’re the only man I can let my guard down with. That you’re the only one I can let close, even if it’s just nothing but a fling.

“And that I can’t stand for you to look at me with that same contempt you show the entire world.”

“I don’t.”

“Yes, you do. I told you, Virat. I know you better than anyone else. I know how deeply you feel things. I know you’re nothing like the superficial playboy you show the world. I...know you, Virat.”

“Leave it alone, Zara.”

“I can’t. I’d rather you call me the vilest names you can think of to my face than blow hot and cold with me. I can’t take it when you look at me as if I’m a stranger to you.”

He closed his eyes and looked away. “Because you are.”

“No, I’m not.” And then Zara asked the question she’d wanted to from the first moment he’d taunted her. “Why do you think I traded you for Vikram, as you called it?”

“Damn it, Zara! Because you did. You built your entire career on the back of your relationship with me, using me to get to him. I tried to...” He pushed his fingers through his hair roughly. “I understand how hard it is to get traction in this industry. I...know that.

I expected that kind of behavior from everyone else. I grew up amid it. But you...” He looked at her then and Zara gasped at the pain etched deep into those familiar features. “I thought the world of you. I...but you simply cashed it all in.”

Zara felt his words like a slap. She’d pushed him to this, she’d foolishly wanted to break down the barrier that their past had left between them. She’d wanted more. And yet, his accusation stole the ground from under her. She wished she could simply walk away from this. From him. From the past.

But she couldn’t. She wouldn’t sleep a wink or function like a normal human being while he thought the worst of her. She was done fighting the power this man had over her. Done questioning why her heart beat a thousand times louder near him. Why he meant so much to her.

She folded her arms, bracing herself for more. “Is that what you think I did?”

“Please don’t pretend. I can forgive you anything except the pretense that you didn’t take money from my mother to leave me. And that she didn’t pull a number of strings behind the scenes to land you that role with Bhai—the one that launched your career, the one that started your friendship with Bhai, as a bonus payment for leaving me.”

Zara had no idea how she managed to stay upright. How she didn’t launch herself at him, screaming that it was all lies. Big, fat lies. That there were reasons why she’d left him but they had nothing to do with money or her relationship with Vikram. That Virat was the only man who brought her alive. Who made her take risk after risk with her battered heart. “And you know this how?” she asked calmly, already knowing the answer.

“Mama told me that you’d struck a deal with her. That when she approached you, all you could talk about was how much you’d wanted to land a role in Bhai’s movie. How desperate you were that your career wasn’t going anywhere...”

She flinched but fired back, “You knew what my career meant to me, Virat. So is it my ambition that you’re holding against me? Because, if it is, it makes you worse than all the other men floating around.”

“No,shahzadi,” he said, and Zara wondered if he even realized how he was addressing her. “Don’t lay that sin at my feet. You thinking Bhai was a better bet for your career...skewered me, yes. But that was the truth back then. I was nothing and he was everything.

“But what bothers me, as much as I try to get over it, is the fact that you used our relationship to do it, Zara. It was your bargaining chip with my mother. It turned everything into a transaction. It tainted everything we had.

“It was worse than losing you...to him.”

“He never had me, Virat. Don’t you get that?”

“I know that, Zara. Now. But I was an angry twenty-year-old who thought you were rejecting me for him.”

“But that’s not true. Don’t you understand that there’s a reason I found my way back to you again?”

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