A Change of Heart (25 page)

He stood too, instinctively taking a few steps back so he wasn't crowding her. She wrapped her arms around herself in a gesture that was becoming too familiar.

She had fallen back into the horrors that trapped her just as he had.

What a pair they made.

“It was . . .” Her head fell forward, defeated. She wanted to say something, but she didn't know how. He knew the feeling.

He wished he could touch her again. Do something to comfort her. He pushed his hands deep in his pockets and held them there.

“Listen, Jess. I'm . . .” She looked up at him then, and he knew she didn't want him to apologize. But how could he not? After last night. After she'd opened up to him, let him close, how had he pushed her like that? He fisted his hands inside his pockets, squeezing out the insane feel of her on his hands. Touching her had felt just—God, where were the words for how touching her had felt?

She took a trembling breath. She was hurting, and here he was thinking about how good touching her felt. “I should never have done that. I won't touch you like that again. I swear.”

Her golden gaze met his. Her lashes were still wet and clumped together into spikes. Relief burned in her eyes.

Yes, that thing burning in her eyes, it had to be relief.

32

 

—Dr. Jen Joshi

 

 

W
hat kind of idiot was she? First, she'd told him. Then, she'd allowed herself to be comforted by him, craved his touch. Then she'd gone mad when he'd touched her. No wonder he never wanted to touch her again. The one time in all her life something had felt so good, so right, and she had ruined it.

How long was it going to tie her up? How long was she going to let those bastards keep her from feeling things? From living.

She wanted to live. She wanted to feel what he made her feel. Even though she knew exactly why he wanted her. Even though she had no delusions. She wanted him. The Nikhil in the pictures at his parents' house, the surgeon who could rattle off the names of diseases as if they were foods he ate every day, the man whose need to comfort others trumped everything, that man was only reaching for her because she was broken and he needed to fix things. At long last, he could bear to fix things.

Whatever it was, it was like nothing she had felt before, and it made her greedy. And she wanted it. Whatever part of him she could have, she wanted.

She watched him pack all those CDs back into their boxes and panic bubbled inside her. They couldn't leave. They hadn't found the evidence.

She followed him and started helping, but what she wanted was to reach for him and take him back to before she had let her past take everything away from her again. To where they still had time.

“You okay?” he asked.

Or maybe he didn't say it, just looked at her as if the question was all he cared about.

His eyes, they hooked into her, and she couldn't look away.

“Nikhil, I—”

“This is it. This is the last of Jen's stuff, our stuff. There's nothing more. Two years of being with her, and in two days we've trudged through it all.”

“We'll find it. It has to be somewhere.” Somehow she knew they were going to find it. She knew it was close. So close she could feel it.

“What kind of asshole waits two years? What kind of asshole doesn't know where his wife might have hidden something she wanted him to find?”

He picked up a box and turned it over. Then another, then another. Dumping out the CDs they'd just put away, watching them spread across the bed. His hands sweeping through them.

“Nikhil, stop, we've looked in all these boxes and it's not here. Stop.”

“I asked her if anything was wrong, and she looked me in the eye and lied to me. And then she was gone and it all felt like a lie. Everything. All those people we had treated. All those places, all our faith and enthusiasm, it all felt like a joke. What kind of man spends two years wallowing in self-pity when he should've been going after the fuckers who did this to her?”

The kind of man who knew he couldn't bring her back. The kind of man who knew nothing could change what had happened. Nothing could reverse it. “You want to now. You can get them now.”
For you, it's not too late.

“Yes, but how, if I can't find it?” He threw a desperate glance at the mess on the bed. “I let them get away with it. I let more people die, because I was too much of a coward.”

“Nikhil, you were not a coward.”

“Not a coward? The cop told me. He told me they were killing people. And all I could think about was how nothing I did would change anything. I let them go.”

At least he hadn't sold his soul to let them go. Sold himself. She slid closer to him and stroked his dry cheek. They had reversed roles. His tears were gone, leaving only anger. Her anger was gone, leaving only tears.

He grabbed her hand, clung to it as if it were a lifeline. “I should have gone after them. I should have fought for justice.”

A laugh escaped her and it stopped him. For the hundredth time, she watched his focus moved outward, away from his own hurt and into hers. “What about you? Didn't you care about catching those men, punishing them?”

She took her hand back. “Justice wasn't a luxury I could afford.”

He held her face in both hands and pulled her close, his forehead touching hers.

“Stop calling it that. Don't call it a luxury. Don't.”

She hated that her tears spilled into his hands. “You didn't do anything because you were in too much pain. I didn't do anything because they bought me off.” She tried to pull away. But he didn't let her go.

“I sold myself. I sold my justice. I took their money and I negotiated for more. For a job in Mumbai. In return for silence.”

She had been the girl who kneed that shopkeeper in the balls for feeling her up. She'd been the girl who lured the whore dealer her uncle had sold her to into the bathroom at Siliguri bus station and locked him in there and helped four girls escape. But they had broken her. In every way it was possible to break a person, those two had broken her in that car.

They'd finally turned her into the powerless, spineless whore they saw her as. And here she was, whoring herself again. Selling herself to the bastard who would take away any chance Nikhil had left at retribution.

“Jess. You were alone. You had to take care of yourself.”

“Don't, Nikhil. Please don't.” She couldn't bear for him to forgive her before he even knew the extent of her crime. To absolve her. To make excuses for her. She pushed herself away from him. Stepped away. Why couldn't she stop shaking? Why did she want to tell him everything? Because she couldn't. Not when they had Joy.

The weight of her secrets swelled in her chest, pushing at the damned scar as if they could rip past it. Escape and set her free.

He stepped closer. “You had the strength to start over. To make a decision to get past what they did.”

This time her laugh edged hysteria. It was laced with such self-loathing that she sounded just as insane as she felt. “Strength? Decision?” As if weakness had been a choice. As if anything in her life had ever been a bloody choice. “Yes, so much strength, two men could push me into a car, and it took only one to hold me down.” More of that maniacal laughter spilled from her. “One of them drove. Can you believe that? I was so bloody strong that it took one man in a driving car to tear me in half?”

“I'm going to break my promise to you,” he said, stepping closer behind her and wrapping his arms around her.

Instead of stepping away she leaned into his touch. Those bastards were closing in around her, and Nikhil touched her, and instead of screaming and kicking at him she sank into him.

Finally, when he spoke, his voice was as gentle as his touch. “Jess, you got past it. Look at you, you're this great mother. You're here fighting for Jen. You didn't even know her.”

She slid out of his arms and twisted around. “That, what happened back there.” She jabbed a finger at the bed. “How is that being past it?”

His eyes saw so much she wanted to cover up. She wanted to cower. But with her gaze locked with his she couldn't.

“They're everywhere, Nikhil. They're still inside me.”

But she didn't want them to be. No more. She couldn't breathe. She wanted to breathe. Just one breath. Please. “I can't even let anyone touch me. I'm twenty-five years old and I'm dead. Unable to feel.”

He cupped her cheek. “I know you feel this.” He dropped the whisper of a kiss on her lips. “I know you feel this.”

She slammed her lips into him.

She grabbed his head, his face, hunted him with her mouth, tried to take it, hoard it, but she couldn't reach what she wanted.

He let her go at it, not pulling away. Finally, the exhaustion of it, the futility, made her stumble back. He kept one hand cupped around the nape of her neck, his fingers on her telling her where she was.

“I don't want to feel them between us. They're still here. I don't want them here.”

* * *

After she gouged out the words from what had to be the deepest place inside her, she just stood there, her eyes gleaming windows that looked out into nothing but darkness, her gaze pinned to a spot on the floor where she still seemed to see long-ago things.

Pain rolled around inside him, old hard pain, new fresh pain.

She shifted her stare to her hands, but the horrors of what they had done to her moved with her gaze and seemed to dance on her palms. Open, face-up palms, a universal plea.

He squeezed his eyes shut. Before him was Jess's helplessness. Behind his closed lids, Jen lay bleeding beneath the murderous thrusts.

He looked back at Jess. She met his gaze, her effort in meeting his eyes Herculean.

The moment danced before him. Life. He could reach for it, or he could curl back into himself and continue to die.

Then just like that, she was inches from him. Her own pain put away. She took his hand. Movement meant existence. She laid his hand on her chest. On the braided scar that sliced her in half.

The puckered skin nudged into his palm through the cotton of her shirt. The living reminder of Jen that had brought him back to the pain of his existence. Her heartbeat was warm and steady under his touch. Under the dead scar, she was alive. She was here. He could do nothing for Jen. But Jess, her? He could make the life she had survived count, help her take it back. Suddenly, he needed to do that more than anything else.

He pulled her close. Their breaths threaded like insidious mists, magic spells intertwining to soothe what he had never hoped to soothe. Her living breath reverberated in his ears and filled his senses. He dove into it, stealing it with his lips. The taste of her was sweet and hot and new, her gasp of arousal already familiar and all her own.

When he pulled away, her entire coiled-up strength was fierce in her gaze. He threaded the fingers of one hand in her hair, and laid his other hand flat against her scar. His past in one hand, the present in the other.

“Nikhil.” His name on her lips was at once an affirmation and a prayer. Deep furrows sank between her brows.

He kissed them away. “I won't hurt you. I swear.”

She nodded. A hint of a nod. But all her trust propelled the movement.

He pressed his lips to the delicate shell of her ear. “You tell me to stop and I'll stop.”

Her only response was stillness.

“Do you want me to stop?”

Fear trembled in her silence, in her dancer's stillness, wound tight around awareness, her entire being suspended between newborn faith and ancient hopelessness.

He removed his hands from her. She blinked up at him. Her eyes naked. Stripped of every defense. For a moment he thought she would pull away.

But she didn't.

His tigress. His dancer. His healer.

Her hands traced up his chest and wrapped around his jaw. His stubble pricked into his own skin. “What if I can't feel anything?”

Warmth tore at his heart. Tenderness uncoiled in his belly. “Didn't you feel anything just now?”

A blush crested her cheeks. She, like him, had felt too much.

He made his voice light. “So, you don't feel anything. So we'll try again. I'm okay with that.”

She smiled. And he realized he was smiling too.

“In fact, even if you do feel something, we'll have to try again, you know, just to make sure.”

This time her shoulders shook in an entirely different language. Laughter. She pressed her forehead into his chest and her sweet laughter fell against his heart.

He laid his chin on her head. “Because, you know, I'm a man of science, and you know what they say about hypothesis?” Her shoulders shook a little more. “It's all in how much you test it. We would have to be sure you felt something. We can't just make assumptions.”

Her laughter tickled his chest. He never wanted it to stop.

“It's no laughing matter. We have to be very thorough.”

She laid the sweetest kiss at the center of his chest. His breastbone. Tentative lips pressed into his heart.

“Yes. Yes, that's the perfect place to start your test.”

She looked up at him. “Will you help me? Tell me what to do?”

“No. I want you to do what you want.”

She went up on the tips of her toes, and this time she pulled his lips down to hers with such deliberate consciousness he forgot what he wanted. Forgot everything but the raw need in her lips as she gathered the scattered remains of him and pressed them together.

“Like this?” she asked against his lips, as her hand stroked his hair.

Yes.

Her breasts pressed into his chest, her nipples darts aimed straight at his heart but also at the thickening in his pants.

As soon as the insistent hardness jabbed into her, she pulled back.

He wanted to pull her back to him, kiss all that uncertainty off her face. But he fisted his hands at his sides and waited, knowing she would find him again.

Her eyes took in the action, then she looked in his eyes, and he knew she saw something in there that brought her back to him. She reached out and unfisted his hands for him and threaded her fingers through his.

* * *

That's what she wanted to say to him. She wanted to whisper it into his mouth. For all the razor sharpness of his jaw, for the rough, stubbly dents of his dimples, his lips were so very soft, she couldn't stop wanting to touch them.

Just a little bit.

She didn't know in what moment of madness she had let it happen. But there it was wrapped up in her heart. She trapped it there in that tiny space because she could never let it get bigger than that.