They stared at each other for some time like that, with his hand in hers. Neither of them would admit what they were thinking… what they were feeling. But the elephant sitting in the middle of the room was a little too conspicuous.
Marley bit her lip. “I suppose there could be abenefitto us not having a professional relationship anymore.”
Nikhil exhaled. “Okay. Yeah, that’s what I was thinking.”
“I… um… really?”
He chuckled, looking down at their connected hands. “Uh, yeah. I have definitely thought about the fact that if I wasn’t your client, and if you weren’t in a boatload of pain, then us being in the same house alone for two weeks could have gone very differently.”
“I… I am in a lot of pain, but I’m getting better.” She smiled. “And… I may have a crush on the movie star living in my house.”
Nikhil smiled widely, and it was so… breathtaking. He made her feel so warm and tingly that she wondered if maybecrushwasn’t a strong enough word. It was how she felt when they were kids, and she saw how hard he worked to keep her mind off her aunt’s illness in chemistry. When she realized that there was no one in the school as sweet as Nikhil Shamdasani. She wasn’t mad about him ghosting her back then anymore. They were literally kids, and he needed to get out of his parents’ house to become the person he was now. And she’d ghosted him, too. And now they may have another chance.
“Well, I’ve had a crush on you since grade-eleven cooking class,” he said.
Marley smiled. “You didn’t see me for almost a decade.”
He chuckled, looking down. “That doesn’t mean I didn’t have a crush. Hell, the first thing I did when I found you in that magazine was figure out how to see you again.”
Marley raised a brow. “You mean asking me to be your stylist was just because you had the hots for me?”
He faced her, shaking his head. “No. It was because I needed someone on my team who actually…likedme. Knew me. Wouldn’t treat me like trouble, or a goofball, or a basket case. And you always had the best fashion sense. Having the hots for you maybe had some influence, though.” He turned his hand so he could lightly run his fingers over her palm.
Marley blinked. If it was true, and he’d never lost the feelings he’d caught when they were teenagers, then his feelings now weren’t just because of his mental state or because they were together at such a heavy time for them both. She looked at their hands. His were broad and somehow muscular. What exactly was Reggie making him do in boot camp every day that hishandswere getting buff? And hers was long and pale. Because she’d barely left the house in weeks. Because her body was healing.
“Nikhil, this… this is incredibly bad timing for you and me to start something.”
His free hand started moving, trailing up her arm. “If you mean because I can’t maul you… that’s fine with me. I’ll maul you later.” His smile was huge.
She shook her head. “No, it’s because… later, when I’m healthy and can actually move again, you’ll be filming your incredibly intense movie. Then you’ll go back to LA andeventually be whisked away for a worldwide publicity tour. You’ll be a movie star. You can do so much better than just a shopgirl.”
He frowned. “You are Mahreen Kamal—the most gorgeous, the classiest, the hottest girl in our high school. There is no better out there. Believe me. I’ve looked.”
“I’m… complicated.” In so many ways. She was a private person, and she couldn’t live his public life. Plus… there was the other thing. The big, bad thing that she hadn’t ever talked to him about.
Even after having this surgery and reducing her breast cancer risk, her bodywouldfail her one day. This defective gene also gave her a high risk for ovarian cancer, so she was planning on having her ovaries removed within a decade, and that would cause other issues for her body. Surgical menopause could affect her heart, her bones, even her appearance. She had no idea if she wanted to, or if she evenshould, have kids before that. And of course, she could develop cancer before that surgery. And she had other increased cancer risks that couldn’t be reduced. It was her fate, and she had to live with it. But it was too much to expect someone else to deal with it, too.
Marley was complicated. She wasn’t exactly a catch.
“My body…”
“Is beautiful.”
She shook her head. “But it’s notworking. I could still get sick. I—”
“And I could fall off that building when I film the rooftop fight scene. Lifeisrisk. All we can do is manage it the best we can. You had the surgery to manage your risk.”
“But managing risks has its own costs. And there are risks I can’t do anything about.”
“Marley, I’d never run away because of your health.”
Of course he wouldn’t. He wasn’t a monster… He was the sweetest man in the world. But how well did she know him, really? Maryam Aunty presumablythoughtshe knew her husband, the husband who ran for the hills the first night that his wife couldn’t make him chai while she was sick from chemo.
She didn’t know how to tell Nikhil all this. How to make him see that she wasn’t the person he saw in front of him. The idealized Mahreen he’d held on a pedestal for the last decade didn’t exist. The real Marley came with way, way too much baggage.
“Marley,” he said. “Wouldn’t dealing with all of life’s uncertainty and bad shit be easier with someone?”
It certainly had been easier having Nikhil with her for the last two weeks. His fingers were lightly playing on her arm, and it was making her feel warm and giving her chills at the same time.
