Her cheeks turned red. Anger filled her gaze. “You know what? I’m tired of you constantly baiting me about that night, so let me clarify this once and for all. That night was a mistake.” She lowered her tone. “The biggest mistake of my life. I was drunk, and I took things too far with you. Do you really think if I were in my senses, I’d have slept with an asshole like you? You sit there looking smug and arrogant, but for what? What is your claim to fame?” She spread a hand out. “Look around you. Everyone here has earned their place at this table. Everyone. And then there’s you, sitting here simply because you’re Keya’s brother. You pretend to be one of us when you never will be. You go about life living in luxury, spending your sister’s money like it’s yours to burn, when you’ve never achieved anything other than a free entry to Sehgal Media thanks to her and my grandfather.”
Her cruel words landed like a blow. Shock gave way to something fiercer as anger and hurt coiled tightly around his chest. Is that what she thought about him? Dismissing that night as a mistake was one thing, but to reduce him to nothing more than a parasite living off his sister’s success was something else entirely.
“You should be careful, Shauna,” he said quietly. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, I knowexactlywhat I’m talking about,” she shot back. “You move through the world as if luxury is your birthright when everyone knows it isn’t. Case in point: the absurdly luxurious suite at Marina Bay Sands that night in Singapore. And the outrageously expensive black Aston Martin you drive… obviously all indulgences paid for by Keya.”
Fuck. His blood was boiling now. How dare she speak to him like that? He let out a slow breath, but even that didn’t help incontrolling his raging emotions. It shouldn’t have mattered what she thought of him, yet it did.
He downed his wine in a single swallow. “So that’s what you think of me? That I am a liability? A leech?”
“Your words, not mine.”
If she had any idea… If she knew even a fraction of the truth, she wouldn’t be looking at him with that kind of contempt in her eyes. God, he was an idiot. Once again, she’d tried to make him feel small and unimportant. Nothing had changed with her.Shewas just the same.
Perhaps her harsh words were just the reminder he needed to walk away from her once and for all. No more being intrigued by her, no more bantering, and no more trying to rile her up. He was done with her.
“Believe whatever makes it easier for you,” he said flatly. “You seem very good at that.”
He didn’t wait for her response. He rose and walked away. Under any other circumstances, he would have left altogether. But this was his sister’s anniversary celebration, so instead he headed toward the Kids’ zone to meet his nephew and niece. He refused to let Shauna’s bitterness cast a shadow over a night that mattered to Keya.
Besides, he wasn’t the man Shauna had painted him to be. He was a man shaped by a harsh past and driven by a destiny he had been born to embrace. Besides, he knew no one at that table thought poorly of him. No one except her. And he was done with her.
Shauna Sehgal was indeed a mistake.Hismistake.
And this time, he told himself, he would forget her for good.
3
The alarm clock by her bedside blinked 7:00 a.m. in sharp red digits.
Shauna stared at it for a long moment, disoriented, as if the numbers might rearrange themselves and grant her another hour of sleep. They didn’t.
She hadn’t really slept last night. Thanks tohim, and thanks to her harshly spoken words to him. God, she was such an idiot. Once again, she’d let her anger get the better of her. She never should’ve said those cruel words to Akash. The memory of them made her wince even now.
In that moment, she’d been so exasperated with him for forcing her to talk about that night that she had lashed out in the easiest way possible. She’d chosen the one thing she knew would wound him, and she had said it without hesitation.
Because if he was hurt, he would stop asking questions. If he was angry, he wouldn’t see how flustered she truly was about that night. She didn’t want him to know how deeply it had affected her. How deeplyhehad affected her. How sometimes, in the quietest moments, she still remembered the way he had touched her with an intensity that had felt almost reverent.The way he’d held her as if nothing else existed. As if she had mattered.
Which she knew wasn’t true. She didn’t matter to him in the least. He’d made that clear years ago. Akash had hurt her once before, and for some inexplicable reason, he still had the power to hurt her again. That was what frightened her the most.
She grabbed a pillow and flung it over her face with a frustrated groan.
Hurting people wasn’t in her nature. She was a good person, yet this one man always brought out the worst in her.
Years ago, just when she had begun to believe they might become something more, he had started dating another woman, casting her aside as if she’d never mattered to him at all. She had learned her lesson after that. She stayed away from him whenever she could, and whenever circumstances forced them into the same room, her words turned sharp and icy.
For a long time, they’d barely crossed paths. Then she joined Sehgal Media in London and discovered he worked there too. She’d hated that. Hated seeing him in her space, in a business she’d always hoped would one day belong to her.
From that point on, things between them had only deteriorated further. Their relationship had settled into a familiar pattern, one that was sharp, distant, and cutting. The hostility between them had rarely softened over the years, until that one night in Singapore, when the attraction between them had unexpectedly flared back to life. After that, she had done her best to stay away from him, until last night and the ill-spoken words she’d thrown at him.
Pulling the pillow off her face, she turned onto her side, staring at the faint line of light slipping through the curtains. She regretted what she’d said to him. She truly did. It shouldn’t matter to her how he lived his life or whether his sister funded it.It was no business of hers. She ought to have walked away from him instead of allowing her anger to get the better of her.
In the past, Akash had always given as good as he got from her. But last night… the look on his face, that brief, unguarded flicker of hurt before anger had taken over, had followed her into the dark. It had kept her awake for way too long. And when she had finally drifted off, sleep had been restless, broken by fragments of memory and regret.
She shouldn’t care what he thought or how he felt. She shouldn’t care how deeply her words had wounded him. But she did. And now, after hurting him the way she had, she was beginning to realize that, perhaps she’d never truly stopped caring.
Fuck, she was an idiot indeed.
