Samarth touched her in public now.
Not the claiming, territorial gestures of a man marking possession—though that was still there, woven underneath—but the easy, unconscious touches of a man who simply wanted to be near his wife. His hand at her back when they entered a room. His fingers brushing hers across the breakfast table. The way he paused in passing to press his lips to the top of her head when she was writing, like the gesture was too natural to require forethought.
"My love." He'd started saying it without preamble, without occasion, the way you said the name of something you were glad exists. She'd looked up the first time, startled, and he'd looked back with complete equanimity.What?As though endearments were something he'd always offered freely.
"You called me your love," she'd said.
"Yes," he'd agreed. "I'll probably keep doing it."
She'd looked back at her laptop and smiled until her face hurt.
The family was adjusting.
Shaurya was insufferable about it—gleeful in the particular way of younger siblings who have been proven right about something important and intend to collect on this indefinitely.
"I'm just saying," he told them both at breakfast one morning, "that I knew. From very early on. I told Abhay, I told Armaan—"
"You told your friends about my marriage?" Samarth said.
"I told them it was going to work out." Shaurya was undeterred. "I have excellent instincts."
"You once bet fifty thousand rupees that a building could not be on fire and have a fully functioning sprinkler system simultaneously."
"That was one time."
"You lost."
"Dramatically," Abhay confirmed from the doorway, not looking up from his phone.
"The point," Shaurya continued with dignity, "is that I knew. About you two. I knew from the moment bhabhi threw that spoon and Bruno didn't even blink."
Nimisha laughed, and Samarth looked at her laughing, and the expression on his face made Shaurya go briefly quiet with something that was almost reverence.
Raghbir's Study - 11:34 AM
The conversation with his father happened without being arranged. Samarth came to return some documents and found Raghbir standing at the window with the look of a man who'd been waiting for an opportunity.
"You're happy," Raghbir said, without preamble.
Samarth set the documents on the desk. "Yes."
"You look different."
"I feel different."
Raghbir was quiet for a moment. "I owe her an apology. Nimisha. I allowed your mother's behavior to go unchecked for too long. I should have—" He stopped. "I was watching what was happening and telling myself it wasn't my business, which was a failure of character."
"Yes," Samarth said. "It was."
Raghbir looked at his son. "You chose well."
"I was chosen," Samarth said. "I just finally accepted it."
His father studied him with the expression of a man who had spent thirty years making difficult decisions and recognized the particular quality of peace that came from finally making the right one.
"She's good," Raghbir said. "Not just for you. She's good. A genuinely good person. In this world, that's rare."
"I know."
