Page 70 of The Promise of a Traitor

“I need the bathroom first,” Aastha said, hurrying past Amyra before she disappeared into the bathroom for the next half hour.

“What are you in such a hurry for?” Amyra called after her. “You’re not going to the café, are you?”

“No,” Aastha replied, shutting the bathroom door behind her. She met her eyes in the mirror above the sink. Dark shadows circled them, her eyes looking sunken and haunted, her hair hanging in straggling masses around her face. She brushed her teeth quickly, looking away from the hag framed in the mirror. She didn’t have time for self-pity today. She had bigger things to get through.

She sucked in a deep breath and stripped quickly, turning on the shower. She needed every ounce of her strength and will power for the meeting she had this morning.

Aastha closed her eyes and allowed the water to cascade over her, washing away the grime and fatigue from the previous night. If only it could scrub her brain clean too. She could still see Advik. His angry, devastated face was burned into her brain, every precious, bitter detail.

Tears stung the backs of her eyelids and she struggled to hold them back. Finally, when she couldn’t anymore, she gave in, sliding to the ground, allowing the tears cascading down her cheeks to mingle with the hot water beating down on her back. Shuddering, racking sobs broke from her as she wrapped her arms around herself and tried to hold herself together.

But the cracks that had formed in her the day she’d left the man she loved sleeping in his bed split apart with the pain of knowing he was lost to her forever. And no matter how hard she held on, the cracks split apart, deeper, wider…Until it felt like there was nothing left of her but fragments of a broken heart.

Chapter Forty-Three

Advik

Advik’s head was still reeling when he let himself into his house, later that afternoon. His head hurt from the lack of sleep and also from the confusing amount of history Manish had just dumped on him. If Aastha had called off the wedding because she loved him, then why hadn’t she come back to him? If she couldn’t come to New York, she could have texted, called, anything really.

Nothing made sense. Least of all the fact that even after all of the heartbreak, his stupid heart still beat only for her.

He’d almost made it to his room when he heard his father’s voice in the hall. He looked to be on a phone call. Maybe he’d walk past without stopping. A man could hope, right? But Yash looked up, caught his gaze and his lips firmed into a determined line. Advik sighed. Hope was for idiots.

Yash opened his mouth. “We need to talk,” Advik supplied before his father could say a word. Yash shut his mouth and nodded. “Let’s go,” he said, tilting his head towards Advik’s bedroom.

Resigned to his fate, Advik and his pounding head followed Yash into the bedroom. He kicked a dirty sock out of the way and cleared some books from the chair in front of his system in the corner.

“Sorry about the mess,” he mumbled. “I was in a hurry yesterday.”

In a hurry to get to the venue, to see Aastha, to get engaged to her. God, he was all kinds of an idiot.

Yash sat down on the edge of the bed and watched him in that quiet, intent way that he had. “Talk to me,” he said.

Advik sat down on the ground across from his father, his back resting against the wall. He shut his tired eyes and started to talk. He began in New York, walked through every step of the twisted, convoluted path that had brought Aastha and him to this one moment. Yash listened quietly, not interrupting, not asking questions.

“And you found out about Manish and her yesterday?” he asked when Advik finally ran out of words.

Advik nodded. A strange lightness swam through his body. Spilling the entire story had been like lancing a festering boil. It brought all the anger, shame, regret, and hurt to the surface. But it left relief in its place.

“What was the plan when you first said yes?” Yash asked. “You were angry with her then, right? Was it to punish her? Get some twisted form of revenge?”

Advik flushed with shame but he met his father’s eyes levelly and nodded.

Disappointment leached into Yash’s gaze as he processed that information. “And now,” he asked finally. “Why are you still engaged to her?”

“I can’t let go,” Advik admitted. “I don’t know what to do, Dad. I don’t know where we go from here. But I know I can’t let go of her.”

“Do you remember what you told your mother and me when we said this engagement was too soon? That this was happening too fast?”

Advik nodded. “I said I didn’t need more time to get to know her better. I already knew everything about her, more than anyone else I’ve known.”

“Maybe now,” Yash said, leaning forward and looking at his son intently. “It’s time to see how well you know yourself. I spent years blaming your mother for everything that hurt in my life. Years that I’ll never get back. Years I could have spent loving her instead. Years that I could have been happy. Loving someone is hard. Losing them is hard. You have to choose your hard.”

“Reading too many self-help books, Dad?” Advik joked weakly.

“I have to, if I have to survive this family,” Yash said feelingly. “You’ll figure this out, Adi. I have faith in you.”

“Just like you did.”