AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I didn’t even know until I was too far along that I was pregnant. And then when I did find out I hid it from everyone. It became this strange obsession I began to focus on. That man was long gone. Especially after I told him that our wealth was nothing but a smoke screen.” Anya rubbed at her eyes. “Sometimes I see Meera and I think... God, how naive was I to just fall for a predator like that?”
“From everything I gather, you didn’t have the easiest childhood. The tales of your parents’ escapades are still talked about now. It’s not a jump to believe you were looking for some attention and fell prey to the wrong guy. Meera, on the other hand...”
“Has had the most wonderful upbringing. And she has you uprooting your life and moving to another country just so she could try her chance at acting. If I ever decide to have a child again, that’s the kind of...” Heat climbing her cheeks, Anya let the words fly away from her lips.
“Shouldn’t you consider that before you throw proposals willy-nilly at the first man you like?”
Anya tried to not take his brusque tone personally. “What do you mean?”
“That you should know what a man can give you and can’t give you before you propose.” He sighed and closed his eyes. “Rani and I lost entire years trying to conceive. She went through so much, mentally and physically. Our relationship never quite recovered.” She saw his Adam’s apple move, as if the admission was still painful. “You should know, Anya, marriage and children and love...those aren’t things I believe in anymore.”
Her heart thudded at the flatness of his words. He wasn’t simply warning her away. There was a well of pain in his heart. “I didn’t mean to bring up painful memories for you.” She cleared her throat, trying to make her way through the tension between them. “Simon, about having a child... I was daydreaming. Until you...and Meera came along, I never gave a thought to the shape of my future. I had no particular dreams.”
“When did you tell your family about the pregnancy?” he asked, cutting her off.
Anya wanted to push the issue. Tell him what she’d realized in the last three days. That she’d take a casual affair with him in the present. For however long it lasted. Especially now that Meera knew a version of the truth about them. But the tight lines around his mouth made her back off.
“I didn’t tell them,” Anya said, picking up the thread of her own past. “I collapsed one evening—my blood pressure was dangerously high—and Vikram found me. I don’t think he or Virat recovered from that for a long time. I know they blamed themselves for not looking after me better.”
His dark eyes full of understanding, Simon simply listened. And for him, because she wanted him to know this, Anya went on. Just this one time. “I got medical attention after that but things really didn’t improve. My body and mind felt so...disconnected. And I went into a very deep depression.”
“And after you gave birth?”
Anya sighed. “That was another disaster. I lost a lot of blood and nearly went into a coma. Vikram spent the weeks leading up to the due date talking to me about adoption. Promised that he had a friend who’d reassured him that the baby would go to parents who absolutely wanted her. He spent hours and hours with me, telling me I was too young, too unwell. That it was a responsibility I just wasn’t ready for, and that I needed to look after myself first.
“I finally relented—especially after the doctor told us that it was going to be a difficult birth. I held her for a little while, looking at her darling little face, but I was still hemorrhaging so they had to take me away.”
Simon clasped her hand in his.
“When I became conscious two days later, she was gone. That depressive episode continued for a long time. For years, the only thing I remember feeling was this...irrational anger toward Vikram. But he never held it against me.”
“So you’re saying I should give even more credit to the far-too-full-of-himself Vikram Raawal?”
Anya smiled, her heart warming up at the fact that that’s exactly what Simon intended to do. “His heart’s always been in the right place.”
His thumb traced the plump veins on the back of her hand. “I’m glad he looked after you. What you went through...was incredibly hard. Rani would’ve wanted me to thank you for giving us such a wonderful gift.”
“It didn’t feel like that at the time. I didn’t even have time to bond with her properly...it felt like my heart was breaking.”
He nodded, his deep brown eyes searching for something in hers. Before Anya could figure out what it was, he let her hand go. “Thank you for sharing that with me. I can’t imagine how painful it must be to talk about it.”
His words felt formal, practiced, as if he was establishing distance between them again. As if he needed to pull back from the intimacy her shared secret had suddenly woven around them.
“What are we going to tell her?” Anya asked, feeling super tired but determined to get this over with. “Should we say I had...kind of a breakdown and you had to play my knight in shining armor? That it wasn’t romantic so much as an obligation? That you...”
He scowled so fiercely that she clasped her elbows in opposite hands. “What?”
“There’s no obligation between us, Anya. Sooner or later, she’s going to realize that I’m insanely attracted to you.”
Simon wanted her. Maybe even with the same desperation that she wanted him. But he clearly wasn’t happy about it. In fact, sometimes Anya got the feeling that he was downright angry that it wasshehe’d found himself drawn to.
She didn’t understand that. Because not once had he ever hinted—by word or gesture—that he didn’t like her. That he didn’t respect her.
After dealing with emotionally closed off men—her father and even her brothers to an extent—for most of her life, Simon’s openness and honesty was like a breath of fresh air. And yet...the more he learned about her, the more he seemed to want to pull away.
Slowly, he extended his hand toward her face, as if he didn’t want to spook her, and waited. Only when she nodded did he clasp her cheek in his broad palm.
Holding his gaze, Anya leaned into the simple touch. Her breath stuttered as the pad of his thumb rubbed back and forth. Again and again. He didn’t lean in or pull her toward him, didn’t turn the touch into something sexual. Neither did he let her go. For long minutes, they stood like that, her thigh leaning against the side of his. Her lungs full of his woodsy scent.
