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“It’s beautiful,” I murmured, tracing the necklace that would supposedly guarantee Dev a long life. My breath caught in my throat at the thought of him putting his life in my hands, even metaphorically.
“My mother always wore one, even though hers is more traditional, mostly made of gold.” At his description, I recalled the necklace his mother wore the night before, two gold disks hanging from a thicker gold chain with more black beads woven into the design. “I thought you might want something a little more updated, a better fit between our two cultures.”
“I love it,” I reassured him, pressing the diamonds against my breastbone with my fingertips. “I…” I stumbled over my words, unsure how to verbalize the thought that had just crossed my mind. “We could’ve incorporated more Indian traditions into our wedding. I didn’t realize…”
“Nah,” Dev shook his head, brushing off the sudden, crushing concern that I’d never asked for his input about our ceremony or any traditions he might’ve wanted. “I’ve never cared much about what my wedding would look like, and I liked our wedding as it was. But growing up, the one thing I always imagined was the mangalsutra I’d tie onto my wife when we were married.” He shrugged, touching the round disk hanging from the clasp of the mangalsutra. “Now I have.”
The mangalsutra felt like a balm against my anxiety from the morning, some kind of proof that Dev was falling alongside me. The engagement ring felt like part of our bargain, proof the marriage was real to those who didn’t know any better. But the mangalsutra was special, given to me in the privacy of our home,and I couldn’t imagine an ulterior motive for giving me the jewelry he’d always imagined on his future wife unless he truly saw me as a partner.
And for the next few days, I convinced myself I was wrong. That all my anxiety and worry were for nothing, my doubt in romance books unfounded because wewerethose romance books. Dev held my hand and kissed my lips as often as he could, pulled me into his lap amid my false protests, yelling “it’s the best seat in the house!” As I laughed at our inside joke. He made sure to wrap me in layers, tugging gloves on my hands and wrapping scarves around my throat to keep my chronically-cold self warm. We laughed together alongside his friends, who continued to accept and include me without faltering.
When we were alone, Dev traced my freckles with his fingers and his tongue, drawing constellations between the dots. He blanketed my body with his, kissing me into the mattress before sliding inside me, making me come a handful of times before he even considered it. It was always sweet but intense, Dev’s jaw half-clenched as if he were holding back. But every time I considered asking, I thought of this new, fragile thing we had. Or at least, that I hoped we had. And how the wrong question or the wrong action could suddenly have everything I wanted crashing down around us.
Our first week as a married couple ended with a dinner atPorto, the newly opened sister restaurant ofMorel.Morelwas a well-known, Italian-inspired restaurant on the other side of the city that I’d never been to, considering intimate restaurants were awkward to navigate with bodyguards. But I’d heard about it - the atmosphere, the food, and more recently, the dinnerware.
Ames had been hired months ago by Maya, the chef and owner ofMorel, to complete a set of dessert plates that had helped Ames’s ceramics business become a success. The restaurant had also been where she and Alex had their firstofficial date, even if he’d had to hack into the restaurant’s reservation system to track her down.
Apparently, Ames’s dessert plates had impressed the owner so much she’d hired Ames on to do all the dishware forPorto. Part of her thank-you was a reservation for Ames, Alex, and their closest friends, of which I was apparently now a member. I’d worried about awkward tension between Ames, Wren, and me once the wedding preparations were over and we no longer had a forced common interest. But our friendship had continued to grow, and I found myself at their houses or their jobs multiple times over the past week, mostly with Dev in tow but also by myself, invited by one of the girls to hang out.
The friend group I had married into was the kind of codependent I couldn’t have even imagined growing up. I had never trusted anyone to have my cell phone number, worried it could be used against me or somehow traced back to my father. And now I used a cell phone given to me by Alex, chock full of trackers I knew he and Bex and Dev could access at any time. And somehow, I trusted them.
The rest of them clearly felt the same, having dinners multiple times over the past week now that planning my wedding no longer took up so much of their time. We usually ended up at Alex and Ames’s house, making dinner around the large island that dominated their kitchen while getting progressively drunker on the concoctions Dev whipped up.
This was the first time we’d gone to a restaurant to eat, and I had a feeling the only reason we were going out was to celebrate Ames’s completed contract with the restaurant.
Dev and I ended up getting there early, traffic miraculously thin despite it being a Friday evening. Dev parallel parked a few blocks away, squeezing between two cars in a few simple moves, and we walked the rest of the way, a comfortable silence settling between us in the dark.
My comfortin Dev’s presence had only grown with each moment spent together. And we spent most of our time together, Dev still determined to keep me safe despite a lack of attempts on my life over the past three weeks.
Alex and Bex kept me updated alongside Dev, telling me with frustration painted on their faces that no leads had turned up, no more information about me had been posted. We were at a standstill, both dreading and hoping someone would make a move to give them more clues to track down.
I was still able to work from home and keep myself busy while we waited for more information to unfold. I’d always worked part time; my father’s empire was expansive enough to keep me clothed and housed for the rest of my life without a job. But Dev was clearly used to working more hours, if his antsy, keyed-up energy was any indicator.
I’d thought of him as a golden retriever the first day we met, and now I felt like he was an under-walked dog. He was too devoted to my safety, and I didn’t want his sanity to suffer as a result. With some encouragement, he became more comfortable leaving me at Ames’s or Wren’s house, allowing John or Cian to take up the mantle while he did surveillance for another job or installed cameras into some unsuspecting target’s house.
“Aww, he did that to me once,” Ames had said with a fond smile when I’d told her where Dev had run off to after dropping me off a few days before. We were in her studio, and I watched as she formed a misshapen ball of clay into a vase, pulling the sides up as if gravity didn’t exist. “That’s how Alex and I first met, you know.”
“I don’t, actually.” I’d heard snippets of their story, mostly involving the ending: the kidnapping by Ames’s ex, how Dev and Alex had gone after him. The house Alex had bought for her, the way he’d taken her in after her ex attempted to assault her. But never the beginning, the way they’d met.
“My ex-boyfriend and his father had hired Alex and Dev to do a background check on me, since Peter wanted us to get engaged,” her nose wrinkled, as if the thought of being engaged to her asshole ex-boyfriend - whose name I literally hadn’t known until today, since everyone usually called him ‘the asshole’ - disgusted her. “Wanted to make sure I wasn’t a gold-digger, looking for Peter’s money.”
“What an asshole.”
She laughed in agreement, continuing the story as she formed the soft curves of the vase in front of her. “I was at my favorite coffee shop, and Alex strolled in behind me. He was dressed like he had money, clean-shaven with shorter hair than he has now, wearing one of his suits with an expensive-looking watch. And then he dropped a hundred dollar bill on the ground, waiting to see if I’d take it.”
“But you didn’t,” I guessed.
Ames nodded. “He looked surprised when I gave it back, and it made me so annoyed. I called him out on his surprise, and we started talking. Nothing crazy, just some easy banter. I ordered him my favorite drink, and we went our separate ways.
“Only Peter’s father wanted a guarantee I didn’t have any secrets, so he insisted upon cameras in my house. Alex watched me for months without me knowing. Just watching, getting to know me. And I started getting these gifts.Perfectgifts, gifts that I loved. He followed me and Bex to a concert, and then back to that same coffee shop the next day, just to get close to me. Bought me this house, bought me a car, bought me coffees andlunches and had me decorate this entire house, because he knew it would be mine, too.”
I had to excuse myself after the story, reading in the main house until Dev came back to pick me up. It wasn’t that I didn’t like the story, or found any issue with it. It was that I was jealous. Of the way Alex knew what he wanted the first time he met Ames, the way he sent her gifts and bought her a house before she even knew his name, the obsessive way he still looked at her, like he’d do anything to keep her.
That was the sort of love I’d always wanted, despite knowing the impossibility of it. And now I had Dev, who wasn’t instantly obsessed with me the way Alex had been with Ames, the way Bex was with Wren, the way my brother already was with the new girl at his school.
Dev hadn’t been instantly obsessed with me, but we had a future, had the ability to grow into whatever was between us, and that was enough for now.
My reverie was interruptedas we turned a corner, and the restaurant came into view. The small, white-bricked building stood on a corner surrounded by other small, local shops. According to Ames, the space had previously been a paint store, and its former life had been reflected in the dishware. I couldn’t imagine how one paid homage to inedible paint in a restaurant, but Ames had been tight-lipped, promising we’d see the results at the dinner.
