Spice and Secrets (9 page)

“
Tehro!
” she cried out to the people already starting to disperse. As if the great Chief Minister of All had spoken. “Stop.
Humlog jayenge.
We’ll go. You all can stay.” She moved past Rahul, not daring to look at him and not stopping to see if he followed. She hopped off the rounded stage and toward the studio side exit. It led off set, into the building’s network of hallways.

What nerve he had, coming here…acting as if he had
any
right to control those working on a film he had no involvement with. Just like with KK, Rahul Anand had simply assumed he could get his way. He’d taken what he thought he was owed. She pressed a palm to her stomach, suddenly ill.

There was no use pretending: he’d take Shona from her if it came to that. “
Nahin,
” she whispered. “No, no, no.”

“Yes,” Rahul said from behind her—
just
behind her. So close she could feel his breath on the back of her neck. “Just say yes to me, Priya. As you did on
The Raj
.” His hands hovered above her arms. His chest was mere centimeters from her back. And she could feel him like he was inside her skin. “My heart’s on fire,” he sang against the curve of her ear, lips nearly tugging on her earlobe. He was the only man she knew who could combine sex and sarcasm in just a few bits of song.

“So go find some ice water.” She took a deep, steadying breath and shut her eyes. It was a mistake, closing herself to the brick walls and doorways, because, at once, she was back on the beach, just the two of them now, alone and sun-warmed…and he was dipping his head and pressing his lips to her wild pulse.

“No need for water when I have
amrita
,” he murmured, licking the hollow of her throat. He was touching her with nothing but his mouth. His wicked, arrogant mouth. Tasting more than just the nectar of immortality, he helped himself to the flavor of her need.

“Rahul, stop it.” She’d made herself vulnerable for the cameras, taken down her defenses, put down all the weapons she carried to protect herself from this…and he was not going to let the opportunity slide. This, too, he would take as if it was already his. “Please.”

“Please,” he mimicked her, but with what seemed like genuine emotion behind the echo. His voice was low and husky, sending ripples down her spine. “Please, Priya. You were so goddamn beautiful in there.
Apsara ki jaise
. Like a goddess.” He was feathering light, brutal, kisses along her jaw and his last, most damning, words were spoken into a caress all too close to her lips: “Let me worship you.”

She couldn’t. For Shona, and for a dozen other reasons. “
Na
. I can’t, Rahul, I can’t.” Priya nearly wept with the effort of pulling away from him and hurrying down toward the dressing rooms without a glance backwards.

She couldn’t be worshipped. It would not matter if he called it “heaven” or if he called it “
Swargha
”—a goddess’s fall from that great height was too far.

Chapter Thirteen

Hours later,
days
later, he could still feel her. The sweetness of her neck, her throat, her jaw…the tantalizing corner of her mouth, so close to the lips she’d denied him. Rahul was tormented by that tiny stretch of millimeters, and he awoke in bed, hard and panting, just from the idea of dying in that gulf. He’d subsisted on a memory for years, and then a brief, blissful bite for a few months. Now…now he wanted everything. Now, he couldn’t go
on
without everything.

“Rahul,
yaar
, you look like shit warmed over,” Sam told him succinctly over cappuccinos at the Chai-Coffi in Versova.

“Mate, you’ve got to do something. Either chuck this bloody plan of yours or turn it up to eleven,” advised Shaw, helping himself to the whiskey Rahul kept in his office desk drawer.

Rahul told each of them to bugger off—with only Sam eager to take the suggestion—and devoted himself to giving one last round of edits to Ravi and Rajat’s script revisions before sending them off to KK. But, still, there was Priya. On every page. In every scene. Speaking Ishika’s words and dancing her dances. Rejecting him. Running away.

I can’t, Rahul, I can’t.

Why? Why couldn’t she? Why was she so determined to put distance between them? Hadn’t the kilometers between Kolkata and Mumbai been enough? Hadn’t the passage of years been far too long? The questions ate at Rahul like acid and, even after he’d finished with a full slate of business meetings, all he wanted was the answers.

Meet me
, he messaged her, knowing that the odds were against her answering. For weeks now, she’d been studiously ignoring every SMS he sent her.
Please, Priya. We need to talk.
Hours ticked by in maddening silence. Until finally,
finally
, the gods smiled upon him and she wrote him back.
Okay. 7 o’clock. China House.

He felt like a schoolboy again, all sweating palms and endless nerves, as he made the drive east to Santacruz. He pulled into the Grand Hyatt glad for the early hour and slim odds of running into anyone with an agenda or a pitch. Priya was waiting for him in the private lounge, clutching a glass of white wine like a life preserver. She looked all of the nineteen she’d been when he met her: uncaring of style, of seeing or being seen, she’d come with her hair in a horsetail and wearing workout clothes. Even in sweats and a tank top, she was gorgeous.

She wasted no time on “hello” or “how are you?” Her face as pale as the wine, she only snapped, “What is it? Why do we need to talk, Rahul?”

“Because
not
talking is killing me.” It was hopelessly clichéd dialogue, but perfect and true nonetheless. “Because I need to see you. To feel you
. Main tumhara bin ji nahin saktha
, Priya. I can’t keep living without you.”

“Don’t be dramatic.” She set down her glass, folding her hands together in a tight knot. “
Yeh koi
film
nahin hain
. This is not one of your movies. There’s no need to play to the audience,
na
?”

“Do you remember
our
film, Pree?” He settled in a seat close enough to touch her but far enough to give her space…leaning forward, playing to an audience of one. “How much fun it was? How much hope we had
? Kitne sapne the
. We had so many dreams.” They’d shot for three weeks in Simla…playing in the snow and then warming each other at night. Filmmaking had been at its purest for him on
Hain Apna Dil To Awara
. The very essence of the art, of telling a story of love. Of
living
one. “Remember what we used to say? That we made that movie because we ‘HADTA’?” Even to himself, he sounded so boyish in that moment, his chuckle tripping over the film’s silly abbreviation. “I have to do this, too. I have to be with you.”

“Why now?” she demanded, rising from the divan and clenching her fists. “You could have followed me to Kolkata, but you did not. So why are you my shadow now? Why?
Kano
?” Her Hindi was gone, buried in anger that only her mother tongue could express. “
Bolo
, Rahul. Tell me. Why is it so goddamn important for you to walk in my every footstep now when you didn’t spare a thought for me then?”

“‘Didn’t spare a thought’? What nonsense.” He mirrored her motions, following her across the lounge even as her illogical words took root. “What the hell are you talking about? Of course I came to Kolkata. Right after you’d gone. I begged at your door every day for a week. Your father ran me off like a dog. He said you were done with me.
Khatam
. Finished. He said he’d kill me if I asked after you again.”

“No.” Priya lurched backwards as if he’d struck her, all the blood draining from her face, leaving the Rose without bloom. “
Na
.
Na
,
hote parena
. It can’t be.” She pressed one hand to her stomach, as if she was about to be violently sick. “You did not come for me. You never wrote me. You never called. You didn’t care, Rahul. You
didn’t care
.” She repeated it, as if trying to convince herself of the fact.

A thousand repetitions wouldn’t make it true.

“I didn’t
know
,” he corrected, closing the space between them, aching to hold her but knowing he couldn’t. It was impossible to grasp on to ice…it always melted and slipped through your fingers. “I didn’t know any of it. Not if you lived, if you died, if you loved me or hated me. So I came back to Bombay and made a life. But
adhi zindagi the
. It was a half life.”

“I can’t make you whole,” she whispered. “
Amar khomotha ney.
I don’t have the energy or the capability. Don’t ask me.”

“I’m not asking, Pree.” He, too, whispered. Because his voice barely had the power for anything more, so choked was it by sorrow. “I’m telling. I’m
telling
you that you are my whole world.”

“So?
Mujhe kya farak parthi hain?
What’s it to me? You’re not directing a scene. You’re not producing a picture. This is real life.
Yeh meri
life
hain
.” Her defenses were up, her Hindi was back. “I don’t have to listen to you.” She turned to go, and his hand flashed out, instinctively circling her wrist. And in that instant he knew he’d been wrong: She wasn’t ice. She was liquid nitrogen. So cold that she burned. But yet he held on. As tight as he could without causing her pain.

“You don’t have to listen, but you
will
hear me. I’m not that stupid boy anymore. I won’t be put off with secrets and lies. I won’t be turned away from your door.”

She wrenched out of his grip. “You. You, you,
you
. It’s all that matters,
na
? Not me, not anyone else? You haven’t grown up at all, Rahul. Just as a child thinks, it’s still all about you. Well, I don’t live like that anymore. I
can’t
live like that anymore. I have priorities.”

“
Sach?
Really? Where were your priorities when you fucked me in Bihar?”

This time it was her hand that flashed out. The blow was more than the simple sting of a slap. It practically knocked his head off…and he savored it.
You’re not immune. You still feel for me.
No one indifferent could put such power into her fist.

His fingertips came away bloody when he touched his rapidly swelling lip. Priya flinched, and he could see the sweetness of her heart that she’d tried to drown in vinegar. “Rahul.” She swallowed, the dampness in her eyes caused by a different kind of hurt. “Rahul, I’m—”

“Don’t say ‘sorry’.
I’m
so sorry. I was wrong. I was crude. I deserved it…and likely worse.” From there, from that flimsy verbal apology, his hand moved on its own. Not echoing the violence of hers but, rather, copying an action played out in so many romantic films. He took his red-tipped fingers and anointed the part in her hair.
Sindoor
was the sign of a Hindu bride. Making that promise in blood was just a fraction of what he owed her. “
You
deserved
this
. All those years ago. I’m sorry I never offered it to you. Maybe if I had…you would touch me in love, not fury. You would be my wife, Priya. We would be a family.”

He felt the shudder go through her. She leaned into him, accepted the shelter of his palm atop her head. But it was painfully brief. Before he could say anything else, win another moment of her weakness, she gathered herself. “Please, Rahul.
Please, don’t,
” she said, before she fled from the room.

Funny, but he’d never imagined that agony and hope could both taste like copper.

She didn’t think of Rahul. Or even of Shona. Not right at the start.
Na
, it was her father she thought of as she fairly ran through the hotel lobby, climbing into the first taxi that pulled up to the curb. Her sweet, talented, intellectual
baba
. Certainly he had been strict with her, had insisted she follow his rules to the very last letter, but he’d never struck her as a man who could be cruel, who could
lie
. Yet he’d been both a tyrant and a liar when Rahul came to Kolkata. The realization hollowed through Priya’s chest like the curved blade of a
boti
slicing through fresh jackfruit. She was just as raw, just as uncooked. Rahul had come for her. He’d
followed
her. But
Baba
had sent him away from her.

I didn’t know.

But for a basket of untruths, he
would
have known. He could have been there for seven more months of carrying Shonali, for the pain of birth and the joy of holding her—so tiny and red-faced and angry at the world—afterward. When, at six months, their daughter attacked the traditional
onnoproshon
plate with gusto and chose the book that symbolized a lifetime of academics, Rahul would’ve laughed and said, “Thank God,
woh
actress
nahin banegi
! No more acting in the Anand family!” No acting. Just life. Just honesty. Rahul could have been there for all of it. Every smile, every laugh, every wobbling step. Every sleepless night. Every lonely morning. Every time she’d reached out for him in the dark, he would’ve been there. When she’d ached for him to kiss her, he would’ve given her his lips. When she feared she’d never love again, he would’ve loved her until she couldn’t untangle from the sheets of their bed.

I didn’t know.

It wasn’t until several kilometers separated her from the Hyatt that she allowed herself to cry. Wrenching, noisy, sobs that made the driver ask, “
Madam, sab tik to hain
? Everything okay?”

No. Nothing was okay. It was all a jumble, a mess, a tragedy of arthouse-film proportions. She’d chased
Baba
’s lies with more of her own, making the myth of Shona’s birth into a full-color picture that papered the walls of their house…resulting in years she couldn’t give Rahul and Shona back. They were strangers…and strangers they would have to remain. Because Rahul would never, ever forgive her if he discovered what she’d kept hidden…and her parents would never forgive her if she told him the truth.