Page 64 of No Boss
Abhinav stilled.
“And I don’t know what to do with that.”
She groaned in frustration.
“I’ve been fighting him since before he arrived. I had a plan. I always have a plan. Now he does this, and I’m feeling things I have no business feeling about a man who still wants to sell my home.”
She sounded genuinely annoyed by it.
“This is your fault, Maa,” she added, sharper now. “You could have made him terrible. You didn’t.”
Abhinav exhaled, slow and careful.
“You made him look like those portraits, gave him that voice, those hands…” she huffed, “and then you let him kneel in the dust for Lakshmi Aunty, and now I…”
She stopped.
“This conversation is not going the way I intended.”
A softer breath left her.
“Help me. Just… help me.”
She looked up again, searching the sky.
“He’s a good man.” The resistance had gone from her voice. “I didn’t want that. I wanted him to be what I thought he was. Someone who didn’t care. Someone who could turn this place into a number.”
A small shake of her head.
“Why isn’t he like that?”
She sat there after her last words, as if the sky might answer if she waited long enough.
After a while, she glanced back at the Haveli, the courtyards layered below, the corridors dimly lit, the diya in the temple still burning like a steady heartbeat in the dark.
Her gaze shifted.
She saw him.
The sound she made was not a word. It was the sound of an entire respiratory system failure.
She sprang off the wall, one hand shooting out to steady herself as her balance faltered.
“How long…” Her voice rose to a pitch she did not recognize. “Were you… when did you…”
He looked at her. She looked at him. Everything else fell away.
His face in the starlight was… different.
The sharp edges were gone. The control he wore during the day had slipped. His expression was open. Not guarded or calculated.
His eyes held hers. And the stars… actually reflected.
She had always assumed that was exaggerated nonsense people wrote in books when they ran out of real descriptions. Apparently not.
Her heart reacted.
She chose not to acknowledge it.
