Hey Doc. Got my suit sorted, just in case Tarun falls through. Little tailor shop on Spadina, the guy measured me like he was engineering a bridge. Also, I've memorized sections 1 through 3 of the dossier, and I have a question about your Auntie Sunita's threat level. Is “red” like, Code Red, or more of a general vibe?
I look at the text for a long time. I look at the way he writes, the easy, rambling run of words, the complete absence of formality, and the fact that he texted me about my family's threat levels while casually mentioning that he found a tailor who could handle his impossible shoulders. Inside my chest, something loosens. Something that had been clenched so tightly for so long that I had forgotten it was there.
I type a response.
Code Red implies imminent danger. Auntie Sunita is a persistent, low-grade threat. Think of her less as an active combatant and more as a surveillance network with anunlimited data plan.
So she's the NSA of Aunties.
That is a surprisingly accurate analogy.
I'm full of surprises, Doc. See you tonight. Plane leaves at 7. I'll bring the Uncrustables.
Please do not bring Uncrustables on an international flight.
Too late. Already packed. Grape AND strawberry. We're going first class on snacks.
I put the phone down on the passenger seat. I press my forehead against the steering wheel. The leather is cold against my skin.
Tonight, I will be on a plane to Rajasthan, sitting next to a man who asked about me a year ago, flying toward a deception that is becoming more complicated with every passing hour, and I have no contingency plan for the way my heart rate accelerates every time his name appears on my phone screen.
Gabriel's voice, quiet and real and stripped of all performance, echoes through my perfectly organized, yet rapidly deteriorating mind: He does not do things halfway.
Neither, it appears, do I.
Chapter 6
The Long Flight
Casey
Iwait until we're at the gate.
Not because I've planned it that way, but because there hasn't been a moment until now that felt right. The check-in line was all logistics and passport fumbling and Arjun reorganizing his carry-on three times while I pretended not to watch. Security was a performance of efficiency where Arjun sailed through the body scanner like he has never set off a metal detector in his life. Meanwhile, I got flagged because I forgot a water bottle in my bag and then dropped my belt and then set off the scanner anyway because, apparently, my belt buckle and my overall structural density register as a security concern for the CBSA. Not the moment.
But now we're at Gate 47, and the boarding screen says DELAYED 35 MIN, and Arjun is sitting in the hard plastic chair beside me with his leather messenger bag on his lap and his spine at its usual stiff ninety-degree angle and his eyes fixed on nothing in particular, and the departure lounge is that specific breed of airport quiet where everyone is suspended between where they've been and where they're going and nothing feels entirely real.
I reach into my jacket pocket.
“Hey, Doc.”
He turns his head. “Yes?”
“We should probably wear these.”
I hold out the ring box. The small one. Dark blue velvet. I pop it open with my thumb, and the brushed platinum band catches the fluorescent airport light, clean and cool and precise, and Arjun's gaze drops to it and his entire body goes still.
Not stiff. Still. The way he goes still in the OR when something unexpected appears on a scan and his brain needs one full second to process before the hands take over. A total pause, from the inside out.
“You bought a ring,” he says.
“I bought two rings. I told you I'd handle it.”
He looks at the ring. He looks at me. His expression is doing something complicated behind the mask, something I can read only because I've spent two years learning the language. Surprise, obviously. But underneath it, something else. Something that flickers across his green eyes like a shadow passing over deep water.
“It's platinum,” he says, as if confirming a finding.
“Brushed platinum. Simple. Nothing flashy. I figured you'd...” I trail off. “I figured it should look like something you'd actually choose.”