“Not a lapse in judgment,” he agrees.
We go to bed. Together. In the moonlight. And when I press my back against his chest and his arm wraps around my waist and his hand finds the place over my heart where it always rests, I do not count the seconds, and I do not calculate the margins, and I do not build a wall.
I just sleep.
Chapter 22
The Good Man
Casey
Dev Mehindra brings me tea.
I want to be clear about the significance of this, because it matters, because it would be so much easier if this man was terrible, and he’s not terrible, and the tea is evidence.
It’s the morning after his arrival. I’m sitting in the garden, on the stone bench beneath the neem tree where I FaceTime my mom, and I’m attempting to video-call Oliver via Mrs. Kasparian's phone, except Mrs. Kasparian doesn’t understand how to work the camera and I’ve been staring at her ceiling for four minutes while Oliver barks at what I suspect is his own reflection in the phone screen.
Dev appears. He’s dressed in linen trousers and a white cotton shirt, looking exactly like a model from a catalogue for people who holiday in places with names like “the Amalfi Coast” and “the Maldives.” He’s carrying two cups of chai, and he holds one out to me with a small, genuine smile.
“You looked like you could use one,” he says. “Kavita's recipe. She showed me where she keeps the cardamom.”
I take the chai. It’s perfect. It’s hot and sweet and spiced withthe exact blend that Kavita uses, which means Dev paid attention when she showed him, which means Dev is the kind of man who pays attention, which means Dev is making this enormously, terribly difficult for all involved.
“Thanks,” I say. “That's really kind.”
He sits down on the other end of the bench. Not too close. Not invading space. Just present, with the easy, measured comfort of someone who has spent their life navigating social situations and knows precisely how much distance to leave between themself and another person's boundaries.
“Is that your dog?” he asks, nodding toward my phone, where Mrs. Kasparian has finally managed to angle the camera so I can see Oliver. Oliver’s lying on her sofa with a throw pillow in his mouth and an expression of such operatic contentment that I suspect he has been spoiled beyond all reasonable recovery, and I’m in for a rough ride when I get back home.
“That's Oliver. He thinks he's a person.”
“He looks extremely comfortable.”
“He's been living his best life. I'm fairly sure he's forgotten I exist.” On screen, Oliver drops the pillow, yawns enormously, and rolls onto his back, presenting his belly to the ceiling with the total, unguarded trust of a creature who has never once in his life had reason to doubt that he’s loved and adored. My chest tightens. I miss that dog so much it's a physical thing.
“I had a dog growing up,” Dev says. “A springer spaniel named Wellington. He was a disaster. He ate an entire sofa cushion once and we had to rush him to the vet.”
“Oliver ate a rose from a wedding bouquet. Five thousand dollars at the emergency vet. He was constipated.”
“Five thousand dollars for constipation?”
“Welcome to Canadian veterinary care.”
Dev laughs. It’s an open, easy laugh, and the problem with Dev Mehindra's laugh is that it’s genuine. It’s the laugh of someone who finds constipated dogs funny becauseconstipated dogs are objectively funny, and he’s laughing with me, not at me, and I can’t help but like him.
I like him, and I wish I didn't, because liking him makes everything harder.
We sit on the bench and drink our chai, and the morning sun is warm through the neem leaves, and the garden is beautiful, and the fountains murmur, and somewhere inside the estate, Arjun is getting dressed with his meticulous, surgical precision, and the man his mother chose is sitting next to me being kind and funny and easy to talk to, and I am experiencing the specific kind of emotional turmoil that I think soldiers have when they discover the enemy is a person.
“Can I ask you something?” Dev says, after a comfortable silence.
“Sure.”
“What's he like? When he's not...” He gestures vaguely at the estate, the palace, the whole elaborate machinery of the Kapoor world. “When he's not this.”
I look at Dev. His dark eyes are careful, curious, and there’s a vulnerability in them that I wasn’t expecting. This isn’t intelligence gathering. This isn’t Meera's interrogation. This is a man who had what he thought was a romantic dinner of equals with Arjun three years ago and has been thinking about him ever since, and who genuinely wants to know.
And here is where it gets complicated, because the honest answer, the true answer, the answer that rises in my throat with a force that cannot be contained, is: when Arjun isn’t this, he’s extraordinary.