Page 95 of Pretend for Me

Heat crawls into my cheeks as I gesture to the window, lying through my teeth but knowing he can see right through me. “Just the view.”

His hand reaches for a wayward strand of my hair, his eyes so intense I feel breathless.

“Thank you,” I say, holding his gaze. “Today has been everything.”

“It’s just the beginning,meri jaan.”

My brows fold. “What do you mean?”

His eyes flick between mine, and I swear he wants to say something but shakes his head as if thinking better of it. “Wait til we get home.”

All too soon the tour ends, and the helicopter lands on the grounds of Dev’s sprawling mansion. A few minutes later, we’re making our way through his enormous front door and into the living room hand-in-hand when something catches my eye.

Not just something . . .twolittle somethings inside individual cages, with blue ribbons around their furry little necks. One of them is nibbling on a cucumber, while the other is sitting on hay, whiskers moving incessantly.

My mouth drops open as my shocked eyes turn to my husband-to-be. “How?”

He shrugs. “Does it matter? You wanted them, so I wanted them.”

My stomach tightens, my lungs and heart feel too big, and my throat closes. And for the first time in my life, I understand the terror and agony of a heart on the verge of falling.

On the verge of shattering.

thirty-two

dev

Enough Is Enough

“Hey, Mom.”

My mother slowly turns her head, watching me step toward her bed. Her mouth tilts up into a tired smile and she reaches out a frail hand, beckoning me to hold it. “Dev.”

I take a seat on the chair next to her bed, the same way I have over the past couple of weeks when I visit her. She has a view of her rose garden from her windows in her room, but she’s been enjoying sitting outside less and less lately.

A sign I don’t want to consider.

I place a tender kiss on her knuckles. “How are you feeling?”

Not waiting for her answer, I quickly get up and refill her glass of water, organize her bottles of meds and the stack of books on her nightstand, and reach toward her feet to pull up the extra blanket there.

“Dev?”

“Hmm?” I notice the TV remote has fallen onto the rug under her bed, so I pick it up and nestle it near her other hand so she can reach it.

I’m just about to reach behind her to ask if I canfluff her pillows when my mother grasps my face with both hands, holding me in place. “Dev, you can’t fix this.”

Her words, even though I’ve known them since her prognosis, hit me like a hammer to hollow wood, threatening to break the last of my composure. “Maybe we still can, Mom. There are new trials coming up every?—”

“No,” she says simply, her eyes filling. “Please, sweetheart, don’t make me beg. Let me go peacefully. On my own terms.” Her thumb skates across my cheek and I realize it’s to sweep away a tear.

“For twenty years, before Deena was born, you were the only true light in my life,” she says, her chin trembling. “Your father was busy building the company. We rarely saw him then.”

She shakes her head. “I’m not complaining, because the man never, not once, let me feel like I was secondary to his work. It’s a feat few can accomplish. He always called from wherever he was, had flowers or gifts delivered almost daily to let me know I was on his mind. But you?” She wipes another tear from my face. “You were my constant. You gave me daily purpose and so much joy. Remember when you were ten and wanted the two of us to learn French? We spent six months in Paris.”

“Just the two of us,” I rasp, recalling our daily trips to a patisserie we’d fallen in love with, our picnics near the Eiffel Tower where we read French books, and making friends with the locals.

She nods. “It was just the two of us for a while, wasn’t it?”

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