Page 72 of Of Socialites and Prizefights

“I'm offering. Let me tend to my knight in shining armour. After, if you want to go, I won't stop you.”

With a pained expression, Roz let her eyes fall shut, pulling back to keep Deepa at arm’s length, though she didn't relinquish her hands. “If you invite me back into your bed, you've got to know I'll never want to leave. Either you've got to keep me, or you’ve got to let me go right now.”

Deepa’s heart flew into her throat at the thought of either option.

“I asked you once already if you might want to marry me, and I meant it. But I can’t go around doing things by half measures.” Opening her eyes, she met Deepa’s wide-eyed, flustered gaze, and asked, “Do you want me, or not?”

“I do,” Deepa said firmly. And then, “But what if it isn’t love?”

“So what if it’s not?”

“You’d settle for less?”

“Nothing about you feels like settling,” Roz told her. “You’re everything I’ve ever wanted.”

“And a few things you want nothing to do with,” Deepa countered wryly.

“No. I want all of you.”

Roz didn’t falter for a second, silver eyes locked on Deepa’s kohl-dark gaze. Deepa couldn’t deny Roz’s words any more than she could look away.

“I love your ambition,” Roz told her. “I want your hunger and your cleverness as much as every other part of you. When I asked you to tell me that I was enough, I didn’t mean that I wanted you to throw out all your plans and give up on your goals. I just meant, let me look after you in every other way. Don't look to men for attention or security. Keep using them for money, if you have to, but let me be enough for everything else.”

“Oh,” Deepa managed. The butterflies and hummingbirds were staging an uprising, threatening to overwhelm her from the inside out, but she thought it might be good. “I thought you didn’t like that.”

“I likeyou.” Roz stroked her thumbs over Deepa’s hands where they were joined. “Now, what’s this preoccupation with love? I thought you didn’t believe in it.”

“I don’t. But… I never told you how I’m supposed to break my curse.”

Realisation dawned in Roz’s eyes, and she pulled Deepa closer. “They got you with a classic, did they? You need true love’s kiss, like in the fairytales?”

“But none of our kisses have worked. Like you said, I never believed in love, so it shouldn't matter to me. But you’re more of a romantic than I could ever be. Does it bother you?”

“Not a bit,” Roz said immediately. “If you say you’re choosing me, that’s more than good enough.”

“Even if it means we don’t really love each other?”

Roz snorted. “That curse is infallible, is it? I don’t believe that for a minute.” Raising their hands, Roz spun Deepa in a twirl, her skirts flaring, before pulling her in for a kiss. “I love you, Deepa Patel, curse and all, and I want as much of you as you can give me,” she said against Deepa’s lips. “What do you say?”

Looking at their joined hands, it was easy to imagine them covered in ceremonial mehndi, and for the first time, Deepa realised that her casual cotton half sari bore the red-and-cream patterning of Gujarati wedding attire. For once, the thought of getting married didn’t make her stomach twist.

Untangling their fingers, she flung both arms around Roz’s neck, and she would have wrapped both legs around Roz’s waist, too, if Roz hadn’t been so thoroughly beaten. “You have me,” she promised, and marked Roz’s mouth with a press of carmine lipstick to seal the deal.

For the first time all week, Roz’s grin returned to full-wattage, and she caught Deepa around the hips to lift her off the floor for just a second.

“Yeah? Alright then. Let’s go get that ice.”

The Songbird was always busy on a Thursday night, but it was no challenge to sequester Roz in a corner of the dressing room where they could be alone. There, Deepa sat Roz on the little wooden stool in front of the vanity and undressed her piece by piece. She wiped the sweat from Roz’s body with a wet clothbefore wrapping ice from the bar in that borrowed button-up to press it to the worst of her bruises.

Each mark, Deepa softly worshipped, following every curve and line of muscle, committing Roz’s body to memory as Roz had committed hers so many times before. Under her touch, Roz was stone-still, only the tremor in her breath giving her away.

“What if I never break the curse?” Deepa asked. In that moment, it felt more like a curiosity than a real problem. She held the ice pack to Roz’s ribs with one hand, her other hand low on Roz’s stomach, resting over the line of her abs, just above the waistband of her shorts. Roz’s skin was still hot from the fight, and hotter still from their proximity. “What if I'm going to turn into a leopard every night for the rest of my life?”

“There’s plenty we can fit in around it.” With Deepa standing so close, Roz’s voice felt like a rumble. “Midnight till dawn isn't so long, by my count. Anyway, I think you’ll break it.”

“How?”

Roz shrugged. “It’ll happen.”

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