Page 45 of BounBound By Scars

His voice was low. Too damn smooth.

Panic shot through me and I jumped up, creating space between us.

Kabir stood slowly, watching me carefully.

“We need to talk, Lia.”

“Like how wetalkedthe day after we kissed?”

His hands went up in surrender.

“No. And… we didn’t kiss.Thatisn’t how I’d kiss you.Youkissedme, and I fucked it up.”

I rolled my eyes and dropped onto the far edge of his bed. He did the same.

“Alright… so… there’s something you need to know.”

He didn’t speak for so long that I exhaled sharply, loudly—because if he wasn’t going to say something, I might combust from frustration.

Communicate, Kabir!

He let out a slow breath, rubbing his hands together as if trying to warm himself.

“When I was at MIT, I met this girl. She was Indian, an immigrant—like me.”

My stomach clenched out of jealousy.

“She was my best friend,” he continued, voice oddly detached. “For five years, she was the person I told everything to. The one who always had my back. My world was better with her in it.”

I swallowed hard. The parallel to us was screaming.

“When I got placed at NASA, she kissed me and we started dating.”

That threw me. I had expected some messy, unspoken, one-sided love. Not this.

“We were together for almost three months.” His fingers curled into fists. “I loved her in a way I thought she loved me too.”

I felt my pulse in my throat, thudding, thudding, thudding.

“And then, one night, she came home,” he continued, staring blankly past me. “Smiling. Giddy. She told me she had the best sex of her life.”

My whole body stiffened.

“Not with me.” His bitter smile cut through me.

I inhaled sharply, horrified.

“She told me over dinner,” he went on, his voice now eerily calm. “It’s stupid, but I remember having my favorite egg curry dish. Anyway… she said it like it was a casual update. Like she was telling me about a good book she read. I thought she was joking at first. Thought maybe I misheard her. But then she kept going, telling me how much she enjoyed his hands on her. How she spent hours talking in his embrace.”

I could hear my own heartbeat in my ears. “Kabir…”

“I asked her,‘what about me?’,” he whispered. “And she said,‘I just thought we should give it a try because I loved you as a friend. I thought… why not?’”

I flinched.

“She said it like it was a compliment.” His laugh was empty, hollow. “Like I should be grateful she even considered me. That I was worth trying out, you know, an experiment.”

A chilling smile spread across his face. My fingers curled into the bedsheet.