Page 20

Amelia

My throat still burned from nearly choking on my juice, but it was nothing compared to the slow-burn wildfire currently raging under my skin.

Kabir’s voice. His lips on my shoulder. That nickname. Heeriye .

He said it like it meant something. Like I meant something. I did. I was confident enough to know that I did.

I blinked and turned toward Kaylan across the table—who, of course, was watching me with an amused smirk and a silent well, well, well written all over her smug face.

I widened my eyes at her in warning . Don’t.

She just arched a brow, leaned into Logan, and whispered something in his ear.

Logan glanced at me, then at Kabir, then grinned—like this was some kind of milestone in a plan he orchestrated. I swear, he looked like a proud mentor who’d just watched his star student ace the final exam.

I was officially losing my mind.

Breakfast wrapped up in the usual buzz of post-wedding chaos. People trickled out in twos and threes, and I slipped into the hallway, heart hammering in my chest like I’d just run five miles instead of eating five waffles.

I hadn’t even paid attention to Sebastian this whole time. I should’ve at least checked his drink like I did every day.

Kabir was just ahead, walking with that annoyingly calm confidence that had replaced the stormy tension from the night before. He looked… lighter. Relaxed.

He turned a corner and I moved faster, grabbing his arm—his forearm, because apparently my hand couldn’t wrap around his tree-trunk-sized bicep—and stopped him in his tracks.

He looked down at where I was holding him, then at me, his brow raised in question but his eyes… soft.

“As I said last night,” I started, voice slightly breathless. “We need to talk.”

He didn’t stiffen. Didn’t retreat. He just nodded.

The last time I’d said those words, he looked like he was walking into his own funeral. This time?

He smiled.

And suddenly, I wasn’t sure what I wanted anymore. I’d laid myself bare during that damn speech, said more than I probably should have. I had no idea if he got it. If he paid attention to it.

But then I remembered his voice from earlier— Heeriye —and the way it wrapped around my ribs like silk and steel.

Maybe… just maybe… there was still hope.

We reached my room, and just like last time, I stepped in first and turned to shut the door behind him.

Click.

It sounded final.

But unlike the last time, it didn’t feel like an interrogation room.

It felt like an invitation.

And that terrified me.

My nerves were dancing just under my skin, desperate to keep the moment from spiraling into something I couldn’t control. So I reached for the safest topic in the world—the one thing I could say without unraveling.

“I didn’t instigate the kiss last night,” I said quietly. “That was the first—and only—time I’ve been intimate with Seb in any capacity.”

Kabir’s brows lifted slightly, his expression unreadable. Then he exhaled slowly, like something deep in his chest was loosening. “Okay,” he murmured. “And I know. I saw it. I saw you.” A pause, and then more softly, “I see you.”

The way he said it… it wasn’t accusatory. It wasn’t even bitter. It was just heartbreakingly honest.

I swallowed. “Listen… the whole thing with Sebastian was a mistake. I wasn’t even dating him, not really. I was…”

I trailed off, unable to finish the sentence. The shame sat thick in my throat.

“Using him?” Kabir finished for me, not with judgment, just quiet disappointment.

I nodded. “It sounds so fucking childish, and I can’t believe I even pulled something like that at this age. I thought… I thought you didn’t want me. And seeing me with Seb might—I don’t know—shake something loose in you. Jolt you or…”

My voice cracked. The weight of it all was finally pressing down on me.

But Kabir didn’t flinch. His gaze softened, his lips tugging into a gentle, wounded smile. “You didn’t have to do anything to jolt me out of complacency. Amelia… your existence is enough. Every time I look at you, it’s enough.”

God.

He looked away, and his voice dropped. “I just… it was hard to believe. That you kissed me because you wanted me.”

Ashamed. I felt ashamed.

“I do.” The words came out choked, but I meant them with every part of me.

“It hurt,” he whispered, staring at the floor. “Seeing you with him. It fucking hurt.”

I nodded slowly, my chest tightening with guilt. “I hurt you.”

That made him glance up, a frown creasing his beautiful face. “No, you didn’t. I just took too long to say how I felt. I won’t ever make that mistake again.”

The silence that followed was heavy. But not empty.

It was full of things we were finally saying. And everything we still hadn’t.

I couldn’t look at him anymore without wanting to hold his face and tell him every stupid thing I should have said years ago. So instead, I shifted.

Changed the subject. But not really.

“What’s her name?” I asked.

His brows furrowed. “Who?”

“The girl you based your entire commitment issues on.”

He blinked. Then sighed, but not in irritation. It was as though he was amused. “Ah.”

Kabir leaned back against the door like he had all the time in the world.

And maybe… for once… he did.

I crossed my arms.

“Why do you even wanna know?” Kabir smiled—cool, careless, like the mention of her didn’t slice down the middle of an old scar.

I narrowed my eyes. “Because I’d like to know if she’s going to show up out of nowhere, claim you as the love of her life, and just… paddle away with you.”

He blinked. “Paddle?”

“Yeah. She’s kayaking. In slow motion. Off a waterfall. Now can you answer?”

His smile didn’t waver, but his eyes darkened as he stepped closer—deliberate, grounded, dangerous.

“Namrata was my best friend,” he said, voice low. “I thought I loved her. Thought she was the one who saw the boy trying to claw his way into NASA. The one who stood beside that boy while he stumbled through the start of his career. I gave her everything I had… back then.”

He was in front of me now. Close. Close enough to make my pulse forget its job.

“She left,” he continued, “because I wasn’t what she wanted. But what she never saw—what she didn’t wait long enough to realize—is that the boy she left behind became a man.”

His hand lifted. Not touching, just hovering—like he didn’t trust himself to make contact yet.

“A man who knew his worth. Who didn’t want to be a placeholder. A man who looked at a woman and forgot how to breathe. Who’d strive hard to be enough. For her .”

He tilted his head. The glint in his eyes could cut glass.

“For the woman who once called him a softie.”

Fuck, he knew about that?

He continued. “She left the boy who loved—to become a man in love .”

My throat locked up. Because holy shit.

His next breath was a whisper. “That man… isn’t looking back. So no, she won’t be paddling back into anything. I’m quite hard to find.”

God help me, I was the one who couldn’t breathe now.

My heart was still rattling in my chest. “Well, I still don’t like her.”

Kabir raised a brow. “That’s fair.”

“I mean it. I don’t like what she did to the boy version of you. So…” I stepped closer, squinting. “What’s her full name?”

He snorted, actually had the audacity to laugh. “Absolutely not.”

“Okay.” I shrugged casually, knowing damn well the chaos I was about to unleash. “Then I guess I’ll just ask Zane, find her location, deploy Chariot, and show up at her doorstep.”

Kabir blinked.

I tilted my head and smiled sweetly. “And we both know my drone doesn’t knock.”

That got him.

He stilled, completely stilled.

His eyes widened, not in fear, not in offense—no, this was different. Like something in that mess of circuits and weaponized sentiment just triggered a memory.

“Come with me,” he muttered.

Before I could so much as blink, he grabbed my wrist—gently, but firm—and started walking.

“What? Where are we going?” I asked, my feet scrambling to keep up with his long-ass strides.

“My room.”

I yanked back like he’d just said the code word for an exorcism. “Whoa—whoa! You can’t just say my room like we’re about to go do sinful things in it.”

He turned slightly, that smug Kabir smirk playing on his mouth. “Didn’t say we weren’t.”

“Kabir.”

“I’m kidding.”

“Are you?”

“Maybe?”

I groaned but followed anyway, curiosity getting the better of me—and maybe, just maybe, a little part of me hoping he wasn’t kidding.

But the way his pulse was racing under his skin told me: this wasn’t about sex.

This was about something else entirely.

Kabir’s room was as I remembered it—clean, orderly, annoyingly perfect, like he thought chaos could be shut out if he just kept enough corners straight.

I leaned against the edge of his desk as he rifled through his closet, muttering something under his breath.

Then he turned.

Holding it.

A sleek black drone—slightly more compact than Hawk but eerily familiar in design. Elegant, predatory, mine.

My eyes widened.

“Hawk?” I whispered, breath catching. “You saved Hawk?”

He gave me a soft, almost sheepish look. “I couldn’t save Hawk. But I rebuilt her.”

I stilled. Her . The man who once called them inanimate objects was willingly calling a drone, her .

Then a thought hit me like a damn freight train.

Because just a few weeks ago, Sebastian had handed me tulips and I’d stood there like an idiot, unable to name a favorite flower.

But this?

This was my flower.

My favorite fucking flower.

Kabir had handed me a damn bouquet made of steel and circuits and memory.

My chest ached with something I didn’t have a name for.

Then he sank it even further when he walked over, gently placing the drone in my hands.

“I matched her configuration exactly as Hawk. Same stabilizer. Same flight calibration. Even the glitch in the visual processing module you secretly liked. It’s all there. ”

I ran my fingers over the cool, familiar surface. My throat tightened, and when I looked up, he looked so fucking nervous—like he thought I wouldn’t want it.

God, he didn’t understand, did he?

He had no clue what this meant.

He’d built me something no one ever had before—he saw me. Every forgotten quirk, every buried preference. Every inch of who I was, logged, saved, loved.

I stared at him, overwhelmed by how much I wanted him. Not just want.

I loved him.

So deeply that if he asked, I’d give him anything. My trust, my pain, my silence, my rage. I wanted to love him so fully that he never again questioned if he was an option.

Because he wasn’t.

He was my answer.

I set the drone down gently, like it was sacred.

Because it was.

I needed to breathe.

Because this—him—was too much. Too everything. And I didn’t know how to tell this beautiful, brilliant, maddening man that I never meant to drag him through this ridiculous rollercoaster.

But I had. And somehow, he still stood there. Still gave me this.

I stepped closer, cupping his face in both hands, brushing my thumbs against the stubble on his jaw. He froze, breath shallow, eyes wide with a kind of reverence I didn’t deserve.

“You were right,” I whispered.

His brow furrowed slightly, like he wasn’t sure what I meant.

I smiled, watery and aching. “I never had a choice, Kabir.”

His lips parted, but no words came.

“I know when people say they can’t imagine a life without someone, it sounds cliché and stupid…” I shook my head, tears threatening. “But Kabir… I can’t imagine a single second without you. You’re my unshaken foundation. My everything.”

I pressed one hand to my chest. “You’ve always been in here.”

Then I touched my temple. “And in here.”

I leaned in, forehead almost brushing his. “And you’re never getting out. Because I’m not giving you a choice either.”

His eyes filled, and his breath caught audibly.

“You chose me, huh?” he rasped, voice cracking.

I nodded, biting my lip through the rush of emotion.

He let out a tearful laugh, pulling me tighter. “There wasn’t a choice, Heeriye .”

I laughed through the lump in my throat because he’d trapped me—in more ways than one.

“There was!” I laughed along with him.

His hand slid to the back of my neck, eyes gleaming.

I added. “A guy who liked me—”

“—and a man who fucking loves you,” he finished, voice low and rough.

His gaze didn’t falter. It burned straight into me.

“Amelia Desmond,” he whispered, lips brushing mine, “you’re the love of my life.”

My heart tripped over itself, breath catching as his next words broke softly against my mouth. “Can I kiss those gorgeous lips of yours now?”

I didn’t answer—I launched.

No hesitation. No pause. My body moved on instinct, like it had been waiting for this moment far longer than my mind had admitted.

Kabir caught me instantly. One arm locked around my waist, the other cradling the back of my neck like I was something breakable. His grip was firm but reverent, grounding me in the middle of this emotional earthquake.

Finally. Finally.

I was kissing Kabir Gill.

Properly.

And it wasn’t soft.

It was fire. A desperate, clumsy, breathtaking kind of hunger. Years of tension. Of sleepless nights. Of missed chances and unspoken truths, all poured into a single devastating kiss. His lips were warm and aching against mine, moving like he was terrified this might vanish. That I might vanish.

And then his voice—wrecked, trembling—slipped between our mouths.

“Amelia…”

It shattered something inside me.

His breath hitched as our mouths met again, deeper this time, and he whispered like a prayer into the space between us.

“I’ve been dying for this,” he rasped. “I’ve been…”

My hands clutched his shirt like it was the only thing keeping me upright. “Me too.”

“Years, Lia. Years, I’ve wanted this. Thought of this. Every fucking day.”

I whimpered softly when his lips traced the corner of my mouth, his thumb brushing my jaw as if to ground himself in my skin.

“You’re not a dream, right?” he whispered, forehead against mine, voice breaking. “Because bhagwan ki qasam … if I open my eyes and you’re not here—”

“You’re not dreaming,” I whispered as my fingers ran through his hair.

He kissed me again. Fiercer. Longer.

“Mine,” he choked out with a smile, like the word had been caged in his chest for a lifetime. “Even when you weren’t, you were mine.”

Kabir Gill’s kiss wasn’t just a promise. It was a reckoning. A confession. A breaking point.

This wasn’t a kiss you gave lightly. This was a kiss that rebuilt everything he thought he lost.

And when our teeth clashed and our breaths tangled, I felt it in my bones—

We were tangled together, hearts bare, souls surrendered.

This was it.

Me.

Him.

And the kind of love that hurt to hold, but hurt more to let go.