Page 148 of Tiger's Voyage

Then Ren shoved a giant forkful of fruit into Kishan’s mouth, and he started coughing.

“Now look what you’ve done,” I accused. I approached Kishan, sat next to him, and smoothed back his mussed hair. Kishan stopped coughing, reached out for my hand and kissed it warmly.

“There’s my girl. I missed you,bilauta. Did you sleep better in your own bed?”

“Well, actually—”

“Here,” Ren growled and shoved the plate back into Kishan’s hands. “Finish it yourself. Kelsey and I need to talk about something. We’ll be right back.”

Ren grabbed my hand before I could protest and yanked me through the hall to the stairs and down to the staff deck. Then he stopped and grabbed my shoulders.

“Kelsey, if you don’t tell him it’s over, I will. I’m going insane watching you fawn all over him.”

“Alagan Dhiren! Don’t you have any sympathy for him at all? Can’t you understand how hard this is? You think you can just snap your fingers and make the past few months disappear? Well, you can’t. I realize that this situation is uncomfortable. It’s not easy on any of us. I need time to sort through my feelings and decide what to do.”

“What do you mean decide? You think this is like choosing which shoes to wear? You don’tdecidewho you love, you just do.”

“And what if I love you both? Did you ever think of that?”

He crossed his arms over his chest. “Doyou?”

“Of course I love both of you.”

“No, you don’t. It’s not the same,iadala.” He sighed unhappily, turned, and ran a hand through his hair. “Kelsey. You’re driving me crazy. I never should have picked that trigger.”

“What? What trigger? What are you talking about?”

Conflicted, he tore his gaze from me, walked over to the staff dining table, and sat down. He put his elbows on the table and his head in his hands and then confessed, “Durga let me pick the trigger. The thing that would happen to help me get my memory back.”

I pulled out the chair across from him and slowly sat down. “What did you do?”

“I needed to pick something that would guarantee you were safe. I couldn’t just pick seeing you at the house, for example, or even meeting with Phet. I racked my brain trying to come up with something, and the image of Kishan stealing a kiss from you on the beach kept flashing through my mind. I knew he’d try to do it again, and I figured that if I was around to see him kiss you, and he felt comfortable doing it, that you would likely be out of danger. So the trigger was a kiss. Who knew he would wait so long.”

My mouth fell open in astonishment. “You bet your memory on Kishan’s kissing me?”

“Yes.”

“Wait a minute. Kishan kissed me before the ship. He kissed me in Shangri-la. Why didn’t it work then?”

“Because I was still a captive, which was part of the stipulation. I had to be freeandsee you kiss. Wait a minute—when did he kiss you in Shangri-la, and why is this the first time I’m hearing about it?”

I waved my hand in the air. “It doesn’t matter. Whatdoesmatter is, you’re an idiot.”

“Thank you.”

“You’renotwelcome. You’re anidiotbecause I made Kishan promisenotto kiss me. He promised me he wouldn’t until he knew you and I were over. He didn’t touch me for months because of that promise.” My mouth fell open. “Youdidn’ttrustme.”

“I didn’t trusthim. And just how many kisses are we talking about here? Because if they were anything like the one I saw, I’m going to have the Scarf sew his lips together.”

“For your information, he stole a couple of kisses in Shangri-la, and kissed me at the pool before we rescued you, which made me cry by the way, and that’s when I made him promise. I waited for you. Even when you got back and didn’t remember me and couldn’t touch me, I waited for you. I didn’t evenapproachKishan until you started flaunting bimbos in front of me. I was loyal to you, Ren. Ilovedyou.”

“Youstilllove me.”

I groaned. “Why couldn’t you have picked somethingelsefor a trigger, like getting home safely or eating my cookies again?”

“I had no idea he would keep his hands off you. I assumed he’d try kissing you at every opportunity.”

“He did until I made him promise not to. This is ridiculous. I feel like we’re stuck in a Shakespeare play. He loved her, she loved him, he forgot her, and then she loved the other guy.”