Page 116 of Wasted Grace

She’s makingmalai kofta. My favorite.What the fuck?

I’m mid-whiplash when I walk to the counter and take the stool.

My knees buckle slightly, but I sit. Watch her. In silence. Watching her prep the kitchen before the groceries even arrive. I stay quiet. Trying like hell not to do something—say something—that might accidentally force this moment to dissipate into a puff of smoke.

But somehow... somehow...

The ache in my chest hurts a little less.

The kitchen doesn’t feel haunted anymore. It feels like something out of the old pages of our book.

THIRTY-ONE

Greesha

Anger.

An emotion I’ve known since I was fifteen. It carved its way into my bones, settled there. Familiar enough to fuel my reflexes, guide my fists, make decisions my heart couldn’t.

Resilience.

The bow I wrapped around that anger. A cocoon I built, pretty enough to pass for strength—weak enough to hold the anger in. It carried me through RAW, through the blood and the training and thegrief. It carried me through the silence. The silence of life lost.Familylost.

Love.

That was different. It didn’t come armed. It came soft. Gentle. Washed over everything like it had the ability to overshadow everything else. It brought back the girl Iusedto be—before the violence, before the masks. But it was an illusion. It never matured with me. It never learned to carry the weight of the woman I was and the one I wanted to become. And so, itcracked.

Fear.

That one? That one was a fucking demolition crew. It tore through everything I thought made me...me. Shattered every layer of identity I’d worn like armor. There was a moment—after Afghanistan, after the marriage, after the return—where Iwas certain:Greesha was gone. Every version—erased. Buried beneath what I survived.

But I was wrong.

Because all of it—every last thing—came rushing back. The moment fear took over in the dimly lit hallway of Advik’s apartment...

I relived the horror.

And I realized something that struck like a quiet truth:

I can’t anchor myself in anyoneof these emotions. Not the presence of them. Not theirabsenceeither.

Because when I feel nothing—I amAadya.

When I clutch desperately to only one—I amGreesha Das.

But who I really am?

She’s somewhere in between. A fierce, fractured, unfiltered combination of thefearlessand thefearful.

And she—whoever she is—loves the broken man sitting on that barstool. The one who hasn’t moved since I surprised him with a grocery order.

God, the look on his face.

I don’t even know why I’m making fuckingmalai kofta. I haven’t cooked in years. But the moment I opened the fridge and saw those damn tomatoes, something clicked.

Maybe I just... wanted to remember what it felt like to do something ordinary. To choose softness. To choose comfort. To choose this amalgamation of everything I was. So I went with the first instinct and grabbed those tomatoes.

Not for Advik. Forme.