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Agastya glanced at her for permission, but Veda was paralysed with nerves and couldn’t move. She saw a few phones exchange hands and then his father’s PA was walking over with a phone to where they sat. All around them phones were pinging as the video was forwarded to everyone.
And then Veda could hear her voice, loud and clear.
“My husband has more integrity in his little finger than everyone in this room put together. He did not take that money. If anyone in this dance troupe dares to even infer otherwise, forget actually saying it, I will not dance with them or for them. Good luck finding another dancer to headline this performance in two days.”
Shit. Someone had recorded the whole thing. She could feel Agastya’s gaze burning into her, but she didn’t look at him. Her own phone had started to vibrate in her hand, but she placed it face down on her lap not bothering to even glance at the display.
“Veda isn’t just my wife.” Agastya’s strong voice broke through her reverie. She looked up and found him still looking at her even as he addressed the press. “She is also my biggest blessing. Like most men, I took my blessings for granted but I can promise you, I won’t be doing that again.”
Veda looked away, her chest feeling tight and uncomfortable. Emotion swelled inside her, good and bad, until she didn’t know how to cope with any of it. Her fingers started to tremble and she clenched them in the folds of her saree hoping no one would notice.
Agastya was still speaking, his words slipping through her brain like water through a sieve. His hand came to cover her shaking ones, clasping them in a strong, hard grasp, and with that simple touch, the world slid back into focus around her. Veda took a deep breath and forced herself to stay in the moment.
“I don’t deserve her,” Agastya was saying now. “I’ve never deserved her, but I am grateful every moment of this life that I get to have her share it with me.”
He really was a man of words, she thought dispassionately. So many words, all smoothly woven together to say exactly what the other person wanted to hear. The public, his party workers, his family, and her. She’d fallen for it too, hadn’t she?
Agastya had never lied to her. Not once. But he’d played with his words to say what she wanted to hear, what she’d needed to hear. So, whom did she blame for her circumstances today? Agastya or herself?
Bitterness rose inside her even as the crowd went into paroxysms of joy at what they perceived a Ram-Sita jodi. She wanted to gag at the description the man with the microphone came up with. Agastya was no Ram, and she was no Sita. She’d push him into a bonfire before giving a trial of fire to prove herself to anyone.
Thankfully, the whole, dramatic event was starting to wind down. Her video had been the perfect ending it would seem as everyone was just lapping up the fairy tale feel to the whole thing.
She couldn’t wait to get away from here, the duplicity of the life she was living making her want to scream. Now that would be another viral video in the making. She barely held it together, keenly aware of her family’s reassuring presence at her back. If it hadn’t been for them, she would have bolted. She played her role till the end and then finally, they were walking out of the venue and towards their cars.
“Veda.”
She heard him call out, but she didn’t look back. She grabbed the top of her open car door and was about to get in when his hand closed over her elbow, halting her escape.
“I need to talk to you,” he murmured.
“No.” Veda discreetly pulled her arm out of his grip, pasted a sweet smile on her face for the cameras aimed at them and moved to keep the car door between the two of them.
“Veda, please.” The desperate yearning in his voice was almost her undoing. Almost. But then she remembered all the days and nights she’d yearned for him, for this man who’d used her with less regard than a Grandmaster did a pawn on his chessboard.
“No, Agastya.” Her voice was a bare thread of a whisper.
“I love you.” The words were a broken whisper, loud enough for her family who’d formed a protective cover around them to hear. “I love you so damned much. Please? Hear me out one time.”
She started to shake, tremors snaking through her body, her throat closing up. It was all too much. The lights, the cameras, the people screaming their name, the echo of her voice from a million phones, and at the heart of it all, Agastya. Always, at the heart of everything in her life, was Agastya.
She tried to grab the car door but her shaking hands couldn’t get purchase. Ram’s arms came around her and he ushered her into the car, shutting the door behind her. She looked up through the window and at Agastya who still stood there, motionless, his face a fractured mask of composure.
She wanted to tell him she forgave him. She wanted to tell him she loved him too. But the words wouldn’t come. They stayed unsaid, clogging her throat and making it hard to breathe.
And then the car started to move. She twisted in her seat, her eyes desperate to keep him in her sights for as long as she could. He stayed where she’d left him, alone and still, his eyes on her. Until, her path diverged from his, and she could see him no more. And still, she knew he was there, watching the road she’d disappeared down, the road that took her away from him.
Thirty-Nine
AGASTYA
Got it.
The terse message filled Agastya with a fierce exultation. He held out a hand and Naresh placed a burner phone in it. Virat picked up on the first ring.
“There’s no doubt?” he asked.
“None,” Virat confirmed. “The trail is clear and it has his sticky, digital fingerprints all over it.”
