Page 110 of The Encore’s Crown

I loved her. That was the worst part. I loved her so much that every conversation felt like standing at the edge of something I couldn’t survive falling into. When she did catch me on the phone, I kept my voice distant. Tired. Distracted. I gave her nothing she could hold long enough to ask what had changed. She knew anyway. Radhika always knew when I was lying, especially when I didn’t say anything.

A few weeks later, I went to a party in the Hollywood Hills. Another glass house overlooking Los Angeles. Another infinity pool glowing blue beneath people who had no intention of swimming. Music shook the windows. Actors, musicians, models, executives. Everyone beautiful enough to make beauty meaningless.

I'd been drinking. Just enough to pretend I didn’t have control. A woman I vaguely knew pulled me onto the dance floor. Blonde, maybe. Or light brown. I couldn’t remember later. Her hand settled on my shoulder while mine rested at her waist. I wasn’t cheating. I would've never been that stupid. I still knew she was special, my heart was still hers and Radhika’s family knew everyone. If I so much as disappeared into a hallway with another woman, she would probably receive photographic evidence before I made it back to the room.

But I flirted. I let the woman lean close to speak into my ear. I smiled when she touched my chest. I knew exactly what I was doing. Making myself look like the man Radhika’s father already suspected I was. The woman laughed at something I didn’t hear. Then her expression changed. Her gaze moved past my shoulder. I turned.

Radhika stood at the edge of the room. She was still wearing whatever she had flown in, dark trousers and a fitted jacket over a silk top. Her hair was pulled back. Her face was bare except for the makeup left from a day spent traveling.

She looked exhausted. Furious, devastated. I removed my hand from the woman’s waist but it was too late. Radhika crossed the room. People moved out of her way. When she finally reached me, she slapped me across the face with all her strength. My head snapped to the side. The room went silent enough to hear the pool water lapping outside. I tasted blood where my tooth had caught the inside of my cheek. Fair, I thought.

Radhika’s hand shook at her side. “How dare you,” she said.

The girl beside me stepped back. Smart. I slowly turned my face back to Radhika. There were tears in her eyes, but the fury held them there, bright and unshed. I could see the whole thing. The flight she must have taken. The calls I ignored. The photos and humiliation. The worry. The hope, stupid and stubborn, that I would see her and drop the act. I should have. Instead, I took another drink.

“Long flight?” I asked.

Radhika stared at me like I had become a stranger while she was looking directly at me. Then she let loose in Hindi, fast and vicious and beautiful, every word cutting through me even where I couldn’t catch all of it.

“Tumne mujhe kya samjha?” she snapped. “Main koi bewakoof hoon? Tum mujhe phone nahi karte, mere messages ka jawab nahi dete, aur phir yahan kisi aur ladki ke saath tamasha kar rahe ho?”

What did you take me for? Do you think I’m a fool? You don’t call me, don’t answer my messages, and then you’re here making a spectacle with some other girl?

I understood enough. My face stayed blank. That was the trick, let nothing through. Make yourself empty and people eventually stopped trying to find you.

“Radhika,” I said.

“Don’t,” she snapped. “Don't say my name like that, like you're sick of me.”

My jaw flexed. She stepped closer, lowering her voice, which made it worse. “You told me you loved me.”

My grip tightened around the glass.

“At my home,” she said. “With my family. With everyone there. You held me like—” Her voice caught. She swallowed it down. “Like you knew what that meant.”

I looked at her then. Her face was open in a way I had no defense against. Radhika had been born into cameras and contracts and family expectation. She knew what men could be. She had chosen to believe better of me anyway. So I made myself worse.

“You knew what this was, Radhika.”

Her expression changed. I kept going because I was already bleeding and wanted the wound fatal.

“Don’t act like we were going to get married or something.”

I watched her heart break in real time. The tears finally spilled, one clean line down her cheek, and I hated myself so violently I almost laughed from it. Radhika nodded because she finally understood that there was nothing left in me worth fighting for in that room.

“You are smaller than I thought,” she said.

She turned and walked away.

I lifted the glass to my mouth and drank.

When the music started again, I found the girl from earlier. At the end of the night, I took her home. That felt right. Miserable, but right. Back in the dark. Back where I belonged. No estate or flowers. No father demanding real plans for his daughter's future. No mother pressing sweets into my hand. No Radhika laughing in a courtyard covered in color, looking at me like I hadn't been born damaged beyond repair.

The sun had finally seen what I was.

A thing that consumed light if it got too close.

Chapter 41