Page 116 of The Encore’s Crown

Radhika watches them with growing suspicion.

Rithy slides out of the booth. “Band business. Music never sleeps.”

Ronan gets to his feet, still rubbing his shin. “It was good seeing you, Radhi.” Rafe nods, apparently satisfied, then follows Ronan. Rithy lingers beside the table. Then, he reaches down, grips my shoulder, and squeezes hard enough to make the message clear.

Don’t fuck this up.

Then he’s gone.

The three of them move across the club with the stiff, unnatural speed of men pretending they haven’t just abandoned me. Radhika watches them disappear.

“That was painfully executed.”

“They’ve never been subtle.”

“No.” She looks back at me. “They haven’t.”

Silence settles into the booth. Radhika sits across from me with her hands folded around her glass. I stare at mine. There are a thousand things I could say. None of them feel right.

“I’m sorry.”

Her expression doesn’t change. Then she lets out a quiet breath.

“Sorry is what a child says after breaking something. You had ten years, Kiri. Ten years to decide what you were sorry for.”

She looks at me for a long moment. Then she sets down her glass.

“This was a mistake.”

She starts to stand. My hand moves before I think better of it. I catch her wrist gently. The second my fingers close around her, everything comes back. Hotel rooms with blackout curtains and luggage abandoned by the door. Her bare feet beneath white sheets. Her sari gathered around her waist while she fought not to make a sound. Blue powder across her cheeks. Pink in my hair. Flowers falling from the balconies while she laughed in my arms.

I love you.

The memory hits so hard my grip almost loosens. Radhika stops and her breath catches. I know she feels it too. I see it in the way her shoulders go rigid, then soften by a degree. In the way her eyes drop to my hand around her wrist before lifting slowly to my face. She doesn’t pull away. I stand without meaning to. Now we’re close enough for me to catch the jasmine in her perfume beneath the whiskey and the club. Close enough to see the pulse moving quickly in her throat.

Radhika leans in slightly. Enough to search my face.

I don’t know whether the apology is only for her anymore. Natalia’s voice still lives somewhere inside my head, accusing me of doing the same thing all over again. Pulling someone close, promising something real, then cutting it apart before they can leave me first.

Maybe I’m apologizing to both of them. Maybe I’m finally apologizing to every person I’ve punished for getting too close. But Radhika is the one standing in front of me. So I make myself say it properly.

“I know what I’m sorry for. For not telling you I was afraid,” I continue. “For letting you think I didn’t want a future with you when the truth was I was terrified you’d see where I came from and realize you didn’t want one with me.”

Her lips part.

“My family was a fucking disaster, Radhi. The house was falling apart. My father drank everything we had and beat the shit out of whoever was close enough when he was angry. My mother kept pretending she was fine because she didn’t know how to leave. Still doesn't. Rithy and I spent half our childhood hiding from him. Every scar you felt in the dark came from him. Every time you touched one and I pulled away, that was why.”

Her breathing changes.

“I thought if I brought you home, you’d see him and see me. You’d look at the man who made me and start wondering whether he was waiting inside me somewhere. Whether that was your future if you stayed.”

“Kiri—”

“I thought you’d run.” The words scrape on the way out. “I thought if you were going to leave eventually, I needed to make you do it before you had the chance to decide I wasn’t worth it.”

Her eyes shine, but she doesn’t blink.

“So I made you think it was you. That you wanted too much. That marriage and children and meeting my family were unreasonable. I made you feel ashamed for loving me because I was too scared to admit I didn’t know how to be loved that way. The way the Malhotra's love.”