CHAPTER TWO

His blank expression turned to a glare so fast it felt like a slap.

"Out."

Nice to meet you too, Vikram Rathore, you absolute —

Meera glared back. "Excuse me?"

"Not excused." He pointed at the door behind her with a hand that could have wrapped around her entire forearm. "Out."

"Not until you tell me what happened to —"

"Bahar." The word came out like a command given to a dog. He stalked toward her, and the sheer physical presence of him — the heat radiating off his body, the smell of coal smoke and iron and sweat — pushed her backward without him touching her. "Out. Now."

The woman from the office — Falguni, Meera had already started calling her in her head — followed behind him, wringing her hands. "Vikram Sahab, I didn't know she was —"

"Falguni, you're fine." He held the door until Meera walked through it, because apparently even furious men in Himachal had better manners than she expected. "Meera, I will talk to you. Outside."

The mountain cold hit her like a wall after the warmth of the office. She strode toward her car, her breath coming out in small white clouds that dissolved into the grey morning.

She had to fight the urge to hug him. He looked like Arjun. Sounded like Arjun — well, a rougher, angrier version, like Arjun's voice put through sandpaper. The only problem was that he was looking at her like she'd just walked into his forge and pissed on his anvil.

She fought the tears that welled in her eyes. Crying in front of this man would be giving him ammunition, and she refused.

"I'm sorry for just showing up like this, but you wouldn't return my calls. Arjun's phone has been dead for weeks and —"

"For good reason."

She gaped at him. "What?"

"You've no right to come here." Vikram crossed massive arms over his chest. The sleeves of his kurta were rolled to the elbows, and the muscles in his forearms shifted like something alive under the skin. "Especially not to my place of business." His eyes — Arjun's eyes, but harder, a brown so dark it was nearly black in the overcast light — moved over her from the top of her head to her inadequate sneakers. "You are... not right for him, and that was obvious to everyone but Arjun."

Meera blinked. "Wh-what?"

Was this a joke? Was she misunderstanding his look — that measuring sweep of his gaze that felt less like attraction and more like an assessment of structural weakness?

Sure, Arjun and his brother both looked like they'd walked out of a Rajput miniature painting — all sharp jawlines and warrior shoulders — but did he have to be this cruel about it?

Meera was an assistant professor at one of Pune's oldest colleges. She owned a flat her father had left her. And while she wasn't going to grace any magazine covers, she was perfectly fine-looking, thank you very much. She had long dark hair that couldn't decide between wavy and curly — her mother's contribution — and her father's sharp nose, and eyes that were an unusual grey-green that people always commented on, a genetic echo of something in her mother's bloodline that nobody could quite explain.

She didn't need this man's approval.

Vikram lifted his chin. "Arjun left you. It's a shit situation, but relationships end every day."

The cold in his voice was worse than the mountain air. "I don't believe you."

"I don't know why not. You weren't together very long."

"Are you telling me your brother has a habit of travelling the world, making women fall in love with him, and leaving them with his guitar in their apartment and not a single word of explanation?"

Vikram opened his mouth, then closed it. The guilt that flashed across his face — Arjun's face, wearing an expression Arjun had never once shown her — told her everything she needed to know.

"Do you know where Arjun is?" she asked. "Is he okay?"

"Yes." The word came out like it cost him something. "And... yes. I believe he is fine."

Meera squared her shoulders. The wind was pulling at her hair, whipping strands across her face, and her nose had gone numb three minutes ago, but she was not leaving this courtyard without answers. "I want to talk to him."

"You can't."

"Is he here?" She looked around the yard. Stone buildings, the forge chimney trailing smoke, a row of completed iron gates leaning against a wall. Nobody else in sight — the workers were probably inside, out of the cold. "Where is he?"

"Meera." Vikram's expression softened. A fraction. The way granite softens when you run water over it for ten years — you can see the change but you wouldn't call it progress. "Arjun did tell me about you. He should have... He has responsibilities here." The man could barely look at her. "You shouldn't have come."

"He left everything in Pune. Not just his guitar. His passport. His wallet. His books."

"I'll get those and return them if you want."

"No! He left his — he left things that mattered to him. A brass Nataraja that his wife gave him before she died. He would not have left that behind, Vikram. No one would."

The big man said nothing. The smoke from the forge chimney bent in the wind and carried the smell of hot metal across the courtyard — a smell that reminded Meera of something she couldn't place, a distant memory that itched at the back of her skull.

"Did your family..." The words felt insane even as she formed them. "Did your family force him to come back?"

"My family has nothing to do with it!" Vikram's patience shattered, and the sound of his voice bouncing off the stone walls made a pair of crows launch from the roof of the forge. "Listen — there was a lot that my brother didn't tell you about himself. And I understand why you're confused. I didn't know how to explain things to you, so I didn't call you back. I assumed you'd move on." He let out a breath that turned to fog in the cold air. "Arjun told me about you, Meera. You're a bright woman and a college professor. You have a life in Pune. You're going to be fine."

She was momentarily stunned by the compliments buried inside the hostility, like finding marigolds growing in an abandoned construction site. "I... thank you?" She shook her head. "That's not the point. I love Arjun."

Vikram stepped closer. The heat of his body cut through the mountain cold — actual, physical warmth, as if he'd been standing in front of his forge for so long the fire had gotten into his blood. His eyes searched hers with an intensity that made her stomach tighten.

"Do you now?"

"Yes." She'd had six weeks to think about it, to examine every moment of their relationship under the fluorescent lights of Dr. Kulkarni's office. "Arjun made me feel alive after the worst period of my life. He was kind and generous and he saw me — not the professor, not the depressed girl, not Girish Sharma's quiet daughter. Me. I love him, and I'm not leaving these mountains until I know what happened to him because I know — I know — you're not telling me the truth."

Vikram moved closer still, and the warmth from his body was a physical thing now, pressing against her skin through the inadequate layers of her puffer jacket. The smell of him — forge smoke and iron and something underneath that was just skin, just warm male skin — made her breath catch in a way that had nothing to do with the altitude.

"He wasn't honest with you, Meera."

Her stomach dropped like she'd missed a step on a staircase in the dark. "Is he... is he married? Did his wife not really die?"

Oh God oh God oh God. Was she the other woman? Was she in love with a married man who'd been playing her while his wife waited at home in these mountains?

"No." Vikram's answer was immediate and absolute. "That wasn't a lie. Arjun was widowed about two years ago. Tara was..." He paused, and something moved behind his eyes — something raw and quickly buried. "It was very hard for all of us to lose her. Arjun was... destroyed."

"It's been two years." She knew it was, because Arjun had lost his wife around the same time Meera had stopped being able to get out of bed. Their parallel griefs — his for a person, hers for a version of herself she was afraid she'd never get back — had been one of the things that bonded them so quickly. "Is it so wrong that he doesn't want to be alone anymore?"

"Meera." His voice had dropped to something that was almost gentle, which was more unsettling than the shouting. "Arjun has responsibilities here. He was supposed to be on leave, and he took things too far."

"Too far? We were together for four months. He was talking about getting a teaching position in Pune. We were going to —"

"It was never going to happen." Vikram's jaw tightened. "It's not possible."

"No." She shook her head. "I want to talk to Arjun. If he's here, I want to talk to him." She scanned the courtyard again, as if he might step out from behind the forge chimney with his guitar and that grin. "Where is he?"

Vikram stepped back. "He's here, but he's not right here."

"Then how do you know he's okay?"

He shook his head. "I know where he is, but I can't take you —"

"Why the hell not?" Meera's voice cracked. She was starting to feel the edges of the old darkness pressing in — the helplessness, the sense that reality was slipping away from her like water through fingers. She'd clawed her way back from that place once. She refused to go again. "I'm not leaving Himachal without talking to your brother."

"Well, good luck." Vikram offered her a smile that had no warmth in it. "You can ask around, but no one is going to help you."

"What does that mean?"

The office door popped open. "Can I get you a cup of chai, beta?"

Vikram's head swung toward the door. "She's not staying, Falguni."

Falguni's eyes went wide. "Sorry," she mouthed at Meera before retreating.

"Don't be a bully." Meera had arrived at the metalworks feeling uncertain, but now she was furious — the kind of anger that started in her chest and spread outward like ink in water, staining everything it touched. "Why are you being a bully?"

"I don't know what you mean." He crossed his arms again — the defensive posture of a man who knew he was in the wrong but had decided to stand his ground anyway.

"You order me around. You shout at your office manager. You imply that Arjun is a liar. You're acting like everything about this is normal." She jabbed a finger at him. "It's not. I know Arjun, and he wouldn't just —"

"You knew a part of Arjun." Vikram's voice went quiet, and the quietness was worse than the shouting because it sounded like the truth. "And that's all any of us knows of anyone in this world." He stepped away from her car. "Go home, Meera Sharma. Live your life. Leave my brother in your memories because that's all he'll ever be."

"I'm not done with this." She opened her car door, so angry her hands were shaking — not from the cold but from the effort of not screaming. "Do not think for a single second that I am leaving these mountains without talking to your brother."

Vikram didn't reply. He walked back into the office and shut the door behind him, leaving Meera alone in the courtyard with the forge smoke and the mountains and the sound of a hammer ringing somewhere inside the stone building — a steady, rhythmic clang that sounded like a heartbeat.

She looked up, past the roof of the forge to the hill that rose sharply behind the estate. Dense deodar forest covered the slope, the trees so dark they were nearly black against the grey sky. Between the trunks, she caught a flash of movement — something amber and quick, there and gone.

A fox? A dog?

She stood up straighter and walked toward the edge of the yard, drawn by a pull she couldn't explain — a tug behind her navel, like a fishhook set in her belly, drawing her toward the forest.

Something watched her from between the trees. She could feel the weight of its gaze like a hand pressed against her chest.

Then it was gone, and the forest was just a forest, and the cold was just cold, and Meera Sharma was just a woman standing alone in a courtyard in the mountains, looking for someone who didn't want to be found.

She got back in her car, turned the key with trembling fingers, and drove back toward the town.

She was halfway down the mountain road when she found the note.

It was tucked under her windshield wiper — she hadn't seen it until a gust of wind caught the folded paper and flapped it against the glass. She pulled over at a chai stall, put the car in park, and reached out to grab it.

Heavy paper. Thick, handmade. The kind you didn't find at a stationery shop. Folded once, her name written on the outside in precise, angular handwriting that was nothing like Arjun's loose scrawl.

Meera,

Come to Murrayshall — Rathore House. Tomorrow morning. Take the left fork after the Nag Devta temple. I'll answer your questions. Come alone.

— V

She stared at it for a long time, the paper heavy in her cold fingers, the smell of chai and pakoras drifting from the stall beside her. A bus rumbled past, shaking the car.

She folded the note carefully and put it in her jacket pocket, next to her heart.

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