“Maybe some retribution is called for? But I’ll support whatever you choose to do.”
The words fell on her like rain. How she’d hungered for them.
I’m here, she repeated to herself. Where if a man who deserved her showed up with love, she could take it. Without shame. And not Oscar and not Rajendra and not her aie could take that away from her.
“I know you’re here, Bindu,” he said. Apparently she had spoken her heart. “Let me know when you have a decision.”
“I have a decision,” she said, wrapping her arms around him. She knew exactly what she wanted to do with Richard’s money. But first, she was ready to take her friends with benefits situation with this lovely man to the next level.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CULLIE
On the day that I ended it, we both told the worst lies of our lives. She never told me that her mother had thrown her out, because she wanted my love, not my pity. I never told her that Hema had swallowed half a bottle of sleeping pills. I didn’t want her pity either and I thought giving her something to loathe would make it easier for her to forget me.
From the journal of Oscar Seth
Cullie’s feet sank into the sand. She had never given much thought to quite how wildly she loved the ocean. The powdery grains wiggled their way between her toes, and she closed her eyes with a sigh.
Rohan was grinning into her face when she opened them. If looking at a woman were an art, the man’s talent deserved to be hanging in the Louvre.
“Let me guess. You love the ocean,” he said, the smile spilling like light from his voice.
“You don’t?”
“I grew up in Mumbai,” he said. “It’s my entire childhood. My grandfather used to wake me and my sisters up at four in the morning and take us to Juhu Beach to jump the waves. I’d be up at three and wait for everyone else to wake up, because I had no patience.”
“That’s funny because Binji took me to the beach almost every day over the summer. She had a giant beach umbrella. She’d set it up, and we’d lie under it for hours. I just had to stay under the umbrella so I didn’t get too dark, because my granny Karen—that’s my mom’s mom—would have a meltdown if Binji let me lose my ‘fairness.’ She used to wash me from head to toe with milk to get rid of the tan Binji let me pick up. All Binji said to that was, ‘It’s a small price to pay to get to lie there listening to the ocean, isn’t it?’ Not that she ever said that to Granny Karen.”
“Your Binji wasn’t wrong. It’s the best sound in the world.”
Cullie took his hand and dragged him closer to the ocean. The afternoon sun was high and hot enough to kill those less in love with the sun. Amhi Govache go, Binji loved to say. The sun feeds our souls. It’s the sun, the ocean, and the fish. That’s what makes us better than everyone else at the arts.
They found a flat spot across from where the waves were high and frothy from the meeting of two currents and flopped down on the beach blanket. For a long while they just lay on their backs, listening to the ocean, letting the vibrations of their breathing fill them.
“How is the app coming along?” he asked as the silence kneaded every bit of tension out of her.
Something about how she felt about the app had changed. The desperate need to prove Steve wrong, the rage at losing Shloka: she could no longer conjure up the burning sensation they had caused in her belly.
She felt a paralyzing happiness.
Rolling onto her side, she propped herself on her elbow and stared down at him. A whorl dug into his cheek as a smile tugged at his lips. A matching tug pulled deep inside her, across her breasts and between her legs. Something more than just his smile lit his eyes.
“I’m pretty certain I can’t write an algorithm for meeting your soul mate. If there even is a way to write code for finding happiness, it’s an endless loop of trying.”
His eyes blazed at that.
They’d come this close to kissing often but never done it.
She’d tried many times to initiate it, but he always pulled away. Cullie had not a doubt in her mind that he was attracted to her. This thing burning inside her was not hers alone. Maybe he was shy. But he was shy about nothing else.
“But you believe in soul mates now?”
She shrugged and laid a tentative hand on his bare chest. He had the most beautiful body, lean with muscle, not bulky, chiseled into cords and cuts. Detailed in its beauty, like a meticulously efficient piece of code. What man this hot, this heated, in his reaction to her would not be interested?
She trailed a hand down the line that separated his perfectly sculpted pecs. Arousal dilated his eyes, and the sun filtered all the way into his golden irises and set them on fire. The flame of his gaze did a quick slide down her body.
She was wearing her black bikini. Her body was thick and lush. It would never make the cover of Sports Illustrated, but it made her happy. Obviously, he felt that way too, because his maroon board shorts stirred with his response.
A smile stretched her lips. Knowing burned inside her. She was about to lean over and kiss him when he plucked her hand off his chest and pulled it away.
Rejection stung like a million rattlesnakes, finally shredding through her self-respect. Tears sprang to her eyes, and it was so damned mortifying, she jumped up and broke into a run.
“Cullie, wait.” Why was he following her if he didn’t want her?
She ran into the water, and he grabbed her from behind.
“Don’t touch me if you don’t want me.” Pulling his arms off her, she flung them away.
“I do want you.”
She had to laugh at that. “You could have fooled me.”
“Is that all this is about to you?”
How could he say that? She had spent every moment she could with him these past weeks. They’d talked more than she had ever talked to another human being. Everything he was, she saw it. Everything she was, she’d let him see. And she’d never felt so enough in her life. So right.
Until now. Now she felt small, needy. “What? Wanting you is slutty?” she asked as a wave shoved her sideways. But she dug in her heels and stood her ground.
“No.” He repeated it again with some force. “No! But why do we have to be in such a hurry?”
“In a hurry?” They’d been eye-fucking for weeks. Could he be one of those puritanical abstinence-before-marriage people?
“Why does physical intimacy have to be such a big deal?” A wave splashed his glistening, golden body.
She was a sexual person, and she didn’t give a shit if that was some sort of red flag for him.
“I enjoy sex, and I’m not apologizing for that.”
He ran a hand through his hair, so much frustration in the gesture she wanted to shake him. “But you want me to apologize for wanting to take it slow?” His eyes crinkled with such sincerity that a ball of wanting squeezed in her belly.
“If that’s how you really feel, then I respect your choice. It’s just the way you’ve been with me. Something feels disingenuous.” Disingenuous. That’s exactly how this felt.
“It’s not. Nothing about what I feel for you is disingenuous. I swear.”
Why did she want to trust him so badly? “Is it a religious thing?”