Rebel Hard (Hard Play #2)(67)

You’re mine. I don’t want anyone else.

Nayna believed that now. But how much longer would those words be true?

“Hey.” Navin tapped his beer bottle to Raj’s. “What’s with the tall, dark, and brooding look, bro? I know you’re not trying to pick up women.”

Raj hadn’t even noticed the women in the pub, all his attention on an accountant with dark eyes who filled all the holes inside him but who might only be his for a small moment in time. “It’s nothing,” he said to his brother. “How are you and Komal doing?” The strain between the two had hit such a fever pitch that Aditi had all but moved into Raj’s small flat, making up a bed for herself on his fold-out couch.

Navin shrugged and took a sip of his beer. “She’s pissed off at me because I’m ‘just’ a teacher, can’t give her some fancy lifestyle. I don’t know what she expected since I was a student teacher when we met.”

Raj didn’t like his sister-in-law, but he knew this wasn’t all Komal’s fault. “You’re hardly home, Navin. Why the fuck are you out with the boys all hours when you’ve got a pretty young wife at home?”

“It’s not like she’s at home either,” Navin shot back. “I saw her at the same club I was at yesterday.”

Raj’s temples pounded. “I don’t care who’s at what club,” he said. “You two have to figure something out—it’s not fair on Mum and Dad and Aditi to have you two hissing at each other like feral cats.”

Flushing, Navin ducked his head. “Komal didn’t even want to move in with the family,” he muttered. “I talked her into it.”

That, at least, explained a little of his sister-in-law’s behavior when she’d first come home as Navin’s bride. “Have you considered moving out?” At this stage, their parents would wave them off with cheerful smiles and offers to load their furniture.

“It’s fucking expensive,” Navin said, though—despite his complaints—he wasn’t hard up. Not only did he have his teacher’s salary, he got a percentage of the construction company’s profits. Raj had made his father and mother agree to that setup—even though Raj was running the business, he never wanted Navin or Aditi to feel cut out of something their parents had built.

“I can organize more funds,” he began.

But Navin shook his head. “I’m being an asshole, bhaiya.” Taking another drink of his beer, he put it back down. “I know I’m in a good spot, and I know if you weren’t around, the parents would be looking at me to take over the family business—and I’d be miserable.” A faint grin that reminded Raj of the small boy who’d once followed him around. “I must’ve done something good in a past life to end up with you as a brother, though I clearly also did something very nasty to end up with the marriage from hell.”

Raj squeezed his shoulder. “Try, Navin,” he said quietly. “You loved Komal madly when you two got married. That kind of love doesn’t just disappear.” His own love for Nayna would be forever a part of him, no matter what happened.

Navin’s hand tightened to bloodless whiteness round the beer bottle, and Raj realized his younger brother was fighting a strong surge of emotion. “I think she’s having an affair.”

The words were a punch to the gut. “Think or know?”

“I don’t have any proof.” Navin finished off his beer. “Not that I really care. It’s not like she loves me anyway.”

Raj did what he could for his brother that night, but Navin wasn’t talking anymore. He was also drunk when Raj drove him home, then helped him up the internal stairs to his and Komal’s part of the house. The house had three master suites, two upstairs and one downstairs. Raj’s parents occupied one of the upstairs ones, Komal and Navin the other.

There had previously only been one master suite upstairs, but Raj had added in a second after Navin’s engagement, when his brother told Raj he and his new wife would be staying in the family home. He’d done it as a wedding present, never realizing that his brother was trampling on Komal’s needs and wants.

Aditi had a single room at the far end of the same hallway.

At the end nearest the stairs was a large rumpus room/lounge, set up with a television and sofas.

Raj and Navin had both had single bedrooms on the ground floor before Navin got married and Raj moved out. At present, one was his mother’s sewing room and the other functioned as his father’s study. When in town, Raj’s grandparents occupied the final master suite on the ground floor. That suite had been built for them so they wouldn’t have to deal with stairs.

The main downstairs lounge was where his parents watched their television shows and hosted guests, but there was another, more casual space that flowed off the kitchen and was the lounge Raj and Navin had used most often when growing up. Navin’s game system still sat in one corner, dusted off occasionally by Aditi and her friends.

So it wasn’t as if this was a small house with people on top of one another. And yet Navin and Komal had managed to permeate the entire house with their dislike of one another.

When he knocked lightly on the door of their suite, conscious of not waking his parents, it was wrenched open from the inside.

“Where the f—” Komal bit off her words when she saw Raj supporting Navin.