Girl Gone Viral (Modern Love #2)(38)

She’d had another one a few months later, with more tests and the same result, and then another one a few months after that. Instead of looking for a diagnosis, her dear old dad convinced her it was stress, exhaustion, she was simply too fragile, and only he could help her. Then he’d taken full control of her money, her career, and her time.

She’d had almost zero self-esteem by the time she was twenty-four, and her fear of having “a breakdown” at any given moment had made parties something to dread, even though she was naturally outgoing and social anxiety had never been an issue for her before.

Her father had carefully chosen her outings, all of them geared toward furthering her career, and an after-party at a popular photographer’s house during Fashion Week in Paris had been one of them. She’d grown bored by the people in attendance and the increasing wildness as the night grew late. Since her dad had been too sick to come with her, she’d taken the opportunity to slip away into the empty library for a rare moment of peace.

Only it hadn’t been empty. Hardeep had been sitting in a chair across from another man, also in his sixties, speaking rapid-fire in a language she didn’t know. They’d both looked up when she’d entered, and the other man’s face had hardened.

He looked a little forbidding, and she’d felt a moment of fear, but her future husband had spoken up. “She doesn’t speak Punjabi, do you, love?”

She’d silently shaken her head, and the man had left. Hardeep had invited her to sit down in his place and quickly charmed her. Charmed her so much, they talked all night. She’d spilled her darkest secrets: her father/manager kept her almost under lock and key, she feared he was deliberately using her attacks as a way to maintain control, and she’d started to read stuff on the internet which suggested she could get help for her condition.

She’d forgotten about the meeting she’d interrupted, until she’d found out later that the guy had been a loan shark Hardeep was encouraging to look the other way on a friend’s debt. That was her late husband. Ride or die for his friends. Ride or die for her, the young woman he’d met and felt sorry for enough to save her from her abusive dad.

She hadn’t lied back then. She hadn’t spoken any Punjabi at twenty-four. But she’d always been quick, and she’d felt such a deep gratitude for Hardeep saving her, she’d spent the next three years learning his language. She’d downloaded apps, looked up a word here, a word there, and while she could only speak it at a very basic level now, she could understand enough of the gist of a sentence to figure out what was going on. It helped when the person spoke slow or sprinkled in some English words.

Words like client. Or her name, uttered in Jas’s deep voice.

I have no interest in Katrina.

She’s a client.

Katrina braced her elbows on the kitchen counter and lowered her head into her hands. He’d been so far away, she shouldn’t have been able to hear him. The wind must have timed itself just right, to carry those words to her ears. You wanted something to kill your hope.

Not so brutally, though, yikes. To go from giddily speculating Jas’s tiny overtures meant something other than kindness to hearing from his own mouth that he didn’t want her . . . oof.

She’d only gone looking for him because she’d wanted to check in on what the internet was saying about her. She’d come to a dead stop before she could turn the corner of the house when she heard what Jas was saying about her.

It had been such a good day, otherwise. Once upon a time, she had enjoyed traveling, and staying in a different place wasn’t nearly as unsettling as she’d thought it would be. The silence here was beautiful, the only sounds those of nature. She’d slowly relaxed and tried to build an equally relaxed farm schedule.

She wasn’t relaxed now. Her lower lip trembled, and she stilled it. She was self-aware enough to know rejection was not a good playmate for her. She needed to control her knee-jerk response to the revelation that Jas had zero romantic feelings for her.

She stuck her hand in her pocket and fondled the rock there. Doubtful that the rock would calm her right now, but it didn’t hurt. Time would ease this painful discovery, surely.

Only she didn’t get the time, because the front door opened and Jas called out her name.

She straightened and breathed deep, buttoning all those wayward feelings and hopes and dreams up inside her like she might zip up her sweatshirt. Those eyebrows were not meant to be smoothed by her fingers. So be it. This situation would be mortifying if Jas guessed that she’d come outside and overheard him and his brother. That would be even more mortifying than him witnessing Jia calling him hot. “In the kitchen,” she replied.

He entered, and he was smiling, the jerk. Who gave him the right to look so cute and cuddly right now?

Be cool. “What’s up, bruh?” Not that cool.

She’d so rarely seen such a wide smile on his face. “Come with me.”

She slowly followed him from the kitchen to the front door. Was he taking her outside to shoot her poor soft heart and put it out of its misery?

Cool. “To where?”

“The barn. I found something that you may like.”

Ugh, the last thing she wanted to do was go outside, where she’d eavesdropped on his convo. But since she couldn’t tell him why she was sad—I like you and you don’t like me was a really terrible color on anyone—she had no choice but to follow him.