Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors (The Rajes #1)(100)

All her life Trisha had prided herself on being someone who fought for things she wanted. And yet she had accepted Yash shutting her out, HRH writing her off. She’d believed in her own guilt so much she had never had the courage to ask for forgiveness, to forgive herself. DJ was right; they might be angry with her but she hadn’t ceased to exist for them. That much she knew. Maybe it wasn’t too late.

Unlike her, Nisha was brave, and she knew what to do with her love. She had loved Neel hard, and despite her insecurities, she’d given him everything she had. Fortunately, he saw that.

She threw her arms around him. “Then prove it to her, Neel. Prove it to her.”

AFTER NEEL LEFT, Trisha was about to call HRH to try and figure out the Julia problem, but her fingers dialed Yash instead.

“All okay, Shasha?”

The day had been an emotional roller coaster. All her days seemed to be going that way recently. But it was that question from her brother that finally tipped her over the edge. Regret choked her throat. “No, no it’s not. Can we meet? I need to talk to you.”

“I’ve got a full day,” he said, then shouted a random string of statistics to someone in the room. “How about later in the week?” He’d just come back and had to be busy.

“Yash, I need to see you today.” She didn’t bother to suppress the sniff that hiccuped through her. “Can’t you make time for me?” Even to her own ears she sounded ten. Actually, she sounded seventeen. Her before voice.

There was a beat of silence. “Okay. I’ll see you at the Anchorage this evening.”

“Really?”

He laughed. “Why do you sound so surprised? You did want to meet, right? Please tell me this wasn’t some sort of test. I think I just blew off the mayor of San Francisco.”

“Did you really?” Maybe it was a test. She wasn’t sure. Now she felt awful.

“No. I’m kidding. I love you, but I do want to get elected. I needed to stop by the Anchorage anyway. Will you be done with patients by six?”

“Yes. Thanks, Yash.”

NATURALLY, JUST AS she finished with her last patient, an emergency came up. Anne told her that Dr. Entoff was happy to take it, “But I’ll let him know you’re here so you’ll want it.”

She almost asked Anne for the case details, but then she said, “No, thank Dr. Entoff for me. I have to leave.”

Anne stopped typing at her prosthetic keyboard and almost fell off her too-high chair. “Really?” she said, then quickly, “I mean, okay.” She was channeling the Grim Reaper, as usual. “Also, I set an appointment up for Emma Caine with Jane Liu tomorrow.”

“Thank you, Anne.” She turned to walk away, but there was a notepad sitting on Anne’s desk and she picked it up and started to draw on it. “Actually, would you do me a favor?”

Anne blinked and looked around her to make sure Trisha was talking to her. “Sure, what do you need?”

“Could you stand up, please?”

“Excuse me?”

Trisha turned the notepad toward her showing her the line drawing of the chair she’d done. “See the length of your legs? Here?” She circled the distance from the chair seat to the floor. “See, if your feet are not resting on the floor and you’re bent at this angle and your elbow pulls here, these nerves here can get pinched and then the pain that radiates from here can be felt here because your nerves all connect to your spinal column.” On every “here” she circled and drew lines along the human figure she’d sketched.

Anne stood. Her mouth was hanging open.

Trisha walked around the desk. “You mind?” Anne shook her head and Trisha bent down and adjusted the chair until it was the right height so Anne’s legs would rest on the floor correctly.

“Try that.”

Anne sat and wiggled about in her seat. “It doesn’t feel any different,” she mumbled.

Trisha smiled at her. “Give it a day or two. If it doesn’t help, you can always change it back.”

She was barely down the hall when she heard Anne on the phone. “You’re not going to flippin’ believe this . . .”

TRISHA PULLED UNDER the porte cochere and parked next to Yash’s car and turned the rearview mirror to look at her face. There were deep smudges under her eyes. She hadn’t had a chance to get out of her scrubs. It was a good thing Ma and HRH were not back from LA yet.

After a quick stop in the kitchen, she took the stairs up to Aji’s room. The portraits of Sita and Parvati gave her their usual half-compassionate, half-amused smiles. Sita, at least, had no right to be amused at Trisha. Sita had sent her husband chasing after a golden doe to make herself a blouse, for crying out loud! And then she’d left the safety of her home when he’d begged her not to. Sure, that entire story was structured to scare women from ever crossing the boundaries society and the men in their lives set for them, so Trisha did feel bad for her. But she had paid for it by being abducted by a ten-headed monster and by causing a war for the ages.

All Trisha had done was lose her heart to a man who detested her and puked out her feelings on his shoes like a drunk sorority girl. And years ago, she had trusted a friend who had betrayed her. And now she was choosing to trust someone again, but the betrayal wouldn’t stop nudging at her.

“I’m sorry,” she said to Sita. She understood how trusting the world to be a safe place could make you stupid.