Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors (The Rajes #1)(102)

No, there was no justice to be had. Julia would never be punished for what she’d done to him, and he’d always have to live in fear of the story coming out. Even after he won the election, it would always be there, hanging in his past.

He had every right to be angry at Trisha, to shut her out.

“I just wanted you to know. Thanks for coming out to see me.” Warmth prickled at her eyelids. “I’m so sorry, Yash.”

Yash got off the bed. “Get up. Come with me.”

“Where?”

Without answering, he grabbed her hand, pulled her up. And started striding across the room. “We’ll be back soon,” he threw at Aji and Esha. Neither one of them would question him. He was Yash.

They went through the sitting room and up the stairs, and down the passage that led to the attic playroom. Trisha didn’t have to run to catch up with him, but it felt like that was exactly what she was doing. A memory of trying to keep up with HRH as he strode across the halls of the Sagar Mahal flashed in her mind. HRH had never slowed down for anyone until Yash had landed in a wheelchair. The only thing their father had ever trailed was Yash’s wheelchair.

They walked through the playroom. It had gone from housing an indoor children’s play set, complete with slide and climber, to a pool table and a Ping-Pong table when she got to middle school, and back to the play set for Mishka over the decades. For some reason, no one had removed the slide and climber when Mishka had outgrown it. God, please, please let them need it again.

Yash yanked the dormer window open and dislodged the screen, then climbed through it. The man was as limber as he’d been when they’d last done this. “How on earth do you find the time to run?” she asked, wondering if she could climb through a window in her current unexercised state. Fortunately, her body hadn’t started to disintegrate yet and she stepped out into the sunshine on the eastern roof for the first time in over fifteen years.

It was like stepping back in time.

Yash sank down onto the ledge. They had been like the family from 3rd Rock from the Sun. Only they weren’t searching for their home planet in the sky, they were rooted in their home and surveying their life and dreams from its solid foundation.

“I really am sorry. I’ll do whatever it takes to stop her. I promise.”

He turned to her, and she blinked in shock.

Emotions darkened his face, anger and impatience, the calm facade of the public servant nowhere in sight. “I should have kept track.” He was livid. He ran his hand through his hair, a restless childhood tic that his handlers—as in, Ma and Nisha—had almost trained out of him.

She stuck out her chin, bracing herself. She hadn’t realized how badly she’d wanted to have this out. Her guilt was crushing. Her shoulders, her lungs, everything was collapsing under it. They’d danced around it too long. He hadn’t been able to so much as reprimand her when she so richly deserved a good solid blast of anger. It was about damn time, and if it would end this simmering coldness she felt around him, she’d take it.

“I swear you’ve apologized at least a thousand times since it happened. In fact, I don’t think we’ve had any other conversation since then. Not one. Nothing but apologies. You haven’t said one damn thing to me in fifteen years, except ‘sorry,’ Trisha!”

“I’m pretty sure I’ve said other things,” she mumbled, worrying one big toe with the other.

His expression did not alter, but now she wasn’t sure it was anger at her she was seeing. “So you made a mistake. So what?” He drew in a breath and she had a sense he wanted to shake her. “I want you to mean what you said about doing something to stop her.”

She looked up from her toes. She did mean it. She would do anything.

“Here’s what you need to do: let it go. Forgive yourself. Don’t you see what she’s taken away from us? You’ve let her ruin us.” He waved his arms around their view. Their mountain, with its redwoods, that he’d taught her to hike up. He’d been the first one to show her Anchor Point, the rocky ledge from where you could look straight across the clearing in the trees at their home.

“I miss you, Trisha. So you made a mistake . . . Actually, no. No, you didn’t. I made a mistake. This was my fault; I was the one who trusted her and allowed myself to be put in that position. I was an adult. You didn’t put Rohypnol in that drink. Yes, I blamed you right then, in that moment. But it was me. I needed to blame someone. I knew even then it was on me, not you. I should have stood up for you more with Dad. I should have tried harder to convince you that it was not your fault. I should have shaken you out of your goddamned guilt. God knows I know what living with guilt feels like.”

“Yash, it wasn’t all you. I could have stopped her. I knew. I knew that she’d hacked into my computer. I—”

“No. You were seventeen. She was your friend. This isn’t on you.” He tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “Let’s stop this, okay? I’m sorry. You’re sorry. So, please, please, let’s let it go.”

Her contacts moved in her eyes and she squeezed them shut. “You know I’m blind as a bat without my glasses.”

“Then don’t cry, giraffe. There’s nothing to cry about.”

“But the people of California—”

“Voters aren’t stupid. We’ve taken care of the video, but if by some misfortune she resurrects it, they’ll understand. I was twenty-three. I was drugged.”