Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors (The Rajes #1)(91)

And something about knowing that about Trisha with such certainty made him restless as hell.

“Are you going to get your finger out and tell me what happened?” Emma said looking up from her sketchbook.

Sure. Right after she got her finger out and took her arse to the operating table. “Absolutely nothing.” Other than the fact that she was effectively trying to kill herself, and the most infuriating woman he’d ever met had propositioned him in the most insulting way possible and then acted like he had cut her off at the knees when he had pointed that out.

Emma grunted, then jabbed at the paper, her stabs getting more and more forceful, until finally she tossed the sketchbook across the table. “Hell and bollocks!” she yelled as it went flying to the floor.

He put his iPad down—he’d been calculating how many pounds of tomatoes he would need for the makhani sauce for the Raje dinner—and was about to retrieve the sketchpad, but she put out a hand to stop him and stood, her body tight with frustration. She took a deep breath and was halfway around the table when she tripped and with nothing more than a startled yelp fell facedown to the floor.

DJ jumped up and was next to her in a second, his heart slamming in his chest. “Emma! Love, are you all right?”

He gave her a hand and sat her up on the floor.

Her shoulders were shaking. “I tripped. I fecking tripped! That wanker left his sodding shoes in the middle of the sodding floor!” She glared at Rajesh’s shoes, but her shoulders wouldn’t stop shaking.

“Are you laughing, you cow?” he said, a laugh starting in his own chest. “You damn near killed me just now.”

“That’d be funny, innit? If you died of fright before me!” She dealt him a soft kick on his shins then slumped back into the wall and shook with laughter.

DJ reached for the shoes she had tripped over and tossed them across the room with far more force than necessary. They slammed against one of her many, many boxes covering the flat and slid to the floor. “I’m going to kill him. What the hell is wrong with him?”

“Isn’t that the question to end all questions? Where would we begin?”

They were both laughing hard now, unable to stop. And none of this shit was actually funny.

“Truth is, I didn’t see those,” she said suddenly, throwing a pained glance at the shoes lying in a sad heap. DJ’s laughter dried up inside him. “I don’t see that well anymore.” Her voice was small. So terribly small. “It’s not all the time. But everything disappears suddenly. When I’m sketching or painting. It all just goes away.”

He scooted closer to her. “I’m so sorry, love.” She let him put his arm around her and pull her close. Let him hold her. For all of five seconds.

Then she shoved him away, with all her strength. “Why are you bloody sorry? Why is everyone so bloody sorry? It’s not like you bloody did this!”

Rage and sadness, hot and pure, twisted in his gut, turning into acid he could taste. Who would have known you could taste your feelings? Taste the awful, acrid heat of them. “Your doctor should never have discharged you. This isn’t any place for you.” This stupid fecking pin-box-size flat. “You need to be in a hospital right now, not in a cupboard with some plonker’s clogs tossed about.”

“Shut up, DJ. This isn’t Rajesh’s fault. Fun as it is to blame that wanker for everything, this is not his fault. And it certainly is not Dr. Raje’s fault either. Don’t be an arse. It’s not fair to blame her when I didn’t give her a choice.” She gave him another shove, but she looked a little less angry now, a little more gentle. “You have to stop trying to find someone to blame for everything, bruh’.”

This was precious. “For everything?”

She looked away, done with this conversation. “Forget it.”

Oh, he most certainly would love to forget it. But she’d said it and now it lay on the floor between them like an uncooked chunk of meat they couldn’t just leave there. “Why did you bring it up if you wanted to forget it?”

“Listen, all I’m saying is that this is no one’s fault.” She pushed herself off the floor and he suppressed the urge to help, because he didn’t need another dressing-down. “And other things that you can’t let go of aren’t anyone’s fault either.”

He squeezed the back of his neck where a knot the size of a fist was forming. “Like what?” Whom did he blame that didn’t deserve it?

Her response was an eye roll and a whole lot of silence.

“Like our aunt?” he pushed. “Throwing us out on the street was not our darling aunt’s fault then?”

She gave him a hand and pulled him to his feet. “Oh, that was most certainly her fault. But Dad dying without providing for us was not her fault.”

He pulled his hand away from hers. “You’re right about that. That was all him.” All bloody him.

Her eyes softened. She’d been too young to know Dad, too young to have memories of him, his smiles, his silly jokes, the way he followed Mum around the house like a smitten puppy, his ability to wrap you up and make you feel safe.

“Yes. But isn’t it bloody time you forgave him for it?” She whispered it, but no whisper was soft enough for those words.

“Forgive him for leaving a young wife and two children homeless, when he knew how much his family hated us? Did he think he was bloody immortal? Don’t tell me to forgive Dad. I’m not even bloody angry at him anyway.”