The Vibrant Years(63)

Her hand went to her hair, slapping it out of her eyes. “Excuse me?” She used the tone she used to get people to back off, but it didn’t seem to register.

“This unmitigated disaster,” he went on calmly, as though the moment he’d destroyed had never happened. “Does it have to do with being told you can’t code because you’re a woman?”

She laughed. “No one who’s seen my code has ever been dumb enough to say that.”

Instead of backing away the way people usually did when she told the truth about her genius, he smiled, and the sudden tension between them sank into his dimples and disappeared. “Given that you are the best coder on the planet.”

Fine, she’d told him that when they’d first talked about their jobs. His response had been that he wanted to be one of the better filmmakers on the planet someday.

“Still, the pressure to get it right has to be a lot,” he pushed.

“The reason I need to get it right is because I can’t create something that isn’t the best. Or at least the best thing I can create. Which makes it . . .”

“The best,” he finished with her.

Twin smiles bloomed on their faces again.

“Is that why you have only one?”

And boom! The smile slid right off her face again. She pushed herself off the chair. Was he for real?

“I have only one because I’m frickin’ twenty-five years old. How many multimillion-user apps have you heard of other twenty-five-year-olds creating? I’m not a damned factory. But if I don’t get this to work, my asshole ex is going to destroy what I built.”

He leaned back in his chair lazily. “So you’re not letting being told you can’t code because you’re a woman get in your way. You’re letting your ex get inside your head.”

“I’m not working eighteen hours a day to prove Steve wrong.” Or was she? “And even if I am, it needs to be done. I do need to prove him wrong because he is wrong.”

She sat back down, and he reached out and touched her hand. Warmth spread beneath her ribs, calming her and heating her up at once. This was just who he was, touchy-feely. It must have been all those sisters who obviously adored him enough to have cuddled the hell out of him as a child.

Or just biology. It had been too long since she’d been touched by a man, since she’d had sex. She’d gone out with more men in the past few weeks than she had in years, and for someone who enjoyed sex and didn’t mix it up with unnecessary emotions, the fact that she’d wanted none of them was disconcerting.

Rohan smiled, in that way he had of smiling with his eyes, and need bloomed inside her. “But is this particular app the way to prove him wrong? It’s obviously something you’re not interested in.”

The urge to punch him right after wanting to climb him like a tree, followed by the slippery desire to share every one of her thoughts with him, was incredibly disorienting.

“And now you’re telling me how I feel about my work. That’s worse than mansplaining.”

“Actually you said those exact words to me yesterday.” They’d gotten into the habit of sitting at the café outside his hotel and working almost every day the past week. She trying to make sense out of the nonsense that was dating apps, and he working on the documentary project he was more obsessed with than she’d ever seen anyone be with anything. Except herself with Shloka.

“Honestly, I wasn’t really into it when I started, but now I feel like it cannot possibly be this hard if more than half the world’s adult population is in relationships. As a woman of science, I’m feeling pretty darned compelled to crack the code.”

Between Mom, Binji, and her, they had gone on twenty dates in three weeks. Every date had been some level of a disaster. And the ones that hadn’t been downright ghastly had been meh.

“Well, I guess that’s the next-best reason for creating a dating app, after wanting to help people find someone to be with.” His over-the-top eyes met hers, and that sparkly warmth slipped lower into her belly.

“I’m not certain it qualifies as help. Given the misery relationships seem to cause.”

“One crappy ex nullifies all happy relationships, then?”

“Do you know any happy relationships?”

“I think my parents were pretty happy.”

“I thought mine were too. Well, happy in the Desai way.”

“What does that mean?” The man could hold your gaze endlessly.

“I don’t know how to explain it. We make ourselves miserable in our quest for happiness, so we’re kind of obstinate about it. Does that make sense?”

“Not even a little bit. But it sounds wonderful.”

“Before you start imagining happy family portraits, I did tell you my parents are divorced, right?” Before he could ask about the divorce, she added, “How long have your parents been married?”

“They were married for thirty-five years. My mother died three years ago. She was sick for five years before that.”

Pain so harsh it almost edged into panic flooded his eyes, and Cullie had a sense that she’d seen him like this before. The memory of his eyes flashing with pain like this nudged at her, and she pushed at it, trying to unravel it.

“Cholangiocarcinoma, a.k.a. bile duct cancer. One of the worst cancer survival rates. But she sent it into remission for a year after two years of treatment before it raged back.” He said all of that as though he were talking about someone other than his own mother.