Chapter 29: Silk and Steel
The therapist’s office smelled like sandalwood and suppressed panic. Dev sat in a too-soft leather chair, picking at a thread on his jeans, nodding as Dr. Mehta spoke about attachment cycles and blurred boundaries. He gave all the right answers. He mentioned the social anxiety at college, the pressure of his studies, the loneliness after his father. He painted a picture of a son overly reliant on his mother’s comfort. A harmless, pathetic cliché. He said nothing about the press of his body against silk, the cold shower that hadn’t worked, the way he now catalogued every subtle shift in her posture.
He was a good student. He knew how to describe symptoms without revealing the disease.
“And how have things been at home this week?” Dr. Mehta asked, his pen poised.
“Better,” Dev said, the lie smooth. “We’re setting healthier routines. It’s good.”
The routine was a quiet torture. They ate dinner with the television on for noise. Conversations were logistical: the grocery list, a leaking tap, the upcoming Diwali party at a relative’s house he already dreaded. Priya was polite, diligent, and miles away. She dressed in high-necked kurtas and thick shawls, even in the warmth of the penthouse. The emerald robe had vanished. She was re-mothering herself with a fierce, frightened determination.
It made him want to scream.
The night of the Diwali party arrived with a low thrum of drizzle against the windows. Priya emerged from her room in a deep blue silk sari, her hair coiled neatly. She looked regal and untouchable.
“You look nice,” he said, the words sticking in his throat.
“Thank you,” she said, not meeting his eyes, adjusting a bracelet. “We won’t stay late.”
The party was a shimmering cage of noise and family. Aunties pinched his cheeks, asking when he’d finally graduate and give his mother grandchildren. Uncles clapped him on the back, their breaths smelling of whiskey, making jokes about his quietness. He smiled until his face ached. He watched Priya. She moved through the room with a practiced grace, laughing at jokes, her hand occasionally going to the spot on her lower back that always ached. He saw the weariness beneath her smile. He saw Uncle Ravi, a wealthy widower, linger a little too long talking to her, his hand on her arm.
A hot, metallic taste flooded Dev’s mouth. He turned and walked straight out to the balcony, gripping the wet railing until his knuckles turned white.
The drive home was silent. The city lights smeared by the rain on the car windows. The tension in the luxury sedan was a physical presence, thick and suffocating.
Back in the penthouse, she went straight to her bedroom. “Goodnight, Dev.”
“He was flirting with you. Ravi.”
She stopped, her back to him. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I saw how he looked at you. He sees you as something available.”
She turned then, her composure cracking. “And how do you see me, Dev? Because I no longer know. I can’t breathe in my own home trying to figure it out.” The anguish in her voice was raw. “That man means nothing. This,” she gestured between them, “this is what is choking me.”
He crossed the space before he could think, not to grab her, but to stand too close, to invade the careful distance she’d built. The scent of her perfume and rain filled his senses. “It doesn’t have to choke you. It could be air. It could be everything.”
“It’s wrong.” The words were a plea.
“Why? Because someone else says so?” His voice dropped, low and intense. “They’re all out there with their rules and their judgments, and they’ve made you so afraid of being a woman that you’ve hidden inside being a mother. And they’ve made me so afraid of being a man that I… that I only feel real with you. We’re the only honest thing in this whole dishonest world.”
She was shaking her head, but her eyes were glistening. He saw it—the loneliness he’d named, reflected back at him, a deep well of need that mirrored his own. It was the crack he’d been waiting for.
He didn’t kiss her. He reached out, his fingers brushing the flawless silk of her sari blouse, just over the scar she’d revealed weeks ago. She flinched but didn’t retreat. A tremor ran through her.
“You did this to feel like yourself again,” he whispered. “Let me make you feel that way.”
“Dev, please…”
“Tell me to stop.” His hand settled on her waist, feeling the firm muscle beneath the soft silk, the subtle curve the surgeon had crafted. “Tell me to go to my room and I will. Say it.”
Her lips parted. A soft sound escaped, but not words. She was crying silently, tears cutting through her carefully applied makeup. Her body was rigid, a conflict etched in every line.
He took it as surrender.
His mouth found hers, not like the last time, but slower, questioning. She didn’t respond. She stood frozen. He kissed her jaw, her throat, his hands moving to the pallu of her sari, unwinding the heavy fabric with a clumsy persistence. It pooled at her feet like a blue shadow. The silk of her blouse was thin. He could feel the lace of her bra beneath it.
“This is wrong,” she whimpered again, the mantra brittle and broken.
“Then why,” he murmured against her skin, his fingers fumbling with the hooks at the back of her blouse, “are you letting me?”
A hook caught. He pulled, impatient. There was a sharp, tearing sound. A seam gave way.
She gasped, a short, sharp intake of shock. The torn fabric slipped from her shoulder, exposing not just the scar now, but the full, augmented curve of her breast, cradled in lace. The reality of it, the expensive, intimate proof of her own longing, hung in the air between them.
Dev’s breath hitched. His clinical mind, trained to observe, noted the symmetry, the healing. The rest of him was a white-out of hunger. His gaze was possessive, reverent. His hands slid around her, roaming her toned waist, mapping the new geography of her body she’d created for herself.
She brought her hands up, not to push him away, but to cover herself. A weak, shame-filled shield. “Stop.”
He didn’t stop. He guided her backwards, until her knees hit the edge of the king-sized bed. She sank down, and he followed, looming over her. He kissed her again, and this time, there was the faintest, most horrifying pressure back. A ghost of response. Her body, starved for touch, betrayed her. Her back arched slightly, pressing herself into his roaming hand.
She broke the kiss, turning her face into the duvet. “I can’t… I’m your…”
“You’re Priya,” he breathed, the words a victory. He nuzzled the tear-damp skin of her neck. “And you’re so beautiful. And you’re so lonely. And I’m here.”
She wept into the covers, her body trembling. She whispered “wrong, wrong, wrong” into the fabric, a fading prayer, even as her fingers finally, weakly, tangled in the hair at the nape of his neck.