His words settled between them, heavy and warm. *Not to me.* She wanted to believe it — had built her life around believing it — but the phone was still cold in her hand, Urmila's face fading from its screen, and the lie she'd told her daughter sat in her chest like a stone she couldn't swallow. Vikram saw the flicker. His thumb found her chin, tilting her face up, and his dark eyes held hers with that patient, banked intensity that made her feel like the only woman in the world.

"You're thinking about her," he said. Not an accusation. A door left open.

"I'm always thinking about her." Meghna's voice came out smaller than she intended. "She heard something in my voice. She's twelve, Vikram. She's not stupid."

He took the phone from her hand, his fingers brushing hers, and set it face-down on the table beside them. Then his palm found the small of her back, pressing her into the solid warmth of his chest, and she felt the tension in her shoulders begin to unspool. "Then tomorrow you'll tell her the princess story," he said, his mouth against her hair. "And you'll mean every word, because princesses who outsmart kings — they get to choose their own endings. You told me that." His hand slid lower, settling at the curve of her hip. "Tonight, you're not Meghna the CEO. Not Meghna the mother. Just mine. Let me carry the rest for a few hours."

She should have argued. Should have pointed out that he couldn't carry it, not really, not when his name was Mahadik and his wife was waiting in Nagpur. But his hand was warm through the silk of her saree, and the flat smelled of fresh paint and him, and she was so tired of being the one who held everything together. She let him lead her past the plastic-covered furniture, her bare feet silent on the cold floor, and when he stopped at the foot of the bed his fingers found the knot at her waist. He didn't untie it. He just held it, waiting, his eyes asking a question his mouth wouldn't speak.

Meghna reached up and undid the first button of his shirt herself. "Then take it," she said quietly. "All of it. I'm done carrying tonight."