“The app isn’t what Mehta’s excited about!” How could he not see this?

“When did you start seeing me as such a threat, Naina? I thought you were the one person I could trust to see me for who I am.”

How could she not laugh at that? “That’s precious. Literally everyone in your life sees you exactly as you want to be seen. You don’t even have to do a single thing to deserve it.”

Every bit of softness left his face. “And yet I do. I do everything I can to make sure I deserve it.”

The sudden sharpness in his eyes said he believed that with all his heart. Fine. She wouldn’t argue with that. Maybe she couldn’t argue with that, but she was not feeling nearly generous enough to admit that.

Uncross your damn arms!

He did not pick up on her telepathic message and took a deep breath, which made his big, defined pecs push into his shirt and made the sudden stark press of his hard thigh come alive against her soft one.

She hated muscle memory. It was simply something human beings didn’t need. What purpose did it serve? According to the theory of natural selection, the human body should have done away with it by now.

In response to her glare, he gave her his adorable flesh-eating-critter eyes. “Maybe the problem is that you think I don’t deserve to be seen the way I want to be seen. You’re acting like I don’t deserve any of the things I have. You believe I haven’t suffered enough for them. Isn’t that a little judgmental, even for you?”

Was he seriously trying to turn this around and make it her fault? “I don’t want you to suffer. I want you to not take what I’ve worked so hard for.”

At least he uncrossed his arms, but then he threw them up in an incredulous gesture and it was like he was showing off again. “I’m trying to save what is yours.”

She laughed. How were men so arrogant? “How did what is mine, what I worked so hard to build, become yours to save in the first place? Do you really not see how wrong this is?”

He stiffened as the truth in her words hit him. “I did not go after Jiggy. I did not go after your funding. You have to know that I would never do that.”

“That only makes everything so much worse. It means it literally just fell into your lap without you even making an effort.” She wanted to scream. She wanted to shake him.

He opened his mouth and she knew without a doubt that it was to suggest that Jiggy had given her the funding for the same connections that he had gone to Vansh for.