“He let me love those things without fear, and somewhere along the way I started to notice little things about him. How he never used force to get what he wanted. How he analyzed problems. How he never stayed quiet if he saw an injustice. How big his dreams were. How much he loved his family. How he thought about Esha constantly. How much wonder he had about her.

“The main thing was learning to see him as him, not as every other man I’d met. Not as my father. That was the first step, maybe the last one. Maybe that was the whole journey. Seeing him for him helped me separate how people had seen me from who I really was. And find the me who deserved happiness. Was capable of it.

“I know Naina is much stronger than I was then. I know she loves her work. She values herself. There’s still a part of her that has to separate you from her father. I’ve seen how she looks at you. I recognized that and it scared me. But your father is right, that’s because you’ve always taken care of yourself and that’s made me feel somewhat helpless.

“Give her time. She knows who you are. It’s her own experiences as a child that she has to reconcile for herself. You can’t bamboozle your way through that.”

Vansh had pushed Naina in front of his family without caring what she wanted. He’d forced his feelings down her throat when she’d been perfectly honest with him about hers. “I did bamboozle a little. But I didn’t mean to.”

“You know what the sweetest thing about you was when you were little? How easily you admitted you were wrong. It used to break my heart, because you wanted to take the blame for everything, things that were your fault and things that were not. You’re always good at taking responsibility and setting things right, even when you bamboozle. I know she’s going to see that.”

He jumped off the bar stool and hugged his mother. “Thanks, Ma. I hope she does, but I think there’s a little more bamboozling I might need to do first.”

Chapter Thirty-One

In her whole life no human being had said the words I love you to Naina. Not one single person. Vansh couldn’t do this to her. The words had fallen on her like rocks in a landslide, dismembered her, and she didn’t know how the parts that had flown from her would ever come back together. She’d been wrapped in her sheets rolled up into a burrito on her bed. For three days. Her eyes hurt from crying, her head throbbed.

You can’t just say those words to me, she kept saying to him, but he wasn’t there to hear them.