The smooth paving stones of Regent's Walk gave way slowly to the uneven cobbles of home. I lifted my gaze, then, and filled my lungs with the air of my city, my home. It was unscented here, plain like everything else we had for our own, and I liked it better. There was an honesty to it that Bansi's fine house and broad, peaceful streets lacked. We didn't try to pretend things were other than they were down here. We didn't spray perfume on the air to cover up our stench.
I stopped, then. Bansi was still walking, still had his arm hooked about me, and it pulled him around a few steps until he noticed, and stopped as well. I moved one step to the side. Bansi's finger pressed against my skin, then abruptly released, letting me go. I felt as though I'd finally shaken a mantle from my shoulders, and I could breathe again. "I don't need an escort here," I told him. "I know my way."
"Escort?" He smiled, laughed, made light once again. "What about a companion?"
"I don't need one of those, either."
"Do you think so?" He slid sideways, closer to me. This time, he looped his arm through mine. I looked down at where we were joined, twisted together like two strands of a braid, and had to swallow the knot in my throat. "Everyone needs companionship."
This time, his response did not come immediately. I turned my head to look at him. He was staring at me, his expression twisted with shock, aghast. "Devils, no! That's not you."
That was mollifying, at least a little. But I'd have been more relieved if Bansi had taken the hint and allowed me to finish my walk alone. Here in this part of the city, his bared chest would draw less notice than in uptown, but it didn't draw none, and I didn't care for the attention, the speculative glances. Who knew what people might think about this man who strode carelessly at my side with his dark chest bared and his shoulders thrown back as though he were on display and knew it, and liked it. I was certain it wouldn't be anything I cared for.
And worse, every step we took brought us closer and closer to home. I'd thought I'd be able to shake off his company before we reached it, and I could finish the journey alone. But that had been a fool's hope. Of course he would insist upon accompanying me the entire way. He'd only been waiting a year to learn where I lived, hadn't he? He was too clever, too determined, to give up the opportunity to learn it now.
And I knew him well enough to know that if I tried to fight him, it would only fuel his determination. The harder I tried to keep him from my home, the more he would want to see it. Easier to let him come now, while Elodie was with Corine, and look his fill, and then send him away with his curiosity hopefully satisfied.
Easier. I sighed. Easier once again, just to do as he liked, to give in, to let the current of his cheerful determination wash me along. I wished I had more spine, but he'd worn me down and I was exhausted. I just wanted him gone, as soon as possible. This was the way to manage it.
We resumed walking. If Bansi noticed that my steps were slower, more reluctant, he didn't comment on it. He just slid his arm through mine again and looked about the city as though it held endless wonder for him, though there was nothing more to see here than tiny shops and dirty cobbles and harried-looking people rushing about from one obligation to another. He'd always acted this way, when we were together in my pat of the city. Like it was this half that held the wonder and beauty, and not the Walk. I didn't know what he saw in it. It mystified me. If I were less exhausted, less worn-down, it would have angered me, as it had in the past. We weren't oddities, stuck in a menagerie to be gaped at by the rich when they fancied a thrill. We deserved better than that.
I'd scolded him for it before, and it had accomplished nothing. I held my tongue now. I didn't want a fight.
The streets grew narrower, squeezed in on both sides by the need for homes. My feet moved automatically, and I'd turned at a crossroads and taken ten steps down the new street before I froze, stricken by the realization that I'd started toward Corine's without thinking. I swallowed back the lump of panic in my throat, pulled on Bansi's arm to turn him about, and started back the way we'd come.
His laughter was quiet music in my ear. "Lose your way?"
I shook my head. "I wasn't thinking. You distracted me."
His smile flashed bright as sunshine in the corner of my vision. His voice dropped to a purring timbre that never failed to send shivers across my skin. "Oh, did I now?"
I breathed carefully and slowly, and said nothing. There was no point in encouraging him.
Nerves pricked like needle-points across my skin as we drew closer to home. Worry tightened a band around my chest that made each breath a struggle. I slipped my arm out of Bansi's and shoved my hands deep into my pockets. He cast me a sidelong look and watched me for a long moment, but said nothing, just curved his arm around my back instead and carried on as though I hadn't done anything.
There was no avoiding it. He didn't know this part of the city the way I did, but he'd come here often enough, and spent enough time here with me, that he'd know if I led him in circles. I couldn't just walk with him forever, until his legs tired and he gave in and took himself home. I'd probably tire before he did. He had curiosity fueling him, and I, only dread.
Better to be quick about it, like ripping off a plaster.
Our home sat in a narrow building at the crest of a hill. Usually, I stood at the base of that rise with Elodie's hand in mine and felt happiness, relief. Today, I stood with Bansi's hand a weight against the small of my back and felt only foreboding. I didn't see how anything good could come of this. For a year and more, I'd been trying to keep this place secret, to keep one piece of my life for myself alone, and out of Bansi's reach.
Now... there was nothing for it. I could only pray he wouldn't make me regret it.
Bansi's arm tightened around my waist. I looked over at him. He frowned at me, concern coloring the deep brown of his eyes, adding lines to his face that made him look older than he was. "Ren?" he asked, quiet, concerned.
I shook my head, quickly, with a shrug, to make it seem like it was nothing of consequence. "Sorry. Just catching my breath. That hill's more of a climb than it looks."
He turned his gaze up to follow the street. The corners of his lips quirked up. "Hill? You call this a hill? This is just a bit of uneven ground. You should come home with me some day, now those are hills."
I cast my gaze down to the ground. There were scuffs and bits of torn leather on the toes of my boots. Bansi's were pristine, but for a bit of dust we had picked up from the road.
We had talked before, years before, about me coming back with him some day on one of his return trips with the caravan, some day after we had had our child and overcome his family's disapproval. It had been a dream, a mythical time in which we predicted that all would be rosy and wonderful and just as we'd liked it.
The dream was gone now, as faded and hard to recall as they ever were in the light of day. I had my child, I had Elodie, and the luxury of travel seemed as distant and unobtainable as the moon. Even if I'd wanted to go, I couldn't have. Elodie was here. School would be starting soon. I had a shop to run, to earn our keep.
Bansi kept pace beside me as I climbed the hill to my home. Every step brought with it the keen awareness that Elodie was at Corine's, that they were waiting for me. The only saving grace was that Bansi's sojourn to look at houses had brought us back to the lower city earlier than I would have customarily closed up the shop. Maybe, once he had satisfied himself by seeing me to my door like some sort of misguided gentleman caller up in the Walk, I could be rid of him quickly and get to Corine's in time to collect Elodie without anything seeming amiss.
Corine was concerned enough about me as it was. I didn't think I could bear it if I gave her any more reason to think I was miserable, or to look at me in that sad, sympathetic way she had.
Despite Bansi's protests about calling this a hill, by the time we reached the top of it, he was panting and winded. I was breathing hard from the exertion, but that was all. I was used to walking, used to climbing this hill every day. I smirked a little and paused at the top so he could catch his breath. He bent double, hands braced on his knees and shoulders heaving. I leaned my shoulder against a lamp post and just watched him. When he glanced up and caught my eye, his lips pulled into a wry smile.
"It's no less than you deserve for insulting my hill," I said, and pushed away from the lamp. "Come along, then, if you're still determined to see this all the way to the end. If I'd known you were in such poor shape, I'd have told you not to bother."
He straightened at that, and clutched a hand over his heart. "Such barbs! You wound me."
When I only continued smirking and gestured him along, he dropped the pretense and hurried to catch up to me. "I didn't hear you complaining about my shape earlier."
"I thought to spare your feelings."
He pressed a palm against his chest once more, and staggered as though I had struck him a killing blow, in such a way that his shoulder jostled against mine and I stumbled beneath his sudden weight.
I braced myself and shrugged him off of me, back upright onto his feet. And despite myself, despite the uncertainty and the fair amount of dread that sat festering in my gut like poison, I couldn't help but laugh beneath my breath at his antics.
He saw it, of course. It was inevitable that he would. He abandoned the game and stood straight, his shoulders back and his chest puffed up with pride as he beamed at me, at the knowledge that he had worked his way under my armor and made me smile. I should have known better. I should have been stronger.
"Admit it, Ren." He slung his arm around my shoulder and drew me close, nuzzled against my neck and murmured into my skin, "You missed me."
I shook my head, letting the smile linger. "You flatter yourself."
"Well, somebody must!" He kept his tone light and teasing, but his arm was still tight around my shoulders, he kept his face pressed in the warm space between my neck and my shoulder. His breath was sharp against my skin and smelled of his spices, of distant lands and far-off times. "I would give the job up to you, if you cared to take it."
"I have a job already, though, you see." I slid a hand up into his hair and pulled on a lock of it. "I couldn't take on another, unless I cared to sacrifice my sleep."
And Elodie. That was the greater sacrifice. I forfeited sleep for the sake of Elodie or the shop every time I turned around, it seemed. But Elodie was the one thing I wouldn't compromise on. And the one thing I couldn't tell Bansi.
It was just a joke, anyway. Neither of us meant anything by it. Just a bit of silliness to make the other laugh and the climb seem less arduous. He would tire of this city soon enough -- assuming he didn't abandon his plan to purchase a house altogether, which was what I'd have put my money on, had I been a betting man -- and he'd go home and find someone else to stroke his ego. I wasn't that man. Even when I'd loved him, I'd been terrible at it. I was more the sort to tease and joke than praise. I wielded sarcasm as my weapon, not flattery.
He'd told me once that it was one of the things he liked best about me. The world of the wealthy was ruled by fake smiles and insincerity. He'd said that he liked that I always spoke precisely what was upon my mind, and he never had to wonder about the truth with me, because like as not, I offered it up to him before he ever had a chance to ask.
It had made me smile, then, and think that he was one of the few men in the city, rich or poor, who valued the truth for what it was truly worth. Now, it only filled me with a bitterness I couldn't stomach. He was right that it was my natural state to be forthright, but from the day he had reentered my life, he had made a liar of me. I lied to him about Elodie, I lied to Corine about him...
This wasn't me. It wasn't who I wanted to be.
Bansi's hand tightened on my arm. His head snapped around toward me, brows furrowing, mouth turned down. "Ren? What is it?"
I didn't even have the presence of mind to scold him for using my nickname. I drew a breath, struggling to fill my chest despite the tightness that wrapped around it. "What?" I tried to keep my tone light, slightly bewildered, as though I hadn't a clue what might have concerned Bansi. But that was just another kind of deception, and I was no good at it. His frown deepened, and lines creased the corners of his eyes and the middle of his brow.
"What's wrong? We were fine, weren't we? You were laughing with me. And now..." He trailed off, staring at me as he slowly shook his head. "What happened?"
"Nothing." I wet my lips and fixed my gaze forward. His fingers bit into my arm. I'd probably bruise, and that would be another lie I'd have to tell, to Elodie and to Corine. I shut my eyes and drew slow breaths, trusting Bansi not to lead me into a lamp post as I fought to get my racing pulse under control. "I just-- It's been a long day."
He made a noise I couldn't decipher, and his fingers loosened marginally on my arm. I opened my eyes to see him giving me a wry look, lips quirked and one brow raised. "It has? It's barely evening."
"I've been working since dawn."
"And you stopped working at lunch. Where's the trial of your day coming from, then?"
I held his gaze for a moment, for two, for longer, until some realization flickered in the depths and he frowned once more. "Me? Gods, Ren. I bought you lunch. We walked about the city. We looked at a house. We fucked. Where's the hardship in that?"
"Never mind." We were only a few blocks from home. I didn't want to stand in the middle of the street and have this argument. If we could just get home, I could thank him for the lunch and the fuck and the company and all the other things I felt no true gratitude for, and send him on his way.
It had been nice, those few brief moments when we had smiled and teased, and things had been almost like they used to be. But nothing ever lasted with Bansi, no matter how sure I thought they were. I had learned that five years before. It was a lesson I could not afford to forget.
It was not only my mood that had darkened. Bansi climbed the hill beside me with a grim set to his mouth, his eyes shadowed and unhappy. I noticed, but held my tongue and made no comment.
When we reached my house, a small drab thing tucked back between slightly larger ones, I stopped in front of the door, fingering my key in my pocket, and turned back to him. "There you have it," I said. "You've walked me all the way to my door like a proper gentleman. Will that satisfy you?"
He looked at me for a long moment without speaking a word, then sighed and said my name. He said it like it was a burden, something that grieved him, the corners of his mouth still turned down.
I just stared at him, nonplussed and waiting for his answer. When he gave it, it was just to reach for me, bracket my face between his hands, and draw me into a kiss.
I stiffened, hissed breath sharp through my teeth and grabbed at his shoulders. But he was bare-chested, and there was no shirt there to grip and gain leverage with. There was only smooth skin and strong muscle and the heat that radiated from him always, like he carried a brazier in his heart.
I made a rough sound against his mouth. I meant it as protest, as anger. But even to my own ears, it sounded more like an impassioned groan, and Bansi took it as such. He pressed his mouth harder against mine, slipped one hand from my cheek around to the back of my neck to pull me in. His teeth scraped my lips and his tongue licked inside to tangle with mine and the knot of discontent that had sat in my gut when our teasing had derailed shivered loose and fell apart.
I dragged my hands up, found purchase in his hair where there was none upon his shoulders. But even then, with my fingers twisted to knots against his scalp, I didn't pull him back straightaway. I hesitated.
His mouth was hot and firm on mine, eager where before he had seemed only grimly unhappy. I couldn't help but kiss him back, pulled along by his passion. He groaned like a dying man, or a man who had braced himself for purgatory only to find himself at the gates of paradise. And he kissed me like it was a craving, a compulsion, like he needed it more than breath or water. He kissed me like I was something vital he couldn't live without. That was still just the same.
I couldn't make myself push him away. But when I tried to draw back instead, he just followed me, moving with me like he already knew every motion I'd make, until I'd backed myself up against my door and there was no more escape to be had. He crowded me up against it, broad and already half undressed, with his shirt torn to tatters and tossed away into a discreet alley before we'd even left the Walk. If he'd given me a bit of room, space in which to breathe, I could have marshaled my convictions and shoved him back, told him to go home and not return. But he didn't, and I couldn't.
I felt like I was tumbling, the solid earth vanished beneath my feet and I was falling. Bansi was the only real thing I could hold on to. When he eased me back at last, one hand on the side of my face and the other curved around my waist, he tucked my head against his chest and pressed his lips to my hair. "Ah, Ren," he sighed, and I shivered.
This felt too much like the past, like how things used to be, when they'd been good and easy between us. It felt comfortable, and that just made me shiver harder. I hated how easily he could strip time away from me and bring me back to that place where I loved him wholly, carelessly, heedless of how vulnerable my heart was there upon my sleeve because I believed he'd never hurt me.
I shut my eyes and forced myself to breathe. Every time I drew air into my lungs, tension and ache shoved it back out again so that my breaths gusted against Bansi's skin, stirring the hair on his chest.
"I can't do this," I said. My voice came out quiet and vulnerable, not the way I'd have liked it to. "Ban. I can't."
"Can't what? Kiss me?" He tipped my face up and brushed his lips against mine. "Nonsense. You do it marvelously."
My laughter was broken, painful. "I can't go back to the way things were. The way I was."
"I don't want you to be who you were," he said quietly, like he meant it. I shut my eyes and leaned my brow against his chest. I liked it better when he was brash and overconfident and larger than life. It was easier to deal with him than when he was sincere. "I like who you are just fine."
I'd have laughed if it hadn't hurt so much. "You don't know me. You think you do, but you're wrong."
"Don't I?" His fingers stroked the sides of my cheeks. I knew he was trying to coax me to lift my head, but I resisted. "I know you're a good man, kind and generous and maybe a bit too devoted to work for your own good, but I like that you have a few flaws. I don't think I could bear to stand next to you if you didn't. I'd look a fright by comparison." His touch grew firmer, more insistent. I pressed my face against his skin. "I know everything that matters about you, Ren."
"You are so wrong."
He didn't know the one thing that mattered more than all the rest. He didn't know a thing about Elodie. Part of me wanted to tell him right there, to spit the truth out, open the door and lead him inside and and show him how blind he really was.
The rest of me seized up with terror at the very thought. He said that he'd have stayed, if Leisl had carried his child. I didn't believe him, but maybe he'd have stayed now, out of duty, if Elodie had been his own. But she wasn't, and he didn't want a child, and Elodie deserved better than that.
But worst, most of all, I feared that if I opened that door and let Bansi into my home, he'd see her drawings and toys scattered about, realize that I had a child, and he'd run away just as fast as he had all those years before. I hated that I counted this a factor. That I counted it a problem. I should have introduced him to her the first day he showed up at my shop, if I'd truly wished to be rid of him.
I wanted to want to be rid of him. But he made it terribly difficult to hold on to that conviction in his presence.
Bansi stroked my cheek again. His chest rumbled with quiet laughter against me. "You don't think I'd look like the basest scoundrel in the city, next to your goodness?"
"I'm not good." I lifted my head, would have taken a step back, but the door was still close behind me. I groped for its handle instead. "I don't know where you got that notion. I'm not any better than anyone else."
His smile pulled crooked and fond. He started to reach for me, but I turned my face aside and he aborted the motion. "You need to leave now. I have things to do."
"I could help you."
I shook my head. "They're not those sorts of things."
"I could keep you company."
I drew a breath. "Ban--"
He held his hands up. The gesture was relenting, but his expression was only regretful. "All right. I'll go. Can I--" He made a movement forward and I knew he wanted to kiss me good-bye. I pressed back against the door. He stopped with a sigh. His shoulders sagged like a puppet who'd had half his strings cut. "No. All right. It's all right." He reached instead to take my hand in his, and gave it a tight squeeze before he released me. He backed away, down my short walk to the street.
I unlocked my door with hands that shook, slipped inside and shut it firmly behind me while he was still standing on the street, looking after me with a longing, wistful expression.
I thunked my forehead against the door, hands curling to ineffectual fists against the wood. Damn it. I was weak. Why did I always cave where he was concerned?
I didn't have time to dwell on it. Corine and Elodie would be expecting me shortly, and I had a longer walk than usual to get to them. I waited a few minutes before I cracked the door and peered outside to ensure that Bansi had left, and then I tightened my coat about my shoulders and hurried off to see my daughter.
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