52. JAKE

Reema doesn't know how to react. Anyone would think she was politely neutral, but I saw the way her head almost reared back before she caught herself in time. I've stunned her.

Well, she can join the group. If you told me I'd be voluntarily bringing up my dead father to encourage Patel to share her own vulnerabilities, I'd have laughed and not very nicely. But here I am, in the most surreal moment of my life, ready to bare own damages, so she has a safe space for her own.

I've spent this whole year wanting to beat her at work, poking and prodding at her whenever I won a bigger client, and now I can't let go of her hand.

"I don't know what to say," she tells me honestly.

"Right. We can start with the savings part, moving past the rest for now."

"Savings… You said you are going to spend a lot of your savings?"

Falling back on facts makes this somewhat easier. "The house I grew up in is worth over seventeen times what it cost to own back when my parents first bought it. We've been paying for it for years, but turns out those were rent payments, not mortgage ones. I should have known right away when I took over. Really—I mean—the amounts were odd. But when my dad passed away, everything was a mess. We were—a mess. It took time for the estate to settle—and guess what–the house wasn't part of that. Because my dad sold the place without telling his family, which is a trend, not that I want to get into him hiding his cancer, because I don't…"

She wraps an arm around my waist and leans her head on my arm. It's more than nice.

"Anyway, I've been saving up and trying to negotiate with the current owners to buy the house back for my mom. She's lived there most of her life. And if you could see her in the backyard, knee deep in her garden or drinking her tea on that raggedy patio chair she loves, you'd agree. She can't live anywhere else. It's her home. Which is why I've been saving for this, but the owners are bumping up the price, so the final cost is a moving line that keeps fucking shifting forward. It needs way more money than I calculated."

Against me, she stiffens. "The bonus."

There's no point in denying it. "It would help cover the rest of the cost."

"But I'm in the lead."

"You found a way to track the scoreboard this week, haven't you?"

"I—yes. Sally. I harass her daily for the numbers."

"Still winning?" I ask, even though I know the answer.

"You're here. No one else on the team is?—"

"As unhinged as us?"

She relaxes enough to laugh, and it feels like I've done something right. That her happiness is my job, which I have no interest in sharing with her because it makes no sense. This also feels like the right time to mention Tarun Singh. I should bring him up. Confess why I agreed to coming to this wedding in the first place.

Except—

Signing him is a mountain of a challenge and the chances of it happening are pretty much nothing. And more so, everything has changed between Reema and me. Fuck, I—I don't want her thinking it's been a game for me.

Dread cramps my gut. For a man who prides himself on hard honesty, I can't get this part out. I'm a hypocrite. I need to tell her, but I can't. My throat tightens. Fuck me, I'm actually afraid of losing her.

"I wish we could both win the bonus this year," she whispers, pulling me out of my panicked thoughts. "That we both didn't need it so badly."

"Why do you need it?"

"I—" She hides her face against my arm.

"You can tell me," I coax softly.

"It's so I…" Her fingers tighten on me. "So I don't have to skip meals and sleep in someone else's living room anymore."