A Change of Heart by Sonali Dev Page A

never stop haunting him. He stumbled down the remaining steps. The smell of the sewer in his nose, the grunting of those bastards as they thrust into her ringing in his ears over Jen’s screams.
    He was back at the blasted railing, back in that alley, his face pressed into mud pooled with his own blood.
    He leaned into the ocean, shoving his face into the salty wind. What kind of idiot surrounded himself with this kind of temptation when all he wanted was for this shit to be over?
    * * *
    She squeezed her eyes shut, squeezed every muscle until she stopped shaking. She reminded herself to breathe. It was just a reflex. Just a damn reflex. Nikhil hadn’t been trying to hurt her.
    This wasn’t about her. She tamped down the nausea that clawed up her belly and went to him. She had to finish this. She couldn’t back down now.
    He stood at the railing, his head bent, his entire body weeping like one of those giant conifers that drooped by the Gandaki River. He had that same desolation as the mountain town she’d grown up in. As if he had been born for beauty, as if he’d been showered with blessings, and then the tide had turned and no one knew what to do with the devastation, with the ugliness that the storm left behind.
    He leaned so far into the railing, she half expected him to let go. “Are you happy now?” he whispered into the ocean. “Is this what you wanted to see?”
    No. His pain was unbearable to witness, so sharp it scraped at all the thick skin she’d grown around herself. She shook her head, knowing full well he couldn’t see her. His eyes were fixed on the turquoise waves, but she doubted he saw those either.
    The vibrant blue swirled around them like an abomination, the harsh brightness highlighting the darkness trapped in their two bodies like a spotlight. Anger and pain, old and new, his and hers, pulling and pushing, multiplying against each other.
    Except his pain was pure. It had dignity to it. Her own pain had been ugly, filthier than the deepest gutter.
    Despite his defeated stance, he crumbled further. “She used to . . . God . . . She could make me forget my name. She could make me forget everything. I could come home after sawing off a child’s limbs and she could make me forget. Do you know what that feels like? To have someone like that?”
    No, she didn’t. But she knew what never being able to forget felt like. “If I could change things, I would.” That much she meant. It was much more than she should have shared, but that much she did mean.
    Of course he didn’t believe her. He laughed the ugliest laugh and turned around to face her. “Right.”
    â€œYes. I would.” She met his eyes and held his stare, angry and suspicious as it was.
    â€œAnd what about that heart beating inside you?”
    She shrugged. “That could have come from someone else.”
    â€œSo not from my loss but someone else’s loss.”
    â€œI didn’t choose this. It’s not like I wanted it to happen. Don’t believe me if you don’t want to, but I can tell you one thing for sure. What happened to Jen, if I could stop that from happening to anyone, I would do whatever it took to stop it.”

6
    Maybe I should’ve told Nic the truth. Maybe I shouldn’t have asked him not to come, but sometimes I don’t know how to talk to him anymore. The baby thing has made him totally crazy and overprotective. He’s nothing like the reasonable man I married.
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    â€”Dr. Jen Joshi
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    I t could be the odd, slashed-open feeling of finally being able to talk about Jen, or then maybe it was the expression on Jess’s face—like a child determined to have her way despite having no power at all. But Nikhil saw the woman for the first time, past Jen’s hair, past his own wretched hope, and he knew she wasn’t lying.
    In this moment, he would bet his life she actually meant what she said. Her