Bollywood and the Beast (Bollywood Confidential) Read online

  “But what if she wants to change? That is her choice, hai na? And if they can change and grow together…is that not what love is?” He had little experience with it, but he knew that when Kamal had pulled away from him at the sanitarium, denying Ashu and himself, it had not been willingly either. And the only step he truly wanted to take was not a step up to the roof. Nahin. All he wanted was one small step forward with Kamal.

  Caroline sighed, as if his questions were terribly naïve, terribly young. Perhaps they were…though he felt like he knew enough for lifetimes. “We’re supposed to go back to Bombay tomorrow,” she said softly. “I think it’s going to break her heart.”

  And Taj’s as well. Of this, he had no doubt. In fact, several hearts were likely to line up in the coming days, ready for the smashing.

  Ashraf forced himself to turn and paste on a perfect smile. The one he wore for cameras and hoped to, soon, never put on again. “So you’ll go. But first? You must pay respects to Nani. Come, I will take you to her.”

  She made a startled sound as he herded her without touching. Like a dog pacing cows and sheep. “But…but, Ashraf, I’ve already met your grandmother…”

  “Doesn’t matter. Meet her again. She will love you.” As he led Rocky’s mother to the front staircase, Ashu recognized that this sentimental picture he was headlining was no longer about his near-ascent to the heavens. Perhaps it never had been. Perhaps it had always been about his beloved Bhaiya’s long journey to hell.

  Chapter Thirty

  She packed before she went into the library. It was the only way to ensure she’d actually leave: carrying the bags down the staircase and putting them by the door, next to the neat teak cabinet that hid the shoe rack. Her location scenes were done. Her time here was done. And she and Taj were…what?

  “What do you want from me, Rocky? What do you want me to say? That we will have our happily ever after?”

  “No. Because I can’t break this spell, Taj. I love you, but I can’t. You made your curse. You built this prison. I don’t have the magical powers to break you free. It’s on you to do that.”

  They both knew what she was really saying: come with me.

  And they both knew he couldn’t. Wouldn’t.

  She turned to go, to walk out of his precious cage one last time, but he stopped her with a look, a word. Two. “Please. Rakhee.”

  “Don’t.” She shook her head, even as he reached her in two long strides. “Don’t say ‘please’.” Even as he pulled her close and she struggled against him. “You’ve been trying to push me away since I met you. And I fought and I fought and I fought.” She punctuated each word with a strike at his chest, before letting her hand fall to her side. Open. Powerless. “I can’t do it anymore, Taj. I can’t do it all alone. You have to fight, too. For me.”

  Maybe it fell on deaf ears. Maybe it didn’t. He was too proud, too certain of his own martyrdom, to let her know either way. He sighed her name, fingers sliding around her throat as he cupped the back of her head and tilted her up for his kiss. It was like he was choking the life out of her even as he gave her breath. That was Taj. That was loving him. And she wouldn’t regret a single moment.

  His mouth moved over hers slowly, with a kind of reverence that felt almost…new. He tasted of cloves and coffee, sweet and dark, and when he lifted her and carried her the short distance to his bed, she drank him up. There was no use in saving anything for later. There would be no later. So she touched him all over, every patch of skin she could reach, until he grabbed her hands and pinned them over her head.

  “Taj?” His grip didn’t hurt. But the look in his eye…so focused, so intense, was enough to discomfit her just a little. “What are you doing?”

  “Shh, Rocky. Shaanth. Be calm.” He unwound her dupatta with his free hand, using it to bind her wrists to slats of the old wooden headboard. Tight enough to hold her. Loose enough that the silk didn’t cut. He sat back on his heels, looking entirely too pleased with his handiwork. Especially when she tested the knot.

  “You can’t keep me here, you know. Somebody would start to miss me,” she pointed out, using her foot to punctuate the observation, stroking her toes up his calf.

  He caught her thigh, held her still…and then spread her wide. “I will miss you. So let me have this now.”

  She was in no position to deny him anything. Not now.

  The flimsy material of her kurta buzzed like a zipper as he tore it down the middle. He was kinder to the loose pyjama pants, which he unknotted and unceremoniously tugged down her legs. He made short work of her bra and panties as well, and then she was completely bare to him. To that single, brutal, beautiful eye that saw more than ten men with twenty/twenty vision.

  She expected it to be fast. Hard. Angry and consuming. Everything he wouldn’t say put into action. She braced for it. Neededitwanteditcravedit.

  But Taj went slowly.

  He kissed her face. Just the right side. Her eyebrow, her eyelid, the line of her cheek and below. He followed the curve of her jaw to her throat. Lower. He licked every place she wasn’t burned. Every place she wasn’t scarred. Each place on her body that corresponded with a mark she’d kissed on his, he anointed with his lips and tongue. Until she was squirming against the dupatta. Into his body. Desperately rubbing her thighs together as if they were two sticks trying to generate a flame.

  She could barely breathe. Barely speak. “Taj…please…”

  “Don’t say ‘please’,” he growled before burying his mouth between her legs.

  Rocky nearly arched off the mattress, pulled taut like a bow. There wasn’t a single part of her that wasn’t alive with sensation. Her fingers tingled. Her nipples ached. Even her toes and the flyaway ends of her hair seemed to crackle with need.

  Taj was fighting for her the only way he knew how.

  Dirty. Smart-mouthed. Defensive. An assault on sense and sensibility.

  It was only when she was nearly sobbing for him to stop—no, to keep going—that he crawled back up to her, lips slick with her juices and curved into a jagged smile. It was only then that he opened the fall of his own loose cotton pants and buried his cock to the hilt inside her.

  Neither of them said “please”. For a few minutes, they didn’t say anything at all. All Rocky heard was the blood roaring in her ears, the harsh rhythm of her own gasps for air, and Taj’s heart thudding against hers. She couldn’t feel her wrists. Didn’t care that her fingers were numb and her arms practically yanked out of their sockets. He was everything. This was everything. Their hips slapping together. His mouth plundering hers and marking her with their mingled flavors. The way he raced her to the edge, a daredevil afraid of no risk. In that moment, Taj feared nothing.

  And Rocky feared everything.

  When he finally untied her, rubbing the sensation back into her hands and kissing the faint red marks on the insides of her wrists, she blinked back her regrets and whispered, “Goodbye.”

  When he awoke, she was already gone. He knew without seeing, could feel the absence in the bed beside him. Sweet Rocky, turned bitter on his lips.

  It was midday, though the sun streaming in through the windows did not register until he turned his face toward it. Others spat in the wind; he stared directly into the light, daring it to steal what vision he had left. What use was it now that she’d abandoned him?

  You made your curse. You built this prison.

  Haan. And she’d turned the key in the lock. As he’d known she would. How could she stay here? How could she grow? She was no rose to flourish in his walled garden. You would die on the vine, he’d told her…but he hadn’t truly believed it himself. Not until this very moment, still feeling her hair trailing across his chest and her throat offered up for his lips.

  Taj wanted to roar like the Beast of legend, to strike out and tear and rip. All his grasping fingers found was the soft, rumpled cloth of her dupatta. It burned like nothing he’d ever felt before. Not twisted metal. Not shattered glass. Not rubber dripp
ing, acrid and sharp, as it cauterized dying skin. The simple purple silk was like Shaithan’s tongue…and like Rakhee’s belief in a man who didn’t, couldn’t, exist.

  For the first time in ten years, Taj Ali Khan broke down and wept.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  It took her less than twenty-four hours to start missing everything. To start missing him. Rocky unpacked her things, shook off the dust and the fatigue and burst into noisy, completely unexpected—and hated—tears. Her mom just held her, murmuring, “There, there,” and not worrying one bit about the water damage to her silk suit. They cracked open a carton of ice cream, sat cross-legged on the living room floor and watched two-year-old episodes of The Bold and the Beautiful until her dad started to worry. After that, it was inevitable that she just had to pick up one foot and then the other and move forward.

  In her absence, her father had finally shifted them from hotel living to a three-bedroom flat in Juhu, a stone’s throw from a handful of studios and corporate HQs. The apartment was decorated comfortably, with American touches, but Rocky didn’t feel like she was home.

  Being back in Bombay after the country escape of Taj and Ashu’s haveli was like being dropped into the middle of a three-ring circus. From the traffic to the noise to the smells of smog, exhaust and sewage, everything screamed “city”. Everything whipped by her as though she were on a bullet train, the colors and lights all a shapeless blur.

  She showed up for the 2 Luv in Delhi interior shoots involving her character’s parents—truth be told, it was an honor to work with veteran cinema stars after eight weeks of rowdy young rabble on the streets of Delhi—did a few public appearances at jewelry launches and restaurant openings and even scheduled a follow-up interview with Sunny Khanna. But she missed rosebushes and Nani and Usha’s curries. She missed filming with Ashraf, who wasn’t due back in Mumbai for a few more weeks, and fighting with Taj and curling up in front of the fire after a long day of work.

  What was so wrong about wanting the man she loved and the career she loved? Wasn’t the whole point of this to have it all?

  Rocky was still pondering that question ten days after leaving Delhi, while making the rounds at a music launch for the latest Michael Gill action movie. Poured into a cute, but still modest, purple sundress and matching peep-toe pumps—Caroline had finally let her off the high-heel hook—she made sure to “Namaste” and “Kaise ho?” like a born-and-bred Hindustani, earning a few raised eyebrows, a couple of snarky asides and more than a few compliments on her accent. But she felt alien anyway. Not because she was biracial or Amrikan or an outsider but because she was there without the one person she wanted to share everything with.

  “Rocky Varma?”

  The husky female voice was unfamiliar, and she instinctively braced for impact as she turned around. “Yes?”

  The woman was older, probably in her mid-thirties, and her black hair shoulder-length and perfectly, uniformly waved. “Hullo,” she said, extending a hand. “I’m Archana Desai. It’s nice to meet you.” The smile on her mauve mouth wasn’t fake or predatory; if anything it was welcoming, and Rocky instantly let go of the breath she’d been holding.

  “It’s nice to meet you, too,” she said as she accepted Archana’s hand. “Should we know each other? Hummara jaan-pehchana hai kya?”

  “Nahin. I shouldn’t think so.” A crease formed between Archana’s eyebrows, and she shook her head. “He…he wouldn’t have cause to speak of me all these years later.”

  He. There was only one “he” in her life, and she didn’t need further explanation. “You knew Taj? Before?” Her old Internet research slowly filtered to the forefront of her brain. Archana Desai. Taj’s costar in three films—and almost his costar in life. They’d been engaged. She was suddenly wobbly on her feet despite the lack of stilettos.

  “Haan.” Archana tilted her head, laughing softly. “Very well…and also not well enough.”

  “Because you left him?” She tried not to sound combative, accusatory. After all, she’d done exactly the same thing, hadn’t she?

  “No, we were strangers far earlier. Silly idiots playing at being a jodi on-and off-screen. His rage made me cry, my childishness caused him headaches. The accident…it showed me that we cracked long before we broke.” Archana’s posh, polished English was more British than Indian, and her self-possessed speech fumbled for a moment. She exhaled loudly and raggedly. “Nahin. To say so is simple. I did not see that until years later. I was too regretting, too afraid. Main darkpok thi…and I blamed myself.”

  It was weird, this lady telling her all of these things. But Rocky couldn’t seem to tell her to stop. “You didn’t cause the crash, or what came after,” she assured her. “And I know how Taj can be. It couldn’t have been easy for either of you back then.”

  “Is it easier now? Is he?”

  Again “he”. And it was a strange question to ask. Were her feelings for Taj written on her face? Was it really so obvious? “No,” she said automatically. And then she changed her mind. There was no harm, in this busy, crowded space, in being honest. In being herself. “Yes. Caring about Taj is easy, Ms. Desai. It’s the leaving that’s hard.”

  “Then don’t leave one another. Stay. In each other’s hearts,” Archana said in basic Hindi that needed no translation. “Take care of him. Also take care of you.” She reached out and squeezed Rocky’s hand. Like they were confederates. Like they were friends. A far cry from the high school hallway posturing that masqueraded as club outings. Maybe Rocky had finally grown past that. Maybe she’d finally grown past a lot.

  “Th-thank you,” she whispered, squeezing back. “I hope you take care, too.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  The house seemed emptier with Rocky gone. It was absurd that such a tiny whirlwind could fill up so much space. Strange that she had become a part of their life, their family, so quickly and easily. But Ashraf missed her. He missed the arguments in front of the fire at night and the laughter in the garden. He missed stumbling upon her trying to explain something to Usha with elaborate hand gestures and awkward Hinglish phrasing. He even missed her mother, who had proven frighteningly insightful that day before she left. But, most of all, he missed seeing Taj happy.

  Surely one of them deserved to be happy, no?

  Ashu knew what the pretense of it was like. The peace that came from his daily medication, the check-ins with his doctor, who had recommended a regular therapist to him for when he returned to Mumbai in two weeks’ time. He was calm now, without the constant tape of Nina going in his head, and clear, without the phantom Bhaiya passing judgment. But actual joy…that was a work in progress.

  Particularly since Kamal was no longer present at every turn. Gone was the silent shadow, the constant strength, the rock upon which the Khan household had laid its foundation.

  “He has a life, Ashu,” was Taj’s snappish response to any inquiries. “I do not track his movements.”

  On one occasion, he questioned further: “What happened to the Hotel California? All of that ‘never check out’ nonsense?”

  Taj’s face twisted into a macabre mask. “It happens that you can leave.”

  He thought better of pointing out that nothing was stopping his stubborn brother from leaving, too. Such an observation would only be akin to baiting a wounded lion. But soon enough, Bhaiya would have to hear it. He would have to take action.

  Ashraf couldn’t do the same. Not when he didn’t know what action to take.

  Would he finish out his film slate for the year? Cancel his upcoming dates and music launches? These were minor questions in the great scheme of his life. The bigger ones were far more difficult, not so easily answered.

  Will I ever trust anyone again?

  Will I love someone?

  Will someone love me?

  Is that someone Kamal?

  He wanted him. That much was certain. The slow warmth in his belly, the gentle lick of desire…the welcome dreams that had replaced the worst of his nig
htmares…these were things he could give name to. But he could hardly classify the rest without Kamal’s help. Kamal who, now that he was home and healing and hoping, was nowhere to be found.

  Four days after Rocky’s departure, Ashraf borrowed a rusted skeleton key from the heavy ring Usha kept tied in a knot of her pallu and let himself into Kamal’s rooms. And he settled in to wait.

  There were days when he felt every unnaturally tight, barely healed-over patch of skin. There were days when he felt every pin holding his leg together, when he wanted to go back to the wheelchair like it was his refuge and his salvation. Taj spit on those days. He looked at himself in mirrors until he could barely stand the sight. He walked to and fro. He climbed every stair in the sprawling, crumbling, haveli. He dared his body to fail him.

  Hadn’t everything else failed him? Hadn’t he failed to keep Beauty in the Beast’s lair? Why should his body betray him, too?

  It turned out that Nani was not particularly sympathetic to his situation, and when he posed the question to her, she ruffled like an outraged bird. Gone was the woman who had held his hand and comforted him when Archana walked out on him all those years ago, cooing and clucking as he wept into his bandages.

  “Does your heart work?” she asked in her soft but imperious Hindi. When he nodded, she asked, “Do your legs work?” At this, too, he nodded. “Then what is keeping you from her?”

  She was silent as he searched for the answer—the answer he knew from the very beginning. “Me. Rakhee needs more than me.”

  She made a guttural sound of dismissal that belied how delicate and graceful she looked, swathed in a pale green cloud of a sari. “What will she find that is more than you, son? There is nothing greater than love but God.”

  His grandmother could say that easily, with all of her years of wisdom and living. But that did not mean that Taj had to believe it. He had never been one to put stock in pretty words, in hopes and promises. If Rocky had left him because she could not stay, then so be it. He would not debate if religion was the only thing that could take her place at his side.