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She makes a considering sound at the back of her throat. Eventually, though, her eyes snap back to Meera. Her features soften just enough to confirm that the anger was a mask for worry all along. “Come sit,” she says, relenting. “Both of you. Lunch’s almost ready. And you—” she frowns at Meera, “—are going to explain yourself.”

“What is there to explain?” Meera shoots back, exasperated. “My phone broke. I met a man. Like you’ve been telling me to do for years, by the way. Between all my obligations and a new priority, I didn’t have time to pick up a new phone! I’m sorry.”

“Meera Gallagher, don’t you use that tone with—”

Footsteps thunder down the staircase, drowning out the rest of Gayatri’s response. Meera’s little brother—half-brother, though she doesn’t refer to him as that—ambles into the room and proceeds to nearly knock her over with the force of his embrace. He lifts her clean off the ground, making her shriek with laughter. I’ve never heard her laugh so openly.

I fucking love that sound.

“Dude,” Neil Martinez complains into her shoulder, relief and indignation warring beneath his words, “what the fuck?”

“Language, Neil,” Gayatri snaps.

“I know, I know,” Meera murmurs, squeezing him back. “I’m sorry, buddy. I’m here now.”

He finally sets her down and rears back to really look at her. I’ve done the recon already and know he’s only seventeen years old. Yet, despite the thirteen-year age difference between the siblings, he looks at Meera with a somberness well beyond his years. It’s intriguing.

No less so once he spots me, and his entire demeanor shifts. “Who’s this?” he asks, suspicion narrowing his eyes.

A grin tugs at my mouth, followed by a chuckle. “Meera’s boyfriend,” I answer, before she can.

Neil’s eyebrows shoot up his forehead. “Since when?” He glances at his sister, aiming the question at her.

I know she’s a better liar than this. But, right now, her gaze drops and she mumbles, unconvincingly, “It’s a recent development.”

Neil tilts his head, troubled. “You were here a week ago. How recent could it be?”

“Neil,” Daniel claps his hand onto his son’s back. “Give your sister a minute to hang out before you start interrogating her.”

“She can have her minute while helping you set the table,” Gayatri orders, back behind the counter, stirring something that smells fucking phenomenal.

Meera doesn’t bother protesting. She just throws me a pleading look over her shoulder and lets her brother pull her along. It’s almost like she’s begging me to throw her a rope. I only have my faith in her. If I butt in, her brother will be even more suspicious of the random man wrapped around his sister. I just nod at her encouragingly.

I slip seamlessly into the kitchen myself. I’ve got my own work to do here. “So, Mrs. Martinez, can I help with anything?” I ask the woman eyeing me, not remotely subtle about it. “That smells incredible, by the way.”

I may not have any practice being a boyfriend. But family? Family, I know.

***

Saffron, cardamom, slow-cooked meat are buried amidst layers of fragrant rice, and the heavenly smell of it saturates the dining room.

There aren’t many experiences I haven’t had a taste of in my four decades on this earth. But I’ve somehow managed to suffer through life without ever digging into a heaping plate of biryani.

Fuck, have I been missing out.

Every Sunday, the Yuri clan—albeit varying combinations of it lately, completely dependent on who’s in town—meets at the family estate for family brunch. We do our damnedest not to talk shop at the table. It’s the closest we ever get to normalcy.

And still, our version doesn’t even come close to the warm simplicity of lunch with the Martinezes. It’s another family gathered around another table, technically. But there’s something inherently different about it, and not just because this dining table isn’t a thousand-year-old antique. The table is small enough that elbows brush all around. The room itself modest, set up with napkins and serving spoons and flowers Daniel proudly tells me are from Gayatri’s garden. Every aspect is lived in.

I’m the most curated thing inside this home.

“So,” Neil starts, pointing his serving spoon at me. “Leo. Where did you two meet?”

This part, Meera and I rehearsed last night. She’d shared that it was difficult for her to be dishonest with a person who truly mattered to her. Like her students, and her best friend, and Neil Martinez. We’d come up with a game plan to deal with it. For her, I could build a story, and she could fill in the picture with painful facts, reframing them to slot in right.

“An art auction,” I’m able to answer without missing a beat, keeping her in my sights out of the corner of my eye. That’s what we’d decided to go with. Mostly because I’d been trying to make her laugh, telling her it isn’t a lie since she absolutely qualifies as a work of art.

“Nia wanted to go out instead of staying in,” Meera adds, which is a truth she’d tearfully shared with me about the night she’d been taken.