Life's Second Chances

Thirty-Six

ANU

Bare yourself in the truest form and love will find you splendor. Sidharth knows everything about me. I have not one secret that he doesn't know, yet here I am with the bits and pieces of the man he is and somehow he expects that to be enough. I am the open book and he's a torn page out of the whole story.

I understand his fear of letting me into the darker side of his life. He only wants to love me with the good-seemingly perfect-parts of himself. His devotion and fierce loyalty to me clouding his mind. But one day our love might collapse and get buried under the weight of those very secrets he thinks keeping from me will protect me.

"Love..." softly, but with immense strength his hand caresses my shoulder, palming down to the middle of my back. I physical shudder from his inviting touch wanting so bad to lean into his taut chest and burly arms but something stops me.

I pull away, standing a few inches down the wall of floor-to-ceiling windows in his bedroom. "Don't... Like you've always done you'll just exert these superiority and guilt complexes on me and you don't realize it and I-I just give in to you no matter what. There isn't a time that you don't get your way and for the few times you didn't, you blow up on me making yourself look like a martyr or act as if I'm ill-treating you,"

"It's not what you think, Anuksha. She's one of the last people on this planet I wanted you to meet and just my luck that she showed up at our home," I inwardly smile at the mention of his penthouse being our home, but it does very little to soften the blow of today's revelation.

"You have a sister," I seethe through clenched teeth, fisting my hands to my sides. "I didn't need to meet her, for whatever your reasons for that maybe, but I could've damn well and knew she existed!"

"Ignorance is bliss, sweet," he gently takes my hand, lightly rubbing it between his warm palms. "The less you know about certain aspects of my life the better off you'll be. I don't need you to be burdened by my evils, they already torment me enough,"

"Regardless if you like it or not, Sid, your vices make you who you are. I can't understand why my word and my promise to love you wholly and no matter what may come is not enough for you to trust me with your secrets, while I've had no choice but to blindly trust you with mine,"

"It has nothing to do with trust and you know that," slumped over on the chaise lounge lined up against the windows, he runs his large hands through his hair, clutching the thick slightly overgrown strands of black hair. "I have so many flaws as it is, I'm nowhere near good enough for you and if those dark parts of myself come to light I'm terrified they'll scare you away and make you leave me for good,"

"I'm not going anywhere, love," I wrap my arms around his head, resting his face against my stomach as I light comb through his hair. "But what I deserve is to know the man-all of him-that I'm so desperately in love with,"

I take our usual back table at Clementine's Café down the block from Sid's penthouse. It's been a favorite of ours since we were in high school together. I order a piping hot cappuccino, a croissant with a side of eggs topped in black truffles and a fruit salad. The café is quite being early on a Saturday morning and I make sure to enjoy the tranquility before the mid-morning rush.

Sipping my coffee, I flip through Vogue's fall fashion week look book issue reading over the articles on my shows. Pride fills my chest seeing the images of my creations gracing the pages of fashion's premier magazine, remembering days when I would look at the designs in awe wondering if somehow I could be a part of that world.