31-05-2026, 10:44 AM
(This post was last modified: 31-05-2026, 10:44 AM by adams_masala. Edited 1 time in total. Edited 1 time in total.)
Chapter 118: Latha's Pregnancy
Scene 1
Vanitha opened her eyes. The bedroom was still dark, the morning light just beginning to filter through the edges of the blinds. Beside her, Ashok lay on his back, his breathing too deliberate to be natural. They were both pretending to be asleep, neither ready to be the first to face the day.
Two weeks ago, this bed had been loud and urgent. Vanitha had woken up before dawn, her body hot with jealousy of Latha. She had pulled Ashok’s cock into her mouth before he was fully awake, her hand gripping the base of his shaft as she sucked him hard. He had groaned, his eyes flying open as he looked down to find his wife’s lips stretched around his length. They had fucked against the headboard, Ashok pounding into her with a ferocity she hadn’t allowed in years, his fingers digging into her hips hard enough to leave marks.
That version of their marriage had gone cold since the physician confirmed Latha’s pregnancy. Vanitha knew the baby was Ashok’s. He had revealed his affair with Latha to her, and the uncertainty of that revelation was its own kind of torment.
Vanitha cried sometimes. But her jealousy still made her stick with Ashok.
They came downstairs together, moving with the careful distance of people who had once been intimate and now shared only space. The house was quiet except for the soft hum of the coffee maker. They found Latha at the kitchen counter, three cups of filter coffee already poured and waiting. The whole domestic gesture was so earnest and so precisely wrong for the morning that it landed in the room like a provocation nobody intended.
Latha stood in her simple cotton nightdress, one hand resting lightly on her still-flat belly in the private gesture she had never managed to stop making. Her face was open and warm as she greeted them both.
“Good morning,” she said, her voice carrying the particular brightness of someone performing normalcy with genuine effort. “Coffee’s ready.”
In Latha’s version of the morning, the IVF story was still intact. The baby was officially a medical success, a surrogate’s duty fulfilled. The confusion underneath was real: Ashok had stopped coming to her room. He had stopped pulling her close in the kitchen when no one was watching. He had stopped being the man who pressed his palm over her hand on her belly and said “my baby” with his voice rough. She did not understand why the pregnancy, the thing they both wanted, had made him disappear.
Ashok poured his coffee and stood at the far end of the island from Latha. His body language did the work of a man who was trying not to show preference in either direction and therefore showed everything.
“How did you sleep?” he asked Latha. “Do you need anything for the morning sickness?”
The questions came from a responsible intended father rather than the man who had been filling her with his cum for months.
“I’m good,” Latha answered, watching his face for the warmth that had gone missing. “The ginger tea helps.”
Vanitha watched them both from her side of the counter. Her coffee cup was held in both hands, her expression composed in the way that cost her something to maintain. She took a sip, the coffee bitter on her tongue.
“Did you eat yet?” Ashok asked Latha.
“I had some toast,” she replied. “Dr. Priya said small meals are better for the nausea.”
“That makes sense.” Ashok nodded, his eyes on his coffee rather than Latha’s face.
The conversation moved through the ordinary surface of the morning. Latha mentioned her next doctor’s appointment, the prenatal vitamins she had started, whether she should be eating more protein. Ashok responded to each item with the attentive guilt of a man whose care for her was real and whose ability to show it openly had been severed by the presence of his wife three feet away.
“The baby should be about the size of a blueberry now,” Latha said, her hand still resting on her stomach. “That’s what the app says.”
“That’s amazing,” Ashok replied, his voice carefully neutral.
Vanitha contributed the minimum required to keep the scene functional. She nodded when appropriate, made appropriate sounds of interest, kept her eyes on her coffee rather than the space between her husband and the woman carrying his child.
At one point, Latha asked Vanitha directly whether she was feeling all right.
“You look tired,” she said, her voice carrying genuine concern. “Are you sleeping okay?”
“I’m fine,” Vanitha answered. “Just tired from work.”
The word “fine” did the heavy lifting it always did in a kitchen where three people were carrying secrets that overlapped without touching.
All three of them remained at the counter, the coffee going lukewarm in their cups. The Sunday morning light came through the window over the sink, warming the tile floor. Ashok’s guilt sat between him and Latha like a physical object. Vanitha’s jealousy had curdled into something quieter and more durable than the heat that had driven her to his cock two weeks ago.
Latha’s confusion was the cleanest thing in the room. She was pregnant. She was doing what she had come here to do. And the two people who should be celebrating with her were both somewhere else behind their eyes.
She picked up the coffee pot and refilled everyone’s cups without being asked. It was the only thing she knew how to do with her hands right now. The three of them stayed at the counter a little longer than necessary, none of them ready to be the first one to leave the room.
Scene 2
Vanitha stepped out of the shower, water dripping down her back. She had twenty minutes before the Vanmmer would arrive to take her to the San Francisco office. Her phone buzzed on the counter as she wrapped a towel around her body.
The text was from Selvam. “Left yet?”
She typed back with wet fingers. “About to. Car in 15.”
His response came immediately. “Taking a Vanmmer to the office myself. Mind if I join you?”
Vanitha paused, a drop of water rolling between her shoulder blades. She could have said no. Should have said no. Instead, she typed: “Come to the house. We’ll go together.”
She dressed quickly... a fitted black dress that hit just above the knee, heels that added three inches to her height, gold earrings that caught the light when she moved. Her hair was still damp as she applied minimal makeup... just enough to look professional, not enough to suggest she had made an effort. The doorbell rang as she was slipping her laptop into her bag.
Selvam stood on the porch, his leather briefcase in one hand. He wore his usual white linen shirt and dark trousers, his only concession to the Monday morning a thin gold tie.
“You’re early,” Vanitha said, stepping aside to let him in.
“The car came quickly.” His eyes moved over her outfit with careful neutrality. “You look nice.”
“Thank you.” She grabbed her bag from the hallway table. “We should go. Traffic will be bad.”
They walked to the curb together, maintaining a careful distance between them. The Vanmmer waited at the end of the driveway, its white paint gleaming in the morning sun. The logo on the hood... a stylized V that incorporated both an autonomous vehicle and a human face... caught the light as they approached.
Vanitha slid into the back seat first, moving to the far side to give Selvam room. He followed, his larger frame filling the space beside her. The door closed with a soft click, the interior of the car cool and quiet.
“Office,” Vanitha said to the empty air.
“Confirmed,” the car replied, its voice feminine and calm. “Estimated arrival time: fifty-three minutes.”
The car pulled away from the curb with smooth precision, accelerating to exactly the speed limit before merging onto the main road. The silence between Vanitha and Selvam stretched, weighted with everything they weren’t saying.
“How’s Ashok?” Selvam asked finally, breaking the quiet.
Vanitha turned to look at him directly. “I’m not fucking him, if that’s what you’re asking.”
The blunt statement hung between them. Selvam’s expression didn’t change, but Vanitha saw the slight tightening around his eyes, the almost imperceptible shift in his posture.
“That’s not what I meant,” he said.
“But it’s what you wanted to know.”
He didn’t deny it. The car navigated a curve along the residential street, its speed adjusting perfectly to the changing radius. Outside the window, trees slid past, their leaves catching the morning light.
“How long?” Selvam asked.
“Since we found out about the baby.” Vanitha’s voice was steady despite the ache in her chest. “Few weeks.”
Selvam nodded, his eyes on the road ahead. “I see.”
Something flickered across his face... a softening, a particular warmth that appeared and disappeared so quickly Vanitha might have imagined it. His hand rested on the seat between them, close enough that she could feel the heat radiating from his skin.
“Why?” he asked.
Vanitha looked out the window. “I don’t think I can take it,” she said. “Knowing he’s inside her. That he’s been inside her. That the baby is his, not just biologically but...” She trailed off, unable to finish the thought.
“You still want him,” Selvam said. It wasn’t a question.
“Yes.” The word felt torn from her throat. “But I also want to kill him sometimes. And her. Mostly her.”
Selvam was quiet for a moment. “Ashok is my son,” he said finally. “But this isn’t about what I want. You should make your own choice.”
Vanitha turned to face him. “I’m not going to leave him,” she said. “But I’m not going to touch him either. Maybe not ever again.”
The confession hung between them, raw and honest. Selvam’s expression shifted, something like hope flashing across his face before he carefully masked it.
“I understand,” he said, his voice neutral.
But Vanitha had seen it... the brief moment when his eyes had brightened, when his posture had eased. The idea that she might not be having sex with Ashok had affected him more than he wanted to admit.
The car continued its smooth journey toward San Francisco, the morning light warming the interior. Vanitha and Selvam sat side by side, not quite touching, the space between them charged with possibility neither was ready to acknowledge.
Scene 3
As the car navigated onto the freeway, Vanitha gently changed the subject. “How’s the integration with the BMW team going?” she asked, her voice deliberately professional. “Summer mentioned something about sensor calibration issues.”
Selvam’s expression shifted to the particular focus he brought to technical problems. “The front-facing array was misaligned by two degrees,” he said. “Not enough to affect safety, but enough to cause the occasional hesitation at intersections.” He paused. “We’ve moved the engineers to the separate building across the street.”
Vanitha raised an eyebrow. “All of them? I thought the perception team was staying on the penthouse floor.”
“They were,” Selvam replied. “But the space was getting crowded. The new building has better facilities for hardware testing.”
Vanitha studied his profile, a smile playing at the corners of her mouth. “Is that the only reason? Or did you finally get tired of them staring at me all day?”
The question hung between them, direct and deliberately provocative. Selvam turned to look at her, his expression carefully controlled.
“Yes,” he said simply. “That too.”
He looked out the window for a moment, his jaw working slightly. When he turned back, his tone had shifted to something more serious.
“As CHRO, I wanted to get your thoughts on the Uber integration,” he said. “We’ve inherited fourteen hundred employees across operations, engineering, and support. I’m concerned about cultural assimilation, especially at the leadership level.”
Vanitha nodded, matching his professional tone. “I’ve been thinking about that,” she said. “The operations team is our biggest opportunity. Their drivers have direct experience with passenger behavior, service expectations, pain points in the current system. We should integrate them directly into our route optimization and passenger experience teams.”
“And engineering?” Selvam asked.
“More complicated,” Vanitha admitted. “Their technical architecture is completely different from ours. We could reassign them to our validation and testing groups, or create a separate division focused on legacy system maintenance.”
Selvam considered this, his eyes on the road ahead. “What about cultural retention? These people have built their careers at Uber. They’re going to be resistant to being absorbed by what they see as the competition.”
“That’s where my team comes in,” Vanitha said. “We need to create a clear integration path that acknowledges their expertise while establishing our technical vision as the way forward.” She paused, choosing her words carefully. “The real challenge will be the leadership team. Their executives are used to being in charge. Bringing them into Vanmmer means asking them to accept subordinate roles in most cases.”
“They’ll leave,” Selvam said. It wasn’t a question.
“Some will,” Vanitha agreed. “But not all. And the ones who stay will be the ones who believe in what we’re building.” She turned to face him directly. “That’s actually our biggest advantage. We’re not just acquiring their technology or their market share. We’re offering them a chance to be part of something that’s actually going to change how people live.”
The conversation remained crisp and strategic as they approached the city, the autonomous vehicle gliding smoothly toward their destination. They discussed compensation structures, reporting lines, cultural integration events... all the elements of merging two companies with fundamentally different approaches to the same problem. By the time they reached the Bay Bridge, they had outlined a complete integration plan, their voices carrying the particular energy of people solving a problem together.
As they entered San Francisco proper, the morning light caught the buildings ahead, turning the glass facades to gold. Vanitha watched the city approach, her mind full of what they had built... not just the company but the particular connection that existed between them despite everything that had happened.
Without thinking, she moved closer to Selvam on the seat. “May I?” she asked, her voice soft.
He nodded, his eyes meeting hers with careful warmth. Vanitha gently placed her head on his shoulder, her body relaxing into the contact. Selvam’s arm came around her shoulders, his hand resting lightly on her upper arm. His touch was warm through the fabric of her dress, familiar in a way that made her chest ache.
“You’ve been through a lot,” he said, his voice low enough that only she could hear. “But I meant what I said. About keeping our distance.”
Vanitha nodded against his shoulder. “I know,” she said. “This is just... this.”
Not an affair. Not nothing. Something that existed in the space between categories, undefined but no less real for its lack of name.
The car navigated the final blocks to the Nakamura Building, its movements as smooth and precise as they had been since the journey began. As they approached the entrance, Selvam’s hand squeezed her shoulder once, gently, before releasing her. They straightened, putting careful space between them, their bodies returning to the particular distance of colleagues rather than the intimacy of whatever they had been to each other.
The car pulled to a stop at the curb. The door opened with a soft click, morning light flooding the interior. Selvam gathered his briefcase, his movements quick and efficient.
“See you upstairs,” he said, his voice deliberately casual.
Scene 1
Vanitha opened her eyes. The bedroom was still dark, the morning light just beginning to filter through the edges of the blinds. Beside her, Ashok lay on his back, his breathing too deliberate to be natural. They were both pretending to be asleep, neither ready to be the first to face the day.
Two weeks ago, this bed had been loud and urgent. Vanitha had woken up before dawn, her body hot with jealousy of Latha. She had pulled Ashok’s cock into her mouth before he was fully awake, her hand gripping the base of his shaft as she sucked him hard. He had groaned, his eyes flying open as he looked down to find his wife’s lips stretched around his length. They had fucked against the headboard, Ashok pounding into her with a ferocity she hadn’t allowed in years, his fingers digging into her hips hard enough to leave marks.
That version of their marriage had gone cold since the physician confirmed Latha’s pregnancy. Vanitha knew the baby was Ashok’s. He had revealed his affair with Latha to her, and the uncertainty of that revelation was its own kind of torment.
Vanitha cried sometimes. But her jealousy still made her stick with Ashok.
They came downstairs together, moving with the careful distance of people who had once been intimate and now shared only space. The house was quiet except for the soft hum of the coffee maker. They found Latha at the kitchen counter, three cups of filter coffee already poured and waiting. The whole domestic gesture was so earnest and so precisely wrong for the morning that it landed in the room like a provocation nobody intended.
Latha stood in her simple cotton nightdress, one hand resting lightly on her still-flat belly in the private gesture she had never managed to stop making. Her face was open and warm as she greeted them both.
“Good morning,” she said, her voice carrying the particular brightness of someone performing normalcy with genuine effort. “Coffee’s ready.”
In Latha’s version of the morning, the IVF story was still intact. The baby was officially a medical success, a surrogate’s duty fulfilled. The confusion underneath was real: Ashok had stopped coming to her room. He had stopped pulling her close in the kitchen when no one was watching. He had stopped being the man who pressed his palm over her hand on her belly and said “my baby” with his voice rough. She did not understand why the pregnancy, the thing they both wanted, had made him disappear.
Ashok poured his coffee and stood at the far end of the island from Latha. His body language did the work of a man who was trying not to show preference in either direction and therefore showed everything.
“How did you sleep?” he asked Latha. “Do you need anything for the morning sickness?”
The questions came from a responsible intended father rather than the man who had been filling her with his cum for months.
“I’m good,” Latha answered, watching his face for the warmth that had gone missing. “The ginger tea helps.”
Vanitha watched them both from her side of the counter. Her coffee cup was held in both hands, her expression composed in the way that cost her something to maintain. She took a sip, the coffee bitter on her tongue.
“Did you eat yet?” Ashok asked Latha.
“I had some toast,” she replied. “Dr. Priya said small meals are better for the nausea.”
“That makes sense.” Ashok nodded, his eyes on his coffee rather than Latha’s face.
The conversation moved through the ordinary surface of the morning. Latha mentioned her next doctor’s appointment, the prenatal vitamins she had started, whether she should be eating more protein. Ashok responded to each item with the attentive guilt of a man whose care for her was real and whose ability to show it openly had been severed by the presence of his wife three feet away.
“The baby should be about the size of a blueberry now,” Latha said, her hand still resting on her stomach. “That’s what the app says.”
“That’s amazing,” Ashok replied, his voice carefully neutral.
Vanitha contributed the minimum required to keep the scene functional. She nodded when appropriate, made appropriate sounds of interest, kept her eyes on her coffee rather than the space between her husband and the woman carrying his child.
At one point, Latha asked Vanitha directly whether she was feeling all right.
“You look tired,” she said, her voice carrying genuine concern. “Are you sleeping okay?”
“I’m fine,” Vanitha answered. “Just tired from work.”
The word “fine” did the heavy lifting it always did in a kitchen where three people were carrying secrets that overlapped without touching.
All three of them remained at the counter, the coffee going lukewarm in their cups. The Sunday morning light came through the window over the sink, warming the tile floor. Ashok’s guilt sat between him and Latha like a physical object. Vanitha’s jealousy had curdled into something quieter and more durable than the heat that had driven her to his cock two weeks ago.
Latha’s confusion was the cleanest thing in the room. She was pregnant. She was doing what she had come here to do. And the two people who should be celebrating with her were both somewhere else behind their eyes.
She picked up the coffee pot and refilled everyone’s cups without being asked. It was the only thing she knew how to do with her hands right now. The three of them stayed at the counter a little longer than necessary, none of them ready to be the first one to leave the room.
Scene 2
Vanitha stepped out of the shower, water dripping down her back. She had twenty minutes before the Vanmmer would arrive to take her to the San Francisco office. Her phone buzzed on the counter as she wrapped a towel around her body.
The text was from Selvam. “Left yet?”
She typed back with wet fingers. “About to. Car in 15.”
His response came immediately. “Taking a Vanmmer to the office myself. Mind if I join you?”
Vanitha paused, a drop of water rolling between her shoulder blades. She could have said no. Should have said no. Instead, she typed: “Come to the house. We’ll go together.”
She dressed quickly... a fitted black dress that hit just above the knee, heels that added three inches to her height, gold earrings that caught the light when she moved. Her hair was still damp as she applied minimal makeup... just enough to look professional, not enough to suggest she had made an effort. The doorbell rang as she was slipping her laptop into her bag.
Selvam stood on the porch, his leather briefcase in one hand. He wore his usual white linen shirt and dark trousers, his only concession to the Monday morning a thin gold tie.
“You’re early,” Vanitha said, stepping aside to let him in.
“The car came quickly.” His eyes moved over her outfit with careful neutrality. “You look nice.”
“Thank you.” She grabbed her bag from the hallway table. “We should go. Traffic will be bad.”
They walked to the curb together, maintaining a careful distance between them. The Vanmmer waited at the end of the driveway, its white paint gleaming in the morning sun. The logo on the hood... a stylized V that incorporated both an autonomous vehicle and a human face... caught the light as they approached.
Vanitha slid into the back seat first, moving to the far side to give Selvam room. He followed, his larger frame filling the space beside her. The door closed with a soft click, the interior of the car cool and quiet.
“Office,” Vanitha said to the empty air.
“Confirmed,” the car replied, its voice feminine and calm. “Estimated arrival time: fifty-three minutes.”
The car pulled away from the curb with smooth precision, accelerating to exactly the speed limit before merging onto the main road. The silence between Vanitha and Selvam stretched, weighted with everything they weren’t saying.
“How’s Ashok?” Selvam asked finally, breaking the quiet.
Vanitha turned to look at him directly. “I’m not fucking him, if that’s what you’re asking.”
The blunt statement hung between them. Selvam’s expression didn’t change, but Vanitha saw the slight tightening around his eyes, the almost imperceptible shift in his posture.
“That’s not what I meant,” he said.
“But it’s what you wanted to know.”
He didn’t deny it. The car navigated a curve along the residential street, its speed adjusting perfectly to the changing radius. Outside the window, trees slid past, their leaves catching the morning light.
“How long?” Selvam asked.
“Since we found out about the baby.” Vanitha’s voice was steady despite the ache in her chest. “Few weeks.”
Selvam nodded, his eyes on the road ahead. “I see.”
Something flickered across his face... a softening, a particular warmth that appeared and disappeared so quickly Vanitha might have imagined it. His hand rested on the seat between them, close enough that she could feel the heat radiating from his skin.
“Why?” he asked.
Vanitha looked out the window. “I don’t think I can take it,” she said. “Knowing he’s inside her. That he’s been inside her. That the baby is his, not just biologically but...” She trailed off, unable to finish the thought.
“You still want him,” Selvam said. It wasn’t a question.
“Yes.” The word felt torn from her throat. “But I also want to kill him sometimes. And her. Mostly her.”
Selvam was quiet for a moment. “Ashok is my son,” he said finally. “But this isn’t about what I want. You should make your own choice.”
Vanitha turned to face him. “I’m not going to leave him,” she said. “But I’m not going to touch him either. Maybe not ever again.”
The confession hung between them, raw and honest. Selvam’s expression shifted, something like hope flashing across his face before he carefully masked it.
“I understand,” he said, his voice neutral.
But Vanitha had seen it... the brief moment when his eyes had brightened, when his posture had eased. The idea that she might not be having sex with Ashok had affected him more than he wanted to admit.
The car continued its smooth journey toward San Francisco, the morning light warming the interior. Vanitha and Selvam sat side by side, not quite touching, the space between them charged with possibility neither was ready to acknowledge.
Scene 3
As the car navigated onto the freeway, Vanitha gently changed the subject. “How’s the integration with the BMW team going?” she asked, her voice deliberately professional. “Summer mentioned something about sensor calibration issues.”
Selvam’s expression shifted to the particular focus he brought to technical problems. “The front-facing array was misaligned by two degrees,” he said. “Not enough to affect safety, but enough to cause the occasional hesitation at intersections.” He paused. “We’ve moved the engineers to the separate building across the street.”
Vanitha raised an eyebrow. “All of them? I thought the perception team was staying on the penthouse floor.”
“They were,” Selvam replied. “But the space was getting crowded. The new building has better facilities for hardware testing.”
Vanitha studied his profile, a smile playing at the corners of her mouth. “Is that the only reason? Or did you finally get tired of them staring at me all day?”
The question hung between them, direct and deliberately provocative. Selvam turned to look at her, his expression carefully controlled.
“Yes,” he said simply. “That too.”
He looked out the window for a moment, his jaw working slightly. When he turned back, his tone had shifted to something more serious.
“As CHRO, I wanted to get your thoughts on the Uber integration,” he said. “We’ve inherited fourteen hundred employees across operations, engineering, and support. I’m concerned about cultural assimilation, especially at the leadership level.”
Vanitha nodded, matching his professional tone. “I’ve been thinking about that,” she said. “The operations team is our biggest opportunity. Their drivers have direct experience with passenger behavior, service expectations, pain points in the current system. We should integrate them directly into our route optimization and passenger experience teams.”
“And engineering?” Selvam asked.
“More complicated,” Vanitha admitted. “Their technical architecture is completely different from ours. We could reassign them to our validation and testing groups, or create a separate division focused on legacy system maintenance.”
Selvam considered this, his eyes on the road ahead. “What about cultural retention? These people have built their careers at Uber. They’re going to be resistant to being absorbed by what they see as the competition.”
“That’s where my team comes in,” Vanitha said. “We need to create a clear integration path that acknowledges their expertise while establishing our technical vision as the way forward.” She paused, choosing her words carefully. “The real challenge will be the leadership team. Their executives are used to being in charge. Bringing them into Vanmmer means asking them to accept subordinate roles in most cases.”
“They’ll leave,” Selvam said. It wasn’t a question.
“Some will,” Vanitha agreed. “But not all. And the ones who stay will be the ones who believe in what we’re building.” She turned to face him directly. “That’s actually our biggest advantage. We’re not just acquiring their technology or their market share. We’re offering them a chance to be part of something that’s actually going to change how people live.”
The conversation remained crisp and strategic as they approached the city, the autonomous vehicle gliding smoothly toward their destination. They discussed compensation structures, reporting lines, cultural integration events... all the elements of merging two companies with fundamentally different approaches to the same problem. By the time they reached the Bay Bridge, they had outlined a complete integration plan, their voices carrying the particular energy of people solving a problem together.
As they entered San Francisco proper, the morning light caught the buildings ahead, turning the glass facades to gold. Vanitha watched the city approach, her mind full of what they had built... not just the company but the particular connection that existed between them despite everything that had happened.
Without thinking, she moved closer to Selvam on the seat. “May I?” she asked, her voice soft.
He nodded, his eyes meeting hers with careful warmth. Vanitha gently placed her head on his shoulder, her body relaxing into the contact. Selvam’s arm came around her shoulders, his hand resting lightly on her upper arm. His touch was warm through the fabric of her dress, familiar in a way that made her chest ache.
“You’ve been through a lot,” he said, his voice low enough that only she could hear. “But I meant what I said. About keeping our distance.”
Vanitha nodded against his shoulder. “I know,” she said. “This is just... this.”
Not an affair. Not nothing. Something that existed in the space between categories, undefined but no less real for its lack of name.
The car navigated the final blocks to the Nakamura Building, its movements as smooth and precise as they had been since the journey began. As they approached the entrance, Selvam’s hand squeezed her shoulder once, gently, before releasing her. They straightened, putting careful space between them, their bodies returning to the particular distance of colleagues rather than the intimacy of whatever they had been to each other.
The car pulled to a stop at the curb. The door opened with a soft click, morning light flooding the interior. Selvam gathered his briefcase, his movements quick and efficient.
“See you upstairs,” he said, his voice deliberately casual.
![[+]](https://xossipy.com/themes/sharepoint/collapse_collapsed.png)