Incense and Sensibility (The Rajes #3) - Sonali Dev Page 0,71
giant dumpster were parked outside. Yash turned around and looked at India’s studio and imagined what that must have been like during the renovation. Then he rounded the corner and made his way up Ashna’s driveway. His sisters had hung out at the restaurant and the house much more than he had. So much of his life had been spent in a whirlwind of fighting for one thing or another. His famous laser focus had always been aimed at something. And like a laser it had eaten through every other aspect of this life.
When he’d walked away from India all those years ago, it had been far too easy for him to make up a million excuses to let what he had felt go. Naina needed him, he had to stay focused on his goals, trusting a stranger wasn’t a chance he could afford to take again. India had dug up too much of his baggage. He’d worked too hard to bury it.
Evidently he’d been right. Because his level of distraction right now was taking over everything else. The election was looming over him like a test he’d blanked out on and all he wanted was to turn around and go back through that turquoise door. He wanted to hear her voice. He wanted to feel how he felt when he was around her. Alive in a way he had been chasing all his life. In all the wrong places.
He knocked on Ashna’s door. It was Rico and Ashna’s now, since Rico had moved in just a month after coming back into her life. Until a couple days ago Yash had wondered if it was too soon.
“Did you walk here?” Rico asked, opening the door. “What’s wrong with you? Where is Brandy? Where were you?”
“You’re sounding scarily like Ashna. Could you please not?” But he’d clean forgotten that Brandy was on her way. He texted her and told her where he was and that she didn’t have to come back. He still didn’t think he needed security outside public events, especially not inside people’s homes. Fortunately, Nisha had agreed that Brandy didn’t have to wait at the yoga studio with him after getting him there safely.
“I knew working for family was going to be tricky,” Rico said.
Yeah, especially their family. “Good thing you’ve trained for the challenge in cutthroat competitive sports.”
They were now fifteen points ahead in the polls even though Yash had made no appearances since the shooting. Rico had kept the media flooded with the tragedy strategically interspersed with ads and recordings of Yash’s earlier speeches.
“Listen, man, I’m sorry,” Yash said. “Everything you’re doing is totally saving my ass and I can’t thank you enough. You want to get me up to speed?”
For the next hour they popped open a couple of Anchor Steams and settled around Rico’s laptop on the kitchen island and went over every detail of all the campaigning Cruz was doing. All his press coverage, his endorsements, where his funds were coming from. Cruz had been forced to pull some of his negative ads because slinging mud at someone who had just been shot had not turned out to be good strategy. Every negative ad had bumped up the donations flowing into Yash’s campaign.
Then Cruz had tried the vote-with-your-brains-not-with-your-sympathy tack and fallen even lower in the polls so fast that he’d reconsidered that too. He was going to have to face off with Yash on policy. Something he had been avoiding throughout the race. This was a huge win. Or it would be, if Yash could get himself behind a podium without passing out.
“What we’re seeing right now is the unstoppable momentum of an accidental occurrence. Your assassination attempt has taken over the conscience of California, and the only thing that can stop us now is either a miracle or you dropping out of the race,” Rico said, with all the satisfaction of someone who loved to win.
Yash knew Rico was right. It just felt like all this was happening to someone else. Yash had knocked on a hundred and ten doors in Orange County the day before the shooting. He’d been in TV studios a total of five hundred hours over the past year. He had been so inside his campaign that being blasted outside it now and not knowing how to get back in should’ve been the most terrifying thing he’d ever experienced. It wasn’t.
“What would make you think I might drop out of the race?” He understood his family and his