Irises in the Snow
Ayah's Pov
This was the very first day of the ridiculous agreement between Aubrey and me.
Call it selfish—soft, dangerous, quietly blooming in a heart that had never allowed itself such indulgence. In a life where I had been nothing but restraint and quiet obedience, where every choice I made was weighed against its consequence on others, this... this felt like something stolen from fate itself.
Something I was never meant to keep.
And yet, I did.
I held onto it with a tenderness that almost ached.
Because the memory I carried of him was not uncertain.
It was not blurred by longing or softened by imagination.
It was real.
I remember the exhibition with a clarity so sharp it almost hurt. The room had been filled with people, with murmurs and admiration and the quiet rustle of expectation—but all of it faded the moment he began to play.
The first note had cut through the air like light through glass.
Clean.
Precise.
Unforgiving in its beauty.
Aubrey Ardel did not simply perform—he unveiled something. Each movement of his hand, each glide of the bow across the strings, felt deliberate, almost intimate, as though he were speaking a language only the heart could understand. The music did not stay confined to the room; it moved, slipping beneath skin, settling into bones, lingering in the hollow spaces people did not know they carried.
I remember the way my breath caught.
The way my fingers curled into themselves, as if trying to hold onto something invisible.
The way my chest felt was too small to contain what I was feeling.
And in that vast room, where every gaze was drawn to him—
He found mine.
Not by accident.
Not fleetingly.
But with a quiet certainty that made the world around me fall away.
His eyes did not pass over me.
They stayed.
And in that moment, I was no longer part of the crowd.
I was seen.
Truly, impossibly seen.
And then—
The memory deepens.
It does not fracture.
It unfolds.
The walls of the exhibition dissolve into night, into a sky stretched wide with stars that shimmer like distant promises. The air had been cold—soft against my skin, brushing along my arms, slipping beneath the edges of my sleeves—but I barely felt it.
Because everything in me was aware of him.
The quiet sound of his breathing.
The subtle shift of his presence beside me.
The way the world seemed to narrow until there was only that space between us.
He stood close enough that I could feel it—not his touch, not yet, but the possibility of it. A fragile tension, like something waiting to happen.
And when I looked at him—
I forgot how to look away.
His face was... luminous.
Not in the way light touches something, but in the way something seems to create light. The moon hung above us, the stars scattered endlessly, but they felt distant, irrelevant. None of it compared to the quiet intensity in his gaze, the softness that lingered at the edges of it, as though he was holding something back.
As though he was choosing gentleness.
For me.
And then he spoke.
You are my peace.
The words were not loud.
They did not demand to be heard.
They settled into the air between us like something fragile and sacred, something that could shatter if handled too roughly.
But they did not shatter.
They sank into me.
Slowly.
Deeply.
I felt them in the way my breath stilled, in the way my chest tightened—not with fear, but with something unbearably tender. It spread through me like warmth, like something soft unfurling in a place that had long been untouched.
No one had ever spoken to me like that.
No one had ever looked at me as though I could be something so... steady, so needed, so quietly essential.
And before I could stop myself—
Before I could remember the rules I had lived by, the distance I was meant to keep—
I reached for him.
My fingers brushed against his coat first, hesitant, almost unsure.
Then they curled.
Gripped.
Held.
The fabric was cool beneath my skin, solid and real, anchoring me in a moment that felt too delicate to exist. I held onto him not out of desperation, but out of something far more dangerous—
Certainty.
As though letting go would mean losing something I had only just found.
And in that second—
That endless, fragile second—
I felt it.
Not just the quiet between us.
Not just the weight of his words.
But something deeper.
A pull.
A longing that was not loud or overwhelming, but soft and consuming, like a tide that did not need to crash to be powerful.
I wanted more.
More than this moment suspended in time.
More than the warmth of his presence without touch.
More than the unspoken understanding that lingered between us.
I wanted something I had never allowed myself to want.
Something that felt inevitable the moment I stood before him.
And that was when it terrified me.
Because the memory was real.
Every breath of it.
Every glance.
Every word.
Every feeling that now refuses to be undone.
And if it was real—
Then so was this.
This quiet, impossible, undeniable want that had taken root inside me.
And for the first time in my life—
I did not know how to let it go.
If playing this ridiculous game meant that I could stay with him a little longer—
Then so be it.
Let it be foolish. Let it be fleeting. Let it be something I would one day have to bury beneath silence and duty. I would still choose it.
Because even the thought of losing him now felt like being pulled away from something I had only just begun to understand.
My heart would not listen to reason.
It beat too fast—restless, uneven, almost frantic against my ribs, as though it were trying to escape me, as though it had already begun to belong somewhere else.
To him.
Aubrey had become everything in ways I did not know how to explain. Not loudly, not all at once, but slowly, quietly—like a presence that seeps into every corner of your life until you no longer remember what it felt like before it was there.
And yet—
One word from him had been enough.
Okay.
So simple.
So careless.
So unbearably cold.
I had stared at it longer than I should have, the glow of my screen reflecting against my fingertips, my breath caught somewhere between disbelief and something far more fragile. It should not have mattered. It was nothing. A reply. A word people use without thought.
But something inside me—
something delicate and newly formed—
cracked.
Not loudly.
Not enough for the world to notice.
But enough for me to feel it.
A quiet, splintering ache that spread through my chest, settling deep, where I could not reach it, where I could not fix it.
And I hated it.
I hated that something so trivial could undo me so easily.
If anyone from my workplace saw me like this—if they could step inside this moment, see the way my hands trembled slightly, the way my thoughts tangled themselves around something as insignificant as a single word—they would not recognize me.
Because the Ayah Ferdous they know is composed.
Measured.
Untouchable.
She does not falter over silence.
She does not break over absence.
She does not wait for someone's reply as though it carries meaning.
But the Ayah Ferdous that Aubrey knows—
or perhaps the one that only exists because of him—
is something else entirely.
Softer.
Uncertain.
Dangerously real.
She feels too much.
She notices everything.
She holds onto moments longer than she should, searching for meaning in things that may not even exist.
And perhaps that is what terrifies me the most.
Not that he could hurt me.
But that he already has—
without even trying.
Here I was—waiting for him beneath the quiet warmth of the winter sun.
It spilled gently across the ground, brushing against the endless stretch of snow until it shimmered like something unreal, something almost enchanted. Every surface caught the light differently—soft, silver, fleeting—turning the cold into something breathtaking, something that almost made you forget how unforgiving it truly was.
It was beautiful.
Painfully so.
And yet, the beauty did nothing to shield me from the wind.
It came in sudden, merciless gusts, slipping through the layers of my coat, curling against my skin like something alive. My body betrayed me each time—shivering, trembling, as though it could not decide whether to endure or retreat.
Winter here was cruel.
But it was also majestic in a way that demanded to be witnessed.
Much like him.
My fingers tightened slightly at my sides as my thoughts drifted back—inevitably, helplessly—to Aubrey.
I wondered what I would see in his eyes when he arrived.
Would there be irritation?
A quiet disapproval at my insistence, at this ridiculous agreement I had drawn him into?
Or—
something softer?
Something that would tell me I had not made a mistake in choosing this?
A flicker of reassurance, perhaps.
A silent acknowledgment that I was not alone in this strange, fragile thing forming between us.
But then doubt, as it always did, found its way in.
What if he changed his mind?
What if he looked at me—truly looked—and realized I was not worth the time, the effort, the quiet complication I brought into his life?
The thought settled heavily in my chest, colder than the wind that brushed against my skin.
Because he could have anyone.
Anyone.
He was Aubrey Ardel.
The name alone carried weight—power, influence, a presence that moved through the world effortlessly. Luxury followed him, admiration lingered in his wake, and people… people gravitated toward him without even understanding why.
And then there was his face.
Not just beautiful—no, that word felt far too small, far too ordinary for something like him.
There was something artistic about it.
As though he had been carefully composed rather than simply born. Every feature precise, deliberate, almost unreal in its perfection—like a painting that had come to life, carrying with it something both captivating and untouchable.
He could choose anyone.
Someone easier.
Someone simpler.
Someone who did not come with unspoken rules and hidden truths and a heart that did not know how to exist halfway.
And yet—
he had chosen to come here.
To meet me.
The thought wrapped around me slowly, warming something deep within my chest despite the cold.
And still—
I waited.
Caught between the beauty of the world around me and the quiet storm within, between hope and doubt, between wanting and the fear of wanting too much.
Waiting—
for him.
The cold was beginning to win.
It slipped past the fabric of my coat, past the layers I had so carefully wrapped around myself, settling into my skin with a quiet persistence that made my fingers ache and my breath turn faint against the air.
Still, I did not move.
My eyes searched for him—restless, almost desperate now—lingering on every passing shadow, every distant figure that might, for a fleeting second, resemble him.
And my senses betrayed me.
Because I could feel him.
As though he were near.
As though he had already arrived and was standing just beyond my reach, watching, waiting, existing somewhere between presence and absence. Even my breath faltered as I tried to catch it—that familiar trace of his scent.
Faint.
Elusive.
Like something carried by the wind just long enough to be noticed, and then gone before it could be held.
My heart reacted before my mind could.
He's here.
But when I looked—
There was nothing.
No sign of him.
No silhouette that stilled the world.
No quiet certainty that I had come to recognize as his presence.
Just the snow.
Just the cold.
And the slow, creeping doubt that wrapped itself around my chest.
Had I been stood up?
The thought came uninvited, sharp and unwelcome, yet impossible to ignore. It echoed softly, repeating itself in the quiet spaces between each passing second, growing heavier the longer he did not appear.
Of course.
Why wouldn't he?
Why would someone like him—
A sudden tug broke through everything.
Small.
Unexpected.
Real.
I froze for a moment before looking down, my thoughts scattering like fragile glass.
A little hand clutched at my trousers.
I turned, the motion slow, almost disoriented, and there he was—
a little boy wrapped in a brown coat that seemed just a size too large, a knitted beanie pulled low over his head. His cheeks were flushed from the cold, his nose slightly pink, and when he smiled—
it was imperfect.
Uneven.
And somehow, impossibly, perfect.
The kind of smile that held no hesitation, no careful restraint. Just warmth.
And without realizing it, I smiled back.
The tension in my chest softened, if only slightly, as I crouched down to meet him at eye level, the snow pressing gently beneath my knees.
"Hi there," I said, my voice instinctively quieter, gentler. "How can I help you?"
He hesitated.
I could see it in the way his fingers fidgeted, in the way his gaze flickered between my face and the ground. There was something timid about him, something uncertain—like he had gathered all his courage just to approach me.
Maybe he was lost.
"Where are your parents?" I asked softly, careful not to overwhelm him.
But he didn't answer.
Not a word.
Instead, he reached forward.
And placed something into my hands.
I blinked, caught off guard by the sudden weight of it.
A bouquet.
Fresh.
Delicate.
Irises.
My breath stilled.
For a moment, everything else faded—the wind, the cold, the quiet noise of the world around us. All I could see were the flowers resting against my palms, their deep, velvety petals impossibly vivid against the pale white of winter.
Irises.
My favourite.
A detail so small, so specific, that it sent something soft and unsteady through my chest.
As if someone had known.
As if someone had been paying attention.
I looked at the child again, confusion laced gently with something more fragile.
"Who are these from?" I asked, my voice quieter now, almost careful. "Do you know?"
But even as I spoke, my eyes lifted—instinctively, habitually—searching.
Scanning the space around me.
Looking for him.
Because suddenly—
I was certain.
He was here.