Ashaas hadn't expected love to feel this gentle. With Arjun, it wasn't the whirlwind she remembered from her younger years with Neel — no dramatic highs followed by crashing lows. Instead, it was steady, like the tide brushing the shore, carving trust into her heart one small moment at a time.
Their romance grew in rituals more than declarations. He would bring her coffee exactly how she liked it, two sugars, no milk, every morning after late-night events. She began leaving sticky notes in his camera bag — sometimes reminders, sometimes jokes, sometimes a single word like stay. These small gestures became a language only they spoke, filling the quiet spaces between them.
One evening, after a particularly extravagant wedding she had planned, Arjun whisked her away before she could collapse into exhaustion. He drove her to a hidden viewpoint overlooking the city, where lanterns flickered against the night sky. They sat side by side on the hood of his car, the world glittering beneath them.
"You're always creating magic for everyone else," he said, handing her a thermos of hot chocolate. "Tonight, you get to keep some for yourself."
Ashaas laughed softly, sipping the sweet warmth. "You're making it very hard for me not to fall for you, you know."
Arjun turned his head, his gaze steady. "Then don't fight it."
The silence that followed wasn't empty. It was charged, humming with something new — the recognition that what they shared was no longer casual, no longer just companionship. It was love, tender and growing.
---
Meanwhile, life moved on for Neel. His café thrived, and Sophia remained by his side, but a restlessness had taken root in him. He couldn't quite explain it — a sense of being in the right place with the wrong piece missing. Sometimes, when news of Ashaas's events appeared in the paper or her laughter floated across the café when she stopped by, the ache in his chest deepened.
He never spoke of it, not to Sophia, not to anyone. But in quiet moments — the kind where he was cleaning tables after hours, or staring at the untouched coffee growing cold in front of him — he replayed memories he wished he could rewrite.
Yet, from the outside, no one would guess. He smiled, he lived, he carried on. Only the reader, and perhaps some part of him, knew how heavy his unspoken regret had become.
---
For Ashaas, however, life was unfolding in brighter colors. She and Arjun began to share dreams — of traveling, of blending their creative worlds, of a future where her planning and his photography could merge into something larger. More than once, they joked about opening a joint studio, a place where love stories could be planned, captured, and preserved together.
But beyond dreams, it was in the smallest of details that she realized how deeply he had taken root in her heart: the way his hand instinctively found hers in a crowded street, the way he never let her silence sit unnoticed, the way he looked at her as if she was a story worth telling every day.
One night, as they walked home in the rain, Arjun pulled her under the awning of a closed shop. She was laughing, droplets dripping from her hair, when he leaned in and kissed her. It wasn't rushed or desperate. It was unhurried, certain, like he had been waiting for the right moment all along.
For the first time in years, Ashaas didn't feel like she was stepping back into something broken. She was stepping into something new, something whole.
And though she didn't know it, miles away Neel was staring at his ceiling, wide awake, haunted by the truth he could no longer deny: he had once held this kind of love, and he had let it slip away.