Steve's POV
Fifth-year law wasn't a degree. It was a weather system.
If I wasn't in class, I was in moot court. If I wasn't in moot court, I was buried in jurisprudence or arguing hypos in a windowless room that smelled like photocopy toner. I lived on coffee and case digests, slept in ninety-minute intervals, and measured my weeks by submissions and oral arguments.
And then there was Ariela.
She didn't orbit me; she ran her own constellation. After graduating with Communications-Journalism, she'd leapt straight into a trainee track at the network. Field reporting, late-night copy edits, learning to read a teleprompter like it wasn't there. We were both sprinting in different directions—two careers with sharp edges, trying to meet in the middle without cutting each other.
Most nights, we made it work. Some nights, we didn't.
And then Bianca Reyes got assigned as my moot court partner.
Bianca was what professors secretly pray for: fast on her feet, paper-cut precise, the kind of competitive that always looks polite until she dismantles you in four questions. She also had perfect timing with "you free to study after?" texts and a habit of taking the chair next to mine even when half the room was empty.
It wasn't a problem... until it was.
Ariela's POV
Newsrooms are loud even when no one's speaking. The scanners hum, the keyboards clack, and rumors pass faster than any press release. Sometimes the rumor is a story. Sometimes the story is you.
"Is that your boyfriend?" our anchor asked, leaning over my shoulder. On my screen: a photo someone in the law building had posted—group study session, boxes of pizza, books everywhere. Steve was mid-sentence, hands moving, focused on the page. Bianca was next to him, leaning in a little too easily. The caption: Bar boys never sleep.
"Yeah," I said. My smile didn't quite land. "That's him."
"You trust him, right?"
"I do," I said. And the truth was, I did. But trust is a muscle. When you don't use it for a few days, it starts to stiffen.
That night I texted him: Call me if you get a break?
He replied past midnight: Out of the library. Dead. Tomorrow?
I stared at the ceiling of my studio apartment and let the silence talk for me. It said I was being childish. It said he was exhausted. It said we were adults balancing impossible things. It said a dozen sensible truths that should have soothed me.
None of them did.
Steve's POV
The thing about late nights is they make every decision feel like a compromise you didn't sign up for. Bianca and I worked well. She anticipated my arguments; I shored up her weak spots. When we won scrimmages, she'd throw me a sharp grin and rap her knuckles on the table like we'd just executed a heist.
"You're scary good," she said one night, packing up her notes. "I mean it. You think like a judge—maddeningly fair."
"Is that a compliment?"
"Don't make me object to your face," she laughed. "Food? You look like you've dissolved three meals into jurisprudence."
I almost said yes. It would've been easy. It would've been thoughtless. And then my phone lit.
Ariela: Still up? How's your brain?
I smiled like a lunatic. "Rain check," I told Bianca. "My brain belongs to someone who remembers to ask it how it's doing."
Her mouth curved. "Girlfriend?"
"Girlfriend."
"Good. Keeps you human."
It was an olive branch. I took it.
But whispers don't care for olive branches.
The Rumor
You don't need intent to plant a rumor. You just need an angle and an audience.
The angle: Bianca and I leaving the library together—her laughing at something dumb I said, my hand full of books because I'm a mule who insists on carrying too much.
The audience: everyone with a phone.
Within a week, Ariela heard every version before I could correct any of them.
When she finally asked to meet, she chose neutral ground: the little café beside campus where we'd once split a dessert we couldn't afford.
"You're busy," she said as soon as we sat, voice too casual. "I get it."
"I'm busy," I agreed, "and I miss you."
Her eyes flicked past my shoulder, where a law classmate I didn't even like was whispering to someone who didn't matter. Ariela's jaw worked. "I saw the photos."
I knew which ones. "They're group photos."
"And the one where she's touching your arm?"
I exhaled. "She grabbed me when she realized she'd left her highlighter and wanted to borrow mine. It's nothing."
"Can you swear you don't like her?"
"I can swear I'm in love with you."
There it was. The truth that felt like enough and suddenly felt like a script I'd said too often. Her mouth pulled tight.
"Then why does it look like you're building a life with her?"
That stung. "Ari, I'm building a case with her. There's a difference."
"But you weren't there when I needed you." Her voice cracked on needed. "My first field story. They let me anchor the taped segment. I texted you when we wrapped. You never replied."
"I fell asleep on my notes," I said. It sounded pathetic when I said it out loud. "I woke up two hours later and—"
"And you're defending yourself like it's court," she said. She stood. "I don't want you to argue me into feeling safe, Steve. I want to know I already am."
She left before I could give the only answer that mattered.
The Breaking Point
It broke on a night of rain.
Bianca and I took first in a scrimmage that had gutted me. We'd dissected an administrative law nightmare until the judge finally stopped interrupting and started nodding. It should've felt like victory. It felt like a bruise.
We left the hall; the storm made lakewater of the steps. Bianca handed me an umbrella without looking at me. "Go home," she said. "Fix your life."
I stared. "What?"
"I'm competitive, not cruel," she said. "If someone had posted photos of my boyfriend with a convenient girl, I'd throw the umbrella at his head." She shoved the handle into my hand. "If you don't want to lose her, stop acting like a man who deserves to."
The rain hit like applause as I ran.
Ariela opened her door at the first knock. She'd been crying. Underneath, she looked furious at herself for it.
"Don't say anything yet," I blurted. "Let me. One minute. Then you can decide if you want to throw me or the umbrella."
She folded her arms. "Go."
"I am not building a life with anyone but you. I don't want a debate to win you. I don't want reasons or arguments or case law. I want you. In every loud, inconvenient, gloriously human way you exist." My chest hurt, but it felt like the good kind of pain—the kind that meant I'd finally stopped posturing. "I choose you. Not because it makes sense to our parents, or because people like taking pictures of us, or because an old arrangement dissolved into a new one. I choose you because without you, every win feels like it's missing its verb."
She stared at me for a long time. The rain softened.
"And when I'm jealous?" she whispered.
"I'll hold you through it."
"And when you're impossible?"
"You'll tell me to shut up before I ruin it."
"And when the world posts photos?"
"I'll post truths," I said. "The ones that belong to us."
Her eyes softened—cautious and bright at once. "Show me."
"I—what?"
"Show me I'm the one you come home to," she said, stepping aside. "No arguments. No speeches. Just... us."
The floor tilted beneath me. "Ari... are you sure?"
She nodded. "I'm not a prize you prove you can win. I'm a person you choose."
"And you're choosing me?"
She smiled—a little broken and entirely brave. "I'm choosing you."
I breathed out the last of my pride. "Then yes. I'll show you."
We kissed like the storm had moved inside, like we were tired of holding the door shut against it. Clothes found chairs, then the floor, then the forgettable corners of a room I'd always thought of as temporary and suddenly wanted to memorize forever. There was nothing clever about the way I touched her. Nothing strategic about the way she said my name. We tripped, we laughed, we got scared, we asked if we were okay, we said yes, we said yes again.
When we finally fell quiet, the rain had stopped. The city hummed like a house that knows it's being watched and pretends it isn't.
"Still jealous?" I whispered against her hair.
"Sometimes," she admitted. "But not right now."
"Good," I said. "Because right now I have exactly one partner."
She elbowed me, then tucked closer. "You better."
Consequences
We told our families two days later because we wanted to be honest. We told them together because we're not stupid.
My mother cried the moment Ariela sat down at our table. They were not delicate tears. They were we liked you for our son before he knew what liking was tears.
Her father did what fathers do when they want to look stern and end up proud: he interrogated me about income, plans, whether I'd finished my thesis, whether I could cook three meals without poisoning myself. Her mother watched Ariela watch me, and whatever she saw made her smile behind her napkin.
We were getting through it. We were almost to dessert when an aunt with no brakes and a doctorate in reading rooms blurted, "So when's the wedding?"
"Auntie," Ariela hissed.
"What?" she said, scandalized. "You think I was born yesterday? Look at the way you're looking at him. That's a wedding." She pointed a fork at me. "You—make it honorable."
We could have laughed it off. We could have said "after the bar" or "after her first promotion." Instead, I took Ariela's hand.
"Soon," I said.
Her parents exchanged a look that had three decades of marriage baked into it. Her father cleared his throat. "There was once another arrangement that wasn't yours to carry," he said gently, remembering the almost-wedding her family had tried to push with Gelo before life intervened. "If this happens, it happens because you choose it."
"We do," Ariela said. "We choose it."
Her mother's eyes shone. "Then let us arrange what you already want."
That's how shotgun weddings happen in our world. Not always because of a scandal. Sometimes because two families understand that love can be true and the calendar can still be ruthless.
The date was set with surprising speed. Papers were signed with the kind of efficiency both our parents admired. The arranged marriage that once loomed like a cage turned into an organized expression of what we'd already decided in a storm-lit room.
The Night Before
My phone buzzed at 1:17 a.m.
Ariela: Are you awake?
Me: Only if you are.
Ariela: Do you ever get scared?
Me: Every time I love something enough to say it out loud.
She sent a photo—not of herself, but of the view from her window. City lights. The line of dawn waiting. The kind of quiet that asks questions.
Ariela: I'm not scared of marrying you. I'm scared of being the reason you don't finish the fight you started—with your degree, with your voice, with everything.
Me: You're the reason I finish it.
Ariela: Promise?
Me: On my obnoxiously annotated codal.
Ariela: I love you.
Me: I love you more.
Ariela: We're not arguing that. Sleep.
I didn't. Not much. But the tension in my chest felt like the good kind—the kind you get before a verdict you can live with.
The Wedding
We didn't do chandeliers. We didn't need a cathedral.
We chose a garden at dusk. Strings of warm lights. Tables under trees. Flowers that looked like laughter.
I stood at the end of the aisle with Gelo and Mark to either side, both in suits that made them look like they'd grown into their bones since the day a band had made us brothers. Adra tuned an acoustic on a stool by the petals, eyes soft, mouth curved like a prayer he didn't want to frighten by saying out loud. Monique fussed with the logistics until event planners started taking orders from her like she was on payroll.
There was no veil. Ariela wanted her face to be the first thing I saw.
When she stepped onto the path, I forgot how to swallow. She didn't glide. She walked like a girl who had run toward her life and arrived breathless and laughing.
Halfway down, she stopped. I frowned, stepped forward.
She lifted her mic—because of course she'd smuggle one into her own wedding—and said, voice steady as broadcast: "Breaking: A woman will now marry the man who argued her into bravery and kissed her into truth."
The guests roared. I could've died happy right there.
When she reached me, I took her hands. They were cool. Mine weren't.
The officiant kept it short because we asked him to. We've never liked long preludes to things that already exist.
"I thought love would be a debate I could win," I told her, eyes refusing to waver. "It turns out it's a witness I needed to be. I promise to choose you when it's loud and when it's quiet. When rumors make us small and when truth makes us taller. I promise to brag about you to strangers and listen to you like I remember how you take your coffee even when I'm on my second bar review and my sanity has filed a writ of habeas corpus."
She laughed; I heard her mother sniff. I squeezed her fingers and finished softly, "I promise to come home to you."
Ariela lifted her chin. "I thought love would be a headline," she said. "Turns out it's the copy edit that keeps the sentence true." A ripple of newsroom laughter from the back. "I promise to be your quiet when the court is loud, your loud when the room forgets to listen. I promise to be jealous sometimes because I am human and you are ridiculous, and I promise to say it out loud so you can hold me through it. I promise to remember the night we chose each other, not because we had to, but because nothing else made sense."
We exchanged rings. There were no doves. There were no fireworks. There were hands held, brows touched, the sound of leaves approving.
"You may kiss your—" the officiant began.
I didn't wait.
Someone whooped. It was Mark. Someone cried. It was Monique. Someone played the softest refrain of a melody I recognized as ours. It was Adra.
We were married.
Reception
If you've never seen a room full of law professors try to out-toast a room full of journalists, you haven't lived.
My dean stood and said I was the best cross-examiner he'd had in years, then added, "But I prefer that he never uses those skills at home." The newsroom anchor followed with a story about Ariela rewriting an entire segment in under five minutes and concluded, "If he can win against that deadline, he deserves her. If he can't, he still deserves her for trying."
Gelo toasted us with a businessman's clarity: "May you be solvent in love, liquid in patience, and diversified in joy." Clara yelled "nerd" and kissed Mark to shut him up before his own speech turned into a TED Talk on compounding affection.
When it was Adra's turn, he didn't speak. He just played. A simple melody, proud and gentle, that felt like a room standing up and hugging you without moving. Later, he pressed the scribbled sheet into my palm. For the story you didn't argue. —A
Ariela and I danced under the trees. She rested her cheek against my chest like she'd always known it was measured in four-four time.
"Happy?" I asked.
"Breaking," she said into my shirt. "Yes."
After
We didn't go far after the reception. We didn't need to. Our world had shrunk to the square footage of a promise.
I carried her over a threshold because my aunt insisted and because I wanted to, then promptly almost tripped because the rug hated me. We laughed so hard we had to sit on the floor to breathe.
There's a version of this story where I tell you exactly how we loved each other that night. I won't. That's not because I'm shy. It's because some things are truer when they're held close.
I will tell you this: at some point, in the quiet that comes after laughter and before sleep, she traced the line of my jaw and said, "Thank you for not letting my fear become our truth."
"And thank you," I said, "for not letting my pride become our story."
We slept like people who had won a case they hadn't realized they'd been arguing for years.
Epilogue — The Fulfilled Arrangement
The headlines the next morning were clean: Yung-Min & Thompson Families Celebrate Union. The photos were perfect angles of our vows and none of our tears. The public called it an arranged marriage because that was the paperwork. We called it fulfilled because that was the heart.
Bianca sent a gift with a note: Objection withdrawn. Congratulations.
I laughed, texted back: Sustained. Thank you.
She replied: Now go pass the bar, married man.
Back at the dorm-turned-home, the boys showed up with breakfast and noise. Gelo hugged us like a brother who'd signed the marriage certificate. Mark tried to get Clara to let him do a "husband test" where he had to open jars and plan a date under thirty pesos. Clara told him to eat his eggs. Adra leaned against the counter, watching all of us with that small, whole smile that always makes me wonder what song he's hearing.
Ariela slid her hand into mine, wedding band warm against my skin. "Ready for everything?"
"I already got everything," I said.
She rolled her eyes. "Lawyer."
"Mrs. Min," I corrected softly.
Her answering grin could have lit a city block. "Breaking," she said, like a prayer.
"Always," I answered, like a verdict.
And that was how the arrangement became the only decision that ever felt inevitable. Not because anyone forced our hands.
Because we kept choosing, and the choosing kept feeling like home.