Author's POV
The drive from Ahmedabad to the farmhouse took forty minutes.
Aarohi had always loved this drive.
The city falling away behind them .... the glass towers softening into wider roads, the wider roads giving way to the familiar pale stone boundary wall that told her she was almost there. She had done this drive more times than she could count as a child. As a teenager who had started pretending she was too old to be excited and had never quite convinced herself. As a twenty-year-old who had made this same drive with the certainty of someone who believed something was about to begin.
That had been the last time.
Seven years ago.
Until now.
Anaya was in the seat beside her, looking out the window with an attention that was different from Aarohi's .... new, taking everything in, the quality of someone who had been hearing about a place for years and was now finally seeing it. She had been quiet since they left Ahmedabad. Not the quiet of someone who had nothing to say .... Anaya always had something to say .... but the quiet of someone who was absorbing.
"It's exactly how you described it," Anaya said, after a while.
"The boundary wall?"
"All of it." She was still looking out the window. "The way the city just .... stops. And then there's this."
Aarohi looked at the road. "Wait until you see the inside."
The driver had the radio on low .... some old Gujarati song she half-recognised. Outside, the August evening was warm and golden, the light that particular colour that Ahmedabad evenings did in this month, and Aarohi sat with her hands folded in her lap and told herself she was fine.
She had been telling herself she was fine for approximately fourteen hours, which was how long the journey from London had taken.
She was mostly fine. She was fine enough.
You came for Bhai, she reminded herself. You came for Riya.
That was true. It was entirely true. Kunal's wedding .... her elder brother marrying her best friend, a marriage the families had decided six months ago with the certainty of people who had been watching two people and trusting what they saw .... was the kind of event that did not allow for absence. She had known that when the date was set. She had known it when her mother's calls shifted from weekly to every three days and the tone shifted from warm to pointed. She had known it when Riya, in their last video call, had said nothing at all about the wedding and simply looked at her for a long moment before Anaya had filled the silence with something practical.
She had delayed coming home for two years. Not because of NeuraVive .... though the expansion had been real, the funding round had been real, the work had been genuinely demanding. That had been true. It had also been convenient.
The real reason was simpler and considerably less presentable.
She still loved him.
That was the problem. Not the old hurt .... she had found a way to live alongside that. The rejection at twenty had broken something in her that she had repaired quietly and alone, in London, completing her Masters and then building NeuraVive with Anaya from the ground up .... a rented office, two laptops, a company that now ran itself in three countries. She had poured herself into the work and the work had held her. That was honest.
What was also honest: at no point in seven years had anyone come close to making her forget him. The men who had approached her .... and they had .... she had dismissed so automatically, so completely, that Anaya had once asked if she was even looking, and Aarohi had said, with more honesty than she usually offered on the subject: I am not.
Anaya had gone quiet.
Is it still him? she had asked finally.
Aarohi had looked out the window for a moment. It has only ever been him. And it is not going to be anyone else.
Even though....
Even though. She had not needed to hear the end of the sentence. He doesn't feel the same. I know that. It doesn't change what I feel. I am just not going to spend my life pretending I can choose someone else. It is only him. It will only ever be him.
Anaya had not argued. Riya, on the video call that same evening, had gone quiet first and then cried a little and then composed herself and said: you are the most stubborn person I have ever loved. Which was probably accurate.
So that was the truth of it. She was coming back because there was no more delaying, because her brother was getting married, because the woman marrying him was her best friend, and because at some point the life she was building had to be built here .... in this city, close to these people .... regardless of who else was here.
Regardless.
The car turned through the gates.
The farmhouse in the evening was exactly as she remembered it.
Warm and sprawling and familiar, the kind of house that had absorbed decades of three families and held them without complaint. The courtyard lit with the early evening light. The smell of cooking from the kitchen and something flowering near the far wall. The sound of Harivadan laughing from somewhere inside .... a big sound, unchanged by thirty years.
She stepped out of the car.
And saw him.
It was not dramatic. He was not standing alone in a shaft of light. He was across the courtyard, near the far end, standing with Kabir and Kunal, a glass of chai in his hand, listening to something being said. He had not seen her yet.
But she had seen him .... the way she always saw him first, always, without trying .... and for one unguarded second before she could arrange herself properly, she felt every single year of the last seven press against the inside of her chest all at once.
Then she breathed in. Feet on the floor. Shoulders down.
Kamini was already moving toward her.
Beside her, Anaya had gone very still.
Not from the sight of Devansh .... she did not know Devansh by sight, had only photographs and descriptions and seven years of Aarohi's careful non-descriptions. She had gone still because of the farmhouse. Because she was standing inside the gates of the place Aarohi had told her about in a hundred conversations and a hundred video calls, the place she had described with the warmth of someone who had loved somewhere deeply and lost access to it, and it was exactly and nothing like what she had imagined and she was absorbing all of it at once.
She stood beside Aarohi and looked at the courtyard and the mango trees and the lights already beginning to come on at the edges of the veranda, and she said nothing, because there was nothing adequate to say.
What Aarohi did not know .... what she could not have known .... was that across the courtyard, the hand holding the chai glass had gone very slightly still.
Devansh had known she was coming. He had known for weeks. He had told himself, with the discipline he had built his entire adult life around, that it did not matter. That he had managed seven years and he could manage a wedding season. That he was thirty seconds away from a conversation with Kabir and Kunal about something entirely unrelated and he was going to stay in that conversation.
And then the car had come through the gates and she had stepped out and he had looked, before he could stop himself, and the discipline he had spent seven years constructing had done something unhelpful and temporary.
He kept his face exactly as it had been.
He was very good at that.
"Aaru beta." Kamini's arms came around her before she had fully oriented herself, and Aarohi pressed her face into her grandmother's shoulder and breathed in .... rose, familiar warmth, the smell of this house carried on a person .... and the thing in her chest loosened. Just slightly. Enough.
"Dadi."
"Let me look at you." Kamini pulled back and held her face in her palms and looked at her with the particular attention of someone cataloguing everything they had missed. Her expression shifted through several things before settling on something that was mostly affection and only slightly reproach. "Thin."
"You always say that."
"Because it is always true."
She pressed a kiss to Aarohi's forehead .... firm, certain, the kiss of someone who had been waiting to do it for seven years .... and then looked past her at Anaya.
Her eyes went warm in the way they went warm for people she was deciding to love.
"And this is our Anu." She said it with the certainty of someone who had heard this name on video calls for years and had simply been waiting to attach it to a face. She opened her arms. "Come here, beta."
Anaya, who was not a person who cried easily, stood very still for a moment. Then she stepped forward and was thoroughly embraced by a small Gujarati grandmother who held on with the conviction of someone who had already decided.
"Dadi," she said, slightly muffled.
"You look thin also."
"We eat very well...."
"In London." Kamini said London with the inflection she had always used for it .... a perfectly acceptable place to build a company and a completely unacceptable place to actually live. "Come. Both of you. Inside."
Pallavi was at the edge of the courtyard, having come from the direction of the kitchen. She held Aarohi's face in her palms without speaking for a long moment .... her eyes doing what they always did, reading the things her daughter would not say aloud. Whatever she found there she kept to herself. She kissed her forehead and then pulled her in properly, the way mothers hold daughters they have been missing for a very long time.
"Maa," Aarohi said, quietly.
"I know," Pallavi said. Just that.
When she released her she turned to Anaya with the warmth of a woman who had been hearing about this person for years and had long since made up her mind.
"Anu beta." She took her face in her hands the same way .... both palms, the full attention. "Finally. You are finally here."
Anaya's expression did the thing it did when something reached her before she had prepared her defences. A brief, helpless softening. "Thank you, Maa."
"Don't thank me. This is your home now too. You understand?" She looked at her steadily, making sure the words landed. "Your home."
Anaya nodded. Once. Her eyes were bright.
"Good." Pallavi kissed her forehead as naturally as she had kissed Aarohi's, without ceremony, without distinction. "Come. There is chai."
Mahesh was in the inner courtyard with Raghav and Manan. He stood as Aarohi approached and for a moment he simply looked at her .... his daughter, back after seven years, standing in the courtyard of the farmhouse where she had grown up .... and something moved through his face that he did not quite manage to conceal before he pulled her in.
He held on longer than usual.
Aarohi felt it .... the emotion of a father who does not express things easily and therefore expresses them entirely in moments like this .... and pressed her face against his shoulder and breathed in and told herself very firmly that she was not going to cry in the first five minutes.
"Papa," she said.
"Beta." His voice was steadier than his arms. "You are home."
Two words. The simplest possible words. They landed somewhere deep and she held them there.
When he finally released her his eyes were slightly bright and he looked away briefly at something across the courtyard with the determination of a man who had decided that no one was going to comment on this.
No one commented.
Dhiraj was sitting near the old stone bench at the edge of the courtyard .... the one he had sat on at every gathering for as long as anyone could remember. He watched her come toward him with the expression of a man who had been waiting patiently for something he was owed.
"Dadu." She crouched in front of him and took his hands in both of hers.
"There she is." His voice was rough with age and something else underneath it. He looked at her face for a long moment .... really looked, the way he always looked at her, as if he was reading something important. "There is my Aaru."
His large weathered hands came up and held her face briefly, and his eyes went very bright, and Aarohi felt her own throat tighten.
"Don't stay away so long again," he said. It was not a request.
"I won't, Dadu."
"Good." He patted her cheek once, firmly, the way he had when she was small. "Now let the others have their turn. You will sit with me before dinner."
"Yes, Dadu."
He released her. Then his eyes moved to Anaya, who was standing a few feet behind Aarohi, and something in his expression shifted into the warmth of a patriarch extending his world.
"And who is this."
"Anaya, Dadu. My .... she is my best friend and my business partner. She built NeuraVive with me."
Dhiraj looked at Anaya for a long moment with the specific attention he gave most things. Then he nodded .... once, the kind of nod that meant something. "Come here, beta."
Anaya came forward and took his hands and Dhiraj held them briefly and looked at her and said: "Aarohi spoke about you. Every time her mother called she would mention you." A pause. "You took care of her in London."
It was not a question.
"I tried to," Anaya said.
"Good." He released her hands. "Then you are ours too."
Harivadan was near the doorway, watching her come with the expression of a man who was not going to pretend he had not been waiting.
"Aaru beta." His arms opened and she stepped into them without hesitation. He was a big man, had always been a big man, and the hug was the kind that made you feel nothing could reach you. He held on for a long moment, one hand patting her back steadily, unhurriedly. "Good. You are here. Now this house is complete."
She laughed softly against his shoulder. "I missed you, Dadu."
"Of course you did." He released her and looked at her face with bright eyes. "No more London for too long. You understand me?"
"Yes, Dadu."
He looked past her at Anaya and opened his arms again with the same instinctive generosity. "And this one. Come."
Anaya stepped forward, slightly surprised, and was embraced by a large Gujarati grandfather she had met approximately four minutes ago, and something about it .... the completeness of the welcome, the absence of any reservation .... made her press her face briefly into his shoulder.
"You are welcome here," Harivadan said, simply. "Always."
Leela was beside him. She took Aarohi's face in her hands the moment Harivadan released her .... no waiting, no ceremony.
"My Aaru." She kissed both her cheeks. "So beautiful. Seven years and still exactly you." She looked at her for a long moment. "You will sit with me after dinner. I have things to tell you."
"Yes, Dadi."
Then Leela turned to Anaya with the same unhesitating warmth and took her face in her hands and looked at her carefully, the way she looked at things she was deciding about.
"So this is the one who kept our Aaru company," she said.
"Yes, Dadi," Anaya said, trying out the word.
Leela smiled .... the real one, the one that reached her eyes completely. "Good girl," she said. "You are very welcome here. This family does not have enough women with sense."
From somewhere nearby, Harivadan made a sound of protest.
Leela ignored him entirely.
Raghav took Aarohi's hands with the directness he had always had. "You look well, beta."
"Thank you, Papa."
He held her hands for a moment .... a beat longer than a greeting required .... and in his eyes was something she could not fully read. Not quite knowing. Not quite wondering. Something in between, something that had been sitting there for a long time.
"Good to have you back," he said. Simply. Meaning it completely.
Then Sarla appeared and that was the end of any restraint.
Sarla closed the distance between them with the decisive energy of a woman who had been waiting for this and was not going to spend one more unnecessary second not doing it. She pulled Aarohi in with the warmth of a woman who had loved this girl since she was seventeen years old and had never been subtle about it.
"My Aaru," she said. Simply. The same way she said most important things .... simply, completely, without decoration.
Aarohi's arms went around her and she felt, unexpectedly and entirely, the comfort of being held by someone who had always looked at her like she belonged.
When Sarla released her she held her at arm's length and looked at her face with eyes that were bright and unashamed. "Beautiful," she said. "You were always beautiful." Then she looked past her at Anaya and her expression shifted into something that was exactly the same warmth, no distinction, no gradation.
She went still for a moment.
Not with hesitation .... with the stillness of someone who is feeling something larger than they had prepared for. She had heard about this girl for seven years. Not always directly .... at first it had been Aarohi mentioning her in passing, the name appearing in conversations the way names appeared when someone had become essential. Anaya and I are working late. Anaya found us a better office. Anaya thinks we should expand. And then three years later .... four years ago now .... the video calls had started including her. Anaya sitting beside Aarohi on the screen, becoming a face to go with the name, becoming a voice, becoming someone Sarla had started to look forward to seeing on those calls.
She had formed a picture of her over those years. A picture that had become quietly important to her in the way that the people who held her children together became important.
She had not prepared for how it would feel to see her in person.
Anaya was standing a little behind Aarohi, taking in the courtyard, and she looked up when she felt Sarla's attention and met her eyes and something in Sarla's chest simply settled .... the way things settled when they arrived where they were supposed to be.
She crossed the distance.
She did not say anything at first. She took Anaya's face in both her palms .... the same way she had taken Aarohi's face, no distinction, no gradation .... and looked at her the way she looked at things she loved.
Anaya stood very still.
"Seven years," Sarla said softly. "Seven years you were with her in London. When none of us could be." Her voice was steady but held something underneath it .... the emotion of a mother who had spent seven years knowing her daughter was far away and had taken comfort in knowing this person was there. "You kept her company. You built things with her. You made sure she was not alone." A pause. "I could not be there. I wanted to be there and I could not be." Her eyes were very bright. "You were there. For all of it."
Anaya opened her mouth and found nothing came out.
"I have wanted to say thank you to you for seven years," Sarla said. "So. Thank you."
"You don't have to...."
"I know I don't have to." Sarla's thumbs moved gently against her cheeks. "I want to." She looked at her for a long moment .... this girl, this person who had been her Aaru's constant for seven years, who had shown up on video calls four years ago and become a face and a voice and a presence that the whole family had quietly come to look forward to.
Then she said it.
She said it the way she said everything that was true .... simply, without ceremony, without buildup. Just the plain honest fact of it.
"Raghav and I never had a daughter." Her voice was steady. "I always wanted one. When Dev was small and then when Yash came .... I used to think, someday there will be daughters in this house. Daughters who are mine the way sons are mine." She paused. "I have Aaru and Riyu. I have had them since they were child and they have always been mine .... mine and Pallavi's and Nandini's, the way all three of you girls are all three of ours." Her expression held the warmth of someone saying a thing that had been true for a long time. She looked at Anaya steadily. "And now I have you."
Anaya was very still.
"You are ours," Sarla said. Not a question. Not an offer. A statement of something that had already been decided, the way Sarla decided everything .... completely and without the possibility of revision. "Raghav's and mine. Not like a guest. Not like a friend's child who visits." She glanced briefly toward Raghav .... the quick certain glance of a wife who knows her husband agrees before she has checked .... and then back. "Our daughter. You stay where Aaru stays. You come when she comes. This house is yours the way it is hers."
A pause. Something warm and slightly amused entered her expression.
"And Dev and Yash are your brothers." Firmly. "Whether they are prepared for it or not."
Anaya made a sound that was almost a laugh and almost something else entirely.
"Maa...." she started, and her voice broke slightly on the word .... the break of someone who had not planned to use that word and had not prepared for what it would do to her when it came out.
Sarla pulled her in.
She held on the way she held on to things she loved .... completely, without reservation, with the conviction of a woman who did not do things by halves. Anaya's arms came around her and she pressed her face into Sarla's shoulder and the farmhouse sounds continued around them and the evening was warm and nobody commented because nobody needed to.
When Sarla finally released her she wiped Anaya's cheeks with her thumbs .... matter-of-fact, unhurried, the way you wiped the tears of someone who was yours .... and said: "Now. No more crying. There is food and you are thin and I did not spend all day in the kitchen for you to stand here crying."
Anaya laughed. Properly, fully, the laugh of someone who had been unexpectedly undone and was finding their way back.
"Yes, Maa," she said.
And the word came out completely this time. No break. No hesitation. Just the word, simple and entirely true, landing like something that had always been waiting to be said aloud.
Raghav, who had waited with the patience of a man who understood the order of things, stepped forward while Sarla was still looking at Anaya.
He pulled Aarohi in the way a father pulled a daughter he had been missing .... properly, completely .... and she felt his exhale against the top of her head. Relief and warmth and the emotion of a man who did not say things easily.
"Beta," he said. One word. The same word her own father had used, in the same tone, and it landed exactly the same way.
"Papa," she said back.
When he released her his eyes were bright and he cleared his throat once. Then he looked at Anaya and took her hands in both of his. "And our Anu. Both of you .... this house is yours. You know that."
Manan opened his arms when Aarohi reached him .... without preamble, without waiting.
"Aaru beta." His voice was warm and unhurried. "Seven years is too long."
"I know, Papa."
He held her for a moment and then released her and looked at her face with the steady eyes she had always trusted. "You look like yourself," he said. "That is the most important thing."
She understood what he meant. He had always been able to say things simply and land them exactly where they were aimed.
He turned to Anaya then, without pause, without any distinction between her and the girls he had watched grow up. "Anu beta. Come here."
Anaya stepped forward and Nandini appeared from the direction of the kitchen, wiping her hands, and crossed the courtyard with the warmth of a woman who had been waiting to do this in person for a long time.
She hugged Aarohi first .... proper, complete .... and then turned to Anaya and held her face with the same tender attention the others had.
"Anu beta." Her voice was soft. "Look at you. Every time I saw you on those video calls I thought .... this one is ours. This one belongs here the same as Riya and Aaru." She kissed her forehead. "You are home. This is home for you. Remember that."
Anaya stood very still for a moment. Her eyes were bright.
"Yes, Maa," she said. And meant it.
Kunal crossed the courtyard toward Aarohi .... unhurried, the way he moved through everything .... and pulled her into the kind of hug that lasted long enough to mean something.
"How are you, Aaru?" he asked.
"I am fine, Bhai," she said.
His exhale was small and deliberate. She had missed him more than she had let herself know.
"Riyu has declared the kitchen a disaster zone."
"She says that every time."
"And yet."
"That's love, Bhai."
He looked at her for a moment with the look .... the Kunal look, steady and reading .... and then let it go the way he always let things go when he understood she was managing and did not need him to ask.
Kabir appeared from the direction of the veranda with the same wide easy energy she remembered .... warm, uncomplicated, the hug entirely brotherly.
"Aaru." He held her at arm's length and grinned. "Seven years in London and you came back looking like this. Unfair."
"You look exactly the same."
"I am choosing to take that as a compliment."
"It wasn't one."
He laughed .... the big Kabir laugh that filled whatever space it was in .... and she laughed with him and something in her shoulders came down another notch. He released her and looked at Anaya with the assessment of someone who had heard about a person for years and was now forming a real opinion.
"So you're Anu," he said.
"So you're Kabir," Anaya said.
He grinned. "I like her," he said, to Aarohi. Then, to Anaya: "Welcome to the chaos. It only gets louder."
"I've been warned," Anaya said.
"Not adequately," Kabir said, and walked back toward the courtyard.
And then .... because there was no more delaying it .... she looked up.
Devansh was standing a few feet away.
He had not approached while she was with the others. He had waited .... the way she remembered he always waited, with the patience of someone who never pushed and never withdrew .... and now they were simply looking at each other across a few feet of courtyard with the weight of seven years sitting quietly between them.
He crossed the distance.
"Aarohi." His voice was the same. She had wondered sometimes whether she had distorted it in memory. She had not.
"Dev."
They stood there for a moment .... just a moment, just long enough to be noticed .... neither of them moving. Not hostile. Not cold. Just the stillness of two people who had too much history to navigate the next three seconds easily and not enough agreement on what that history meant to do it gracefully.
She was aware, without looking, that the courtyard had not stopped. That conversations were continuing. That at least three pairs of eyes had noticed the pause.
Devansh noticed it too. She could tell by the way his shoulders shifted, barely, and he stepped forward.
The hug was brief. His hand came to her back .... flat, careful .... and she brought her arms up and it lasted exactly the number of seconds that made it normal. Not warm. Not cold. The hug of two people performing something familiar for an audience while being precisely aware of every centimetre of distance between them.
She stepped back first.
"Good journey?" he asked.
"Long," she said.
"London always is."
"Yes."
A beat. Someone across the courtyard called something. The evening moved around them and they stepped apart naturally, the way two people do when a moment has been managed and concluded.
She turned toward the house.
Her heart was doing the thing she had always told it not to do and she told it not to again, firmly, and went to find Riya.
Riya was in the kitchen, as promised, in a mild argument with Nandini about the state of something in a pot. She turned at the sound of Aarohi's voice and abandoned the argument entirely.
This hug was different from every other hug. This one came from someone who knew exactly what it had cost her to be here.
"You're here," Riya said.
"Obviously."
"Aaru." She pulled back and looked at her. "You're actually here."
"Stop making it sound like a miracle."
"It's a little bit a miracle."
"The subzi," Nandini said from the stove.
"Maa, one minute...."
"The subzi does not have one minute...."
"It is deepening in flavour...."
Aarohi stood in the kitchen doorway and laughed .... properly, the first time since London .... and something in the farmhouse seemed to settle around the sound, as if it had been waiting for exactly that.
The evening moved the way evenings here always moved.
Unhurried. Layered. Three families drifting between rooms with the ease of people who had been doing this for decades. The kitchen producing food in waves. Leela and Kamini in their corner. Harivadan telling someone something with his characteristic conviction.
Anaya moved through it with the quality of someone experiencing something they had heard described and are finding both familiar and entirely new. She was absorbing everything .... the sounds, the warmth, the way people moved in and around each other without friction. Once, near the courtyard, Aarohi caught her face in an unguarded moment and saw in it something she recognised .... the expression of a person who has just understood what they have been missing.
She looked away before Anaya could catch her looking.
She was doing well.
She was fine.
Dinner was at the long table .... all three families, both generations, the organised warmth of a meal that this farmhouse had hosted a thousand times. Aarohi between Anaya and Riya, across from Pallavi, the comfortable noise of everyone settling.
Normal. Warm. Home.
Three seats down on the other side of the table Devansh was talking to Kabir, unhurried, the quality of a man who never performed conversation. She was not watching him. She was aware of him the way she was always aware of him, which was different from watching and considerably harder to manage.
Riya pressed her knee against hers under the table.
Aarohi pressed back. I know. I'm fine.
The dinner continued. Both Dadus told a story simultaneously from opposite ends of the table about the same incident from forty years ago with completely different details. Someone's chai spilled and was absorbed by the tablecloth and apologised over and forgiven in approximately fifteen seconds. The food was very good.
And at the end of the meal, when the table was loosening and the elders were leaning back and tea was being suggested, she excused herself and went to find air.
The back veranda was exactly as it had always been.
The same worn railing. The same courtyard below, the lights in the mango trees. The same night dark, warm and heavy and familiar.
She stood with her hands on the railing and breathed in slowly and let the farmhouse sounds drift warm behind her.
She heard the third board creak.
She did not turn around.
"You don't have to be here," she said.
A pause. Then: "Neither do you."
His voice was the same. Quiet and deliberate, the kind that said only what it meant.
"Crowded in there," she said.
"It always is."
She was aware of him standing near the door, not approaching and not leaving.
"You've been in London," he said.
"Seven years."
"I know."
Of course he knew. They moved in the same circles .... had always moved in the same circles. She had known things about his life from a distance. The company rebuilt from nothing. What Raghav's losses had cost and what had come from it. She had followed it the way you followed news about something that concerned you deeply, from a remove that let you pretend it did not.
"Dev," she said.
And then she stopped. Because she had not planned what came after that and she was not going to start a sentence she did not know how to finish.
He waited. He was good at waiting. He had always been good at waiting.
"I came for Bhai," she said finally. "And for Riya. That is why I am here."
"I know," he said. "I'm glad you came."
The simplicity of it hit her somewhere she had not prepared for. She breathed in once, steadied herself, kept her eyes on the garden.
"I should go back in," she said.
"Probably."
She did not move immediately. Neither did he.
Below, the night was warm and still, and the lights between the trees moved gently in a wind that had just arrived, and Aarohi stood at the railing of the veranda she had grown up on and let herself be here .... in this difficulty, which was also, somewhere underneath everything, the only place she had ever wanted to be.
She pushed off from the railing.
"Goodnight," she said, without looking at him.
"Goodnight, Aaru."
She walked back through the door.
She did not let herself feel what his saying her name had done until she was down the hallway and the sound of it was safely behind her.
Thanks for reading Chapter 1! 🖤 The farmhouse dinner .... where it all begins again. What was your first impression of Aarohi and Devansh together? Don't forget to vote if you enjoyed this one .... it means the world! ⭐ .... Fanatic Storyteller 🌿
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