A beat of me is stubborn. “Why?” I ask.
He smiles that coy half smile he has. “Just pick, Poorvi.”
The room seems to tilt a bit toward him. Maybe it’s the way he asks; not demanding, not coercive, just inviting. I huff—demonstrably, theatrically—and reach out. His hands aren’t cold at all. When I choose—the right-hand chit—he snatches it away before my fingers have fully closed around it.
“It’s not for you to read,” he teases, but there’s a quick, possessive gleam in his eyes that has nothing to do with mischief. He presses my hand to his lips and kisses my knuckles, careful and reverent. Then he grins, a foxish, utterly vulnerable-to-him grin. “Close your eyes. No peeking.”
He guides me to the doorway, and for a moment I sense a ridiculous, childish thrill: he’s creating suspense for me as if I’m a child at a fair. I hate that it makes me feel like smiling even when I fight it.
“Ready?” he asks, his breath warm in my ear.
“Yes.” My voice comes out small.
He guides me with a hand at my elbow, gentle, the movement deliberate and careful. I trust him entirely in matters small and large. That trust is still a bright, trembling thing in me; I cradle it, worried I might crush it if I fuss too roughly.
He leads me through a corridor that smells faintly of sandalwood and papers. We pause at the threshold and his fingers dance in my palm for one heartbeat. “No peeking,” he reminds, and the mischief in his voice is a soft drumbeat that thrills me.
I stand in the dark for a moment, my lashes resting against my cheeks. The world narrows to his steady chest near my back, the quiet air in my lungs, and the tiny flutter of anxiety in my belly that translates into a ridiculous, hopeful kind of giddiness.
Then he draws me inside.
When I open my eyes, I’m breathing too quickly — not from exertion but from the sudden, exquisite impossibility of what I see. The room is a private library carved out of a wide study, the walls lined floor to ceiling with books. The light is soft, warm, amber-glow, and an armchair sits by the window that frames the palace pond like a living painting. A low rug cushions the floor. Small cushions are scattered as if people had just gotten up a moment ago. There are two reading lamps, shelves labeled in neat little script, and—my breath catches—the very books I’vebeen reaching for for weeks: psychology texts arranged within arm’s reach, and alongside them, a small selection of literary fiction I’d whispered about in passing.
My entire body loosens and tightens at once. Someone has done this. Someone has listened. Someone has given my scattered, battered library of broken hopes a home.
He watches me with an expression that has surrendered the last of his theatrical mischief. “I shifted all the psychology books you ordered,” he says quietly, and his voice trembles a little with something like pride. “And most of the literary fiction, too. I didn’t want you spending your time trying to walk in the old wing.”
I am stunned into silence. For a moment my mouth cannot make the shape of thank you. My chest is a balloon on the verge of bursting with things I haven’t learned to say cleanly. The space between us is warm and full and terribly intimate.
It is absurdly small, and yet it frees the part of me that needed permission to breathe.
“You did this?” I ask, not sure I’m asking or telling the room I’m in.
He nods, stepping closer until his hand skims the small of my back. “I did,” he says. “I thought it might be easier if the books were here. If the place you needed was nearer. If being with knowledge could feel like safety and not a trap.” He watches me carefully. “But I also thought—later—if you feel brave, we could go together to the old library. If you want to.
“If not, we can make this one our little corner.” His smile is a fragile, secretive thing that makes my eyes sting.
I haven’t planned this—none of my life has made room for gestures like this. He did not move the whole library (thank god for smaller pragmatic reasonableness), but he moved the books that mattered for me, into a room that belonged to us tonight. It feels like a bridge built across the thing I feared.
My throat is tight. “Vihaan… this is…” The words wobble before they settle. They are not enough. They never will be enough.
“What was in the other chit?” I ask quietly.
He goes to the table and, with the solemnity of someone opening a small gift, unfolds the little chit I’d chosen earlier and reveals his own secret.
He scratches his head like he’s flummoxed and a little sheepish. “I saw two solutions. One was to do what I just did—bring the books here, give you your own library so you didn’t have to face that dark corridor for now.” He watches me find a volume and run my thumb down its spine, the intimacy of it making me feel like a child again. “The second was to take you to the old library. To walk with you through it and replace your memory with a new one. To be there while you collect what you need and make good images to stack on top of the bad ones.”
My breath catches. The idea of the old library still tastes bitter on my tongue, but there is something braver about his offer now, about the patient courage it suggests—not erasing the hurt, but walking through it and making another story inside it.
He meets my eyes. The light there is steady, not fierce, and it makes something loosen in my chest. “But I think it’s good you chose this one,” he continues. “It may be too soon. You might not be ready. And maybe that would make you feel worse.” The giftisn’t just the room. It’s the choice he gives me without the weight of pressure. He’s built me a safe place, but he hasn’t taken away the power to step into the old, painful place when I feel ready. The offer is both a shield and a hand stretched into the dark.
My eyes sting and I turn away because I can’t let him see how much I’m trembling. “Vihaan,” I say, my voice thinner than I mean. I move through the rows, touching covers as if greeting old friends. Some of the titles I recognize from my notes; others are the literary ones I had promised myself I’d finally read when—when life allowed. The world feels like a soft, giving thing.
He comes up behind me and turns me gently to face him, his chin resting against the crown of my head in a small, intimate gesture. The warmth of him is steady and safe. “You don’t have to say anything,” he murmurs.
I press my forehead to his chest, listening to the steady beat of his heart. The steady rhythm convinces me of small, enormous futures—of nights like this, of being given things I need without always asking, of being allowed to take my time.
I can’t help the words that spool out of me, fragile and earnest. “Thank you,” I whisper.
