“You’re the reason I noticed it,” I say. Her brows pull together faintly. “Not because you created it,” I add quickly. “It was already there.” I reach up, tucking a strand of her hair behind her ear. “But you didn’t let me ignore it.” Her gaze softens. “You don’t let me…stay surface-level,” I continue. “You push without pushing. You say things without dressing them up. You make me stop and actually look at what’s going on in my own head.” She huffs a small breath.
“That sounds exhausting.”
“It is.” That makes her smile. “But it’s also…” I pause, searching for the right word. “…real. I’ve had easy before,” I say, softer now. “People who didn’t question me. Who went along with whatever I said. Who didn’t challenge anything.”
Her expression shifts slightly. “That gets boring,” I add.
“And I’m not boring?” she asks, one brow lifting.
I grin faintly. “You’re the opposite of boring.”
“That’s not always a compliment.”
“It is to me.”
She studies me for a second. “You could have chosen easy,” she says.
There’s something under that. Something she’s not fully saying. But I hear it anyway. I could have chosen someone simpler. Less complicated. Less…her.
I smile warmly at her, my heart thudding against my ribs, “Ishika, It’s very easy to like you, Sunshine.” That part comes without hesitation. Her breath slows slightly. “It feels like I don’t have to pretend I have everything figured out,” I say finally when she doesn’t respond, just looks at me as if trying to decipher if I am lying or not. Her eyes flicker. “It feels like I can say something that doesn’t make sense yet—and you won’t try to fix it or dismiss it.”
My fingers brush against her cheek lightly. “It feels like I’m not the only one holding everything together.” She goes very still at that. “And it feels like…” I hesitate for just a second, then let the words come anyway, “…I don’t have to be alone in my own head all the time.”
She looks at me like she’s trying to understand something bigger than the words themselves. “You’re not,” she says softly, cupping my cheeks.
“I never thought…” I whisper against her forehead, “I would find being with someone so exhilarating and…effortless.” I let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding.
She scoffs, “I don’t think you understand how much effort you put into this…into us.”
“Maybe you see it that way…but to me it comes out like breathing. I never get tired from anything I do for you and for me…it screams things.” I smile. Her eyes soften and she rises up to place a kiss on my eyes as they flutter close.
“And you?” I ask quietly. “Where do I fit in for you?”
She doesn’t answer immediately. Of course she doesn’t. Ishika never rushes something like that. Her fingers trace lightly against my shirt, absent, thoughtful. “You’re…” she starts, then stops. She exhales softly. “You’re the first person who didn’t feel temporary. And that scares me,” she adds.
I smile faintly. “I know.”
“But it also…” she hesitates again, then looks up at me, “…feels right.”Right.I lean down slightly, pressing a soft kiss to her forehead. She melts into me just a little more. And for a moment—we don’t talk. We don’t need to. Her hand stays over my heart. Mine stays wrapped around her. And whatever this is—this unexpected thing we’ve built—it doesn’t feel like a gap anymore.
It feels like something filling it.
CHAPTER 47
ISHIKA
I should have known better than to let him into my workspace unsupervised. Not because he would do anything intentionally wrong. But because Aryan Khanna has a very specific talent for turning even the most structured, orderly environments into something…unpredictable.
And today, apparently, slightly dangerous. “Don’t touch that,” I say without looking up, flipping through the vendor samples spread across the table. “It’s not installed yet.”
“I didn’t touch anything.”
“You’re standing too close to it.”
“That is not a crime.”
“It should be.” I hear his quiet laugh behind me, warm and entirely unbothered by my tone. I don’t turn. I’ve learned that looking at him too often during work hours leads to…distractions I cannot afford.
We’re past design now. Past revisions. Past endless back-and-forth over finishes and textures. Execution has begun. Which means chaos, in a more organized form. Workers moving in and out. Measurements being rechecked. Fixtures being aligned. My attention is needed everywhere at once.
