She had a system.
A drawer in her mind where she filed the things she could not afford to feel. It had worked, mostly, for years. And then Shayaan Malik walked into her office in Dubai and made himself impossible to file.
Tasheen Ahmed is brilliant at her job, careful with her heart, and determined never to make the same mistake twice. She has loved before. She knows exactly what it costs.
Shayaan is patient in a way that unsettles her. Steady in the moments that matter. He shows up when no one asks him to. He waits. He listens. And before either of them realise it, he becomes part of the life she spent years building without him.
Across the glittering offices of Dubai, the quiet streets of London, and the chaos of Mumbai, two people find themselves closer to something neither is ready to name. But Tasheen has a past she has never fully set down. Shayaan has a truth he waits too long to tell. And when everything breaks open, the distance between them becomes the most honest thing either of them has ever had to sit with.
There is chai that goes cold because neither of them wants to be the one to leave.
There is a gold bracelet with four words hidden on the inside.
There is a prayer answered in a shape no one thought to ask for.