Prologue
"Why do you always behave like this? Like a monster?" she asked.
"Because I am a monster. Don't you remember you only called me a monster one day" he said
nonchalantly.
"But things have changed now. We are married. Stop pretending. I know you love me," she said, cupping his face.
"Why can't you put effort to amend things between us? Why?" she yelled
holding his collar.
"Because... because I don't deserve you," he said while looking at the floor.
"I am your wife and this fact can never change," she said while wiping her tears.
"You have no idea what I feel for you. It's not easy for me. You don't know anything," his voice was broken.
"Then tell me everything, I want to know everything," she said while holding his hands.
Distance cannot separate two hearts. Though they were living under the same roof, they were miles apart. A certain distance always prevailed between them and their hearts.
Swara smiled to herself thinking of the last few months. But her smile faltered when she remembered the last few minutes with him. Though she broke down crying, she would never give up. Her love for him strengthens her to fight against every difficult situation.
"I love you, Sanskar. In such a short span of time, you have given me the happiness which I craved for. Then why can't you accept you love me?" she spoke to herself.
Always appreciate the pain of love, because it will let you appreciate each other.
She looked for love everywhere, while he discarded love from everywhere. She saw meaning in fleeting glances and found hope in half-spoken words. He, on the other hand, built walls taller with every memory that hurt. Yet fate, uninvited and insistent, brought them to the same quiet corner of the world—where her search met his silence, and where, for the first time, he didn't walk away.
She looked for love everywhere; in bookstores, in train rides, in the pauses between songs. He discarded love from everywhere
shoving it out of memories, cutting it from the corners of conversations, avoiding it like fire that once burned him too deep.
They met, not in some grand twist of fate, but in the quietest of places: an interview. He noticed first. The way she held her documents if it might vanish, the way she avoided meeting eyes. He noticed, but not her smile, not at first. He noticed that she didn’t ask questions. Didn’t try to fill the silence. Didn’t make him explain the shadows in his eyes. So she stayed still in his storm. And where others would have tried to pull him out of his quiet, she simply sat with him in it.
She didn’t push love.
She brought her presence, her patience. She laughed softly when he didn’t. She stayed kind when he grew cold. She left space where others would have begged. At first, he mistook her gentleness for naivety. Thought she didn’t see the damage in him. But when she looked at him, she didn’t flinch—she saw and still stayed. She never asked him to be more. But in her calm, he became more. He started to speak, not all at once, just enough. He told her about the time he stopped believing in promises. She didn’t reply with advice—only offered her hand. In that hand, he found something terrifying: a softness that didn’t ask for anything in return. She made him love her not by trying to—but by showing him that love could exist without expectations, without pressure, without fear.
Just presence. Just warmth.
In time, his silence softened. And in her, he found the safest place he never thought he'd deserve. And they started believing in promises, unaware of the storm approaching to wreck their lives.
