She didn't wear red on her wedding day.

The lehenga had been red, yes—picked by her mother, approved by her—but Aanya remembered feeling like it didn't belong to her. Like it belonged to an idea of her, a version someone else had written.

She'd smiled for the photos. Lowered her eyes when they told her to touch the elders' feet. Posed with folded hands beside a man she barely knew.

A man who had been handed to her the way people hand over a gift someone didn't ask for, wrapped too tightly to return.

Arjun.

That was his name.

He didn't speak much. Didn't protest. Didn't reach for her. But he was kind in the way people often forget to be. Not performatively—but steadily. Quietly. He didn't claim her. He simply stood beside her.

Aanya didn't know if that was better or worse.

In the beginning, she told herself it would never work. That love could not be arranged, that compatibility couldn't be wrapped in ritual. She convinced herself she'd always carry the ache of having been told rather than asked.

But what she didn't realize—what she would only come to understand much later—was that some of the most lasting loves don't enter like storms. They arrive like morning light. Slow. Gentle. Persistent.

And sometimes, the man you never chose...

Becomes the only one you ever would.