The dupatta is red.

That's the first thing I notice — which is strange, because there are a hundred other things I should be noticing right now. The room, for instance. I don't recognise it. The window I'm standing at, looking out at a Mumbai skyline that's just beginning to turn gold. My own hands, which will not stop shaking no matter how many times I press them flat against my thighs.

But the dupatta is red, and Amma always said red meant something, so I keep noticing it.

Three months ago, I was a food blogger with forty-two thousand followers and a GPS that couldn't find a chai stall. I stress-cooked at 2am and argued in three languages and called my mother every day and knew exactly what my life looked like.

I had no idea what was coming.

I had no idea about him.

The door opens.

I don't turn around. I don't need to — I know the sound of him by now. The particular quiet he carries, like the air decides to rearrange itself when he enters a room. Three months of that sound and it still does something to my heartbeat that I refuse to examine too closely.

"You're still here."

His voice. Flat. Direct. Aryan Malhotra has never once in his life wasted a word.

I look at my hands. They've finally stopped shaking.

"You didn't give me a choice," I say.

A pause. The longest kind — the kind he uses when he has something to say and is deciding whether to say it.

Then, quiet enough that I almost miss it:

"I'm giving you one now."

I turn around.

And the city turns gold behind me, and the dupatta is red, and three months ago I was just a girl looking for chai —

— and now I'm here.

Still here.

•

Three months earlier....