Stacy_cc
Some people live inside the lines. Some people are the lines.
Arhaan Malhotra has never lost control of anything in his life - not his father's empire, not his family's legacy of scalpels and silence, not himself. Heir to a dynasty where every Malhotra becomes a doctor, feared as much in boardrooms as in operating theatres, he is precision walking on two legs. Cold. Exacting. Possessive of everything he decides is his - and he has never wanted anything enough to decide that, until now.
Aanya Kapoor has never followed a line in her life. Paint under her nails, junk food in her bag, a half-finished canvas and a half-attended lecture - she believes rules are suggestions and hospitals are places where dreams go to be lectured at. She hates doctors with the specific, irrational fury of someone who has spent a lifetime being told to sit still, and she has been terrified of needles since before she can remember.
A reckless afternoon. A skidding car. A shattered forearm, two fractured legs - and the last doctor on earth she wanted looking down at her, informing her, in a voice with no room for argument, that she is now his patient.
She calls him a tyrant. He calls her a liability. Neither of them is wrong.
But somewhere between stolen street food smuggled past hospital security, tantrums thrown over injections, and a man who has never had to convince anyone of anything in his life slowly realizing he'd burn his own empire down to see her smile - a war turns into something neither of them ordered, and both of them are terrified to name.
This is the story of before the marriage. Before the world called them husband and wife. This is where it all began - with a crash, a cast, and a man who decided, quietly and completely, that she was already his.