The Bride He Never Wanted

# **The Promise We Couldn't Keep**

When Arnold Joseph was a child, he knew exactly who he wanted to marry.

Angelina.

His childhood best friend.

The girl he followed everywhere, teased endlessly, protected fiercely, and secretly loved long before he even understood what love was.

Under an old guava tree, they made a promise.

*"When we grow up, we'll marry each other."*

And Arnold believed her.

As they grew older, he never stopped choosing her.

He tried to make her notice him. He teased her, stayed beside her, protected her, remembered every little thing about her, and waited for the day she would finally look at him the way he looked at her.

But Angelina never did.

To her, Arnold was her best friend.

Her safe place.

Her childhood companion.

Nothing more.

Even when he finally gathered the courage to hope for something beyond friendship, Angelina couldn't give him the answer he wanted.

And eventually, Arnold gave up.

He fell in love with Priya.

For the first time, he found someone who chose him back.

Someone who loved him deliberately.

Someone who wanted the future he had once imagined with Angelina.

But just when Arnold finally found happiness, his family forced him into the one marriage he never wanted.

With Angelina.

The girl he had spent his entire childhood trying to win.

The girl who had once promised to marry him.

And the girl who had never realized how deeply he had loved her.

For Angelina, the marriage becomes the fulfillment of a childhood dream.

For Arnold, it becomes a cruel reminder of everything he once wanted but could never have.

Yet living together changes things.

The boy who once chased her begins to pull away.

The girl who never saw his love begins to see it everywhere.

In his small gestures.

In his patience.

In the way he remembers things she doesn't even remember telling him.

And slowly...

Angelina falls in love with him.

Only this time, Arnold knows exactly what it feels like to be wanted by her.

And that's whe