Ek Baar Phir Se

Riddhima has spent years moving on from something that never really began.

Armaan was never hers, not in the way that that she wanted, at least. He was just a constant presence at the edges of her life, someone she saw in fragments, in years apart, in moments too small to hold meaning and yet impossible to forget.

So she let it go.

Or at least, she tried.

But when they meet again after nearly a decade, in a place where distance no longer exists to keep them apart, she's left wondering if some things were never meant to be left unfinished-

or if they were simply never given the chance to begin.

•••

Armaan learned early on that some things were not worth risking.

Not distractions. Not mistakes. Not the kind of choices that could cost him everything he had been working toward.

He was told-again and again-to stay focused. To be disciplined. To be nothing like his father.

And for the most part, he listened. But there are some things discipline doesn't account for.

Like the quiet, inconvenient awareness of someone who was never really his to notice. Someone who existed just out of reach, familiar, constant, and increasingly difficult to ignore.

Riddhima was never a possibility. At least, that's what he told himself.

And for years, that was enough.

Until it wasn't.