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Sheikh Sheharyar is the guy who always has a joke ready—the one who never gives a straight answer, who meets the world with a smirk and a clever remark. He moves through life with a grin and a wisecrack, slipping past troubles with an easy charm, never letting anything linger too long.
When he fell off his bike, hitting the pavement hard enough to need four stitches, he still had the presence of mind to joke about the doctor’s terrible handwriting. When he burned his hand in the kitchen, he waved it off like it was nothing, laughing as he dunked it into a bowl of ice water. When he went abroad for culinary school, he didn’t fumble through homesickness or struggle to fit in—he charmed his way through it, blending in like he belonged everywhere. Because that’s who Sherry was. He belonged everywhere.
He was the guy who never got stuck, who never let things weigh too heavily on him. He had perfected the art of ease, of always staying one step ahead of the world before it could catch up to him.
But tonight, the world had caught up. Tonight, nothing felt easy.
Tonight, his hands shook. His heart pounded. His mind raced with a frantic kind of desperation he had never known before.
Because tonight, for the first time in his life, Sheikh Sheharyar was not just worried.
He was terrified.
His hands tightened around the handlebars, his knuckles white against the metal. The bike rumbled beneath him, but he barely felt it. The world was a blur of headlights and streetlamps, of honking cars and the distant hum of the city. None of it registered. All he could hear was the echo of his own voice—sharper than it had ever been, cutting through the air like a blade.
He had shouted at her.
Shouted at Rakshi.
The thought made his stomach churn, made something in his chest twist so violently it was hard to breathe. He couldn’t even remember the last time he had raised his voice like that, let alone at her.
But he hadn’t just shouted at her.
He had ignored her calls.
Had left her messages unread.
Had brushed past her like she wasn’t even there.
And when she had finally come to him, had stood right in front of him, trying to reach him, trying to help—he had pushed her away. So harshly, so cruelly, as if she hadn’t been the only thing keeping him tethered when everything else felt like it was falling apart.
And now, he was feeling the burn of it all.
Because he couldn’t reach his Rakshi again.
God, he missed her.
He missed the way her presence filled every space she stepped into—how even silence with her had never felt empty. He missed her voice, the soft lilt of it, the way it always cut through the noise in his head like a balm. He missed the quiet glances, the unspoken words, the way she looked at him like she saw him, truly saw him, in a way no one else ever had.
He missed her in a way that felt like a hollow ache in his chest, like a part of him had been ripped away and he was only just realizing how much he needed it to breathe.
And now, he was on the brink of losing the best thing in his life, and he didn’t know how to stop it.
Nothing else mattered.
Not the café. Not the customers. Not his stressed mother or his disappointed father or whatever mess he had been trying to handle.
Nothing mattered when he was losing her.
His heart slammed against his ribs as he took a sharp turn, pushing the bike faster, the wind biting against his skin. He didn’t care. All he knew was that he had to get to her.
Before it was too late.
His feet barely touched the ground as he cut the engine and slipped off the bike, his breath still uneven, his mind still racing. Rakshi’s house loomed ahead—bright, loud, alive. Every window was glowing, laughter spilling out into the quiet street. The warmth of it, the life of it, made something inside him twist.
He wasn’t part of that warmth. He wasn’t part of her world right now. He was an outsider, standing on the fringes, looking in.
As he moved toward the back entrance, a weight settled over his chest, pressing down heavier with every step. It wasn’t panic—not exactly. It was something deeper, something more suffocating. Like oil spread thin across a searing pan, shimmering, restless. The longer it sat there untouched, the hotter it became, the more unstable, the closer it came to the moment it would catch and burn. And every second he spent away from her, every step that kept him from reaching her, the heat rose.
And then he saw her.
Not her. But close enough to make his heart stop.
Zara stood by the door, adjusting the heavy dupatta over her shoulder, her gold bangles glinting under the backyard lights. She was dressed for the function, the shimmer of her outfit a stark contrast to the frantic mess Sherry felt like.
The sight of her sent a jolt through him, sharp and sudden. Because if Zara was ready, it meant the function was already in full swing. It meant time was slipping through his fingers faster than he had realized.
And for the first time, the weight in his chest didn’t just press down. It turned volatile.
The oil was moments away from catching fire.
He was running out of time.
Zara’s eyes widened the moment she spotted him, her bangles jingling as she took a hurried step forward. “Sherry?” she whispered, glancing over her shoulder toward the house. “Tumhara dimaag to thikane par hai? Iss waqt yaha kya kar rahe ho?”
Sherry opened his mouth, a joke at the tip of his tongue—something about crashing parties or how he couldn’t possibly miss out on all the mithai—but the words never came.
For the first time in his life, humor failed him.
So he just exhaled sharply and gave a wordless nod.
Zara’s expression flickered—first surprise, then something softer, something dangerously close to understanding. She didn’t waste another second. “Ab isse pehle koi tumhe dekh le,” she murmured, grabbing his wrist and pulling him toward the door. “Andar chalo.”
The moment he stepped inside, the house swallowed him whole.
It was alive—bathed in golden light, draped in garlands, brimming with sound and scent. The air was thick with the aroma of attar and freshly fried jalebis, sugar and spice weaving into something heady and almost suffocating. Somewhere down the hall, a dhol beat thrummed against the walls, laughter spilling from every corner.
He barely breathed.
Head low, movements careful, he followed Zara through the back corridors, past the chatter, past the clinking of plates and the rustling of embroidered dupattas. Every turn was a narrow escape, every passing shadow a threat. The house was too full, too bright—like even the walls could see him, like they knew he didn’t belong here right now.
But he kept moving.
He had to.
Zara stopped just outside a door at the end of the hallway. Rakshi’s door. She turned to him, arms crossed, expression unreadable. “ She huffed, shifting on her feet, her bangles clinking softly. “Shakal dekho apni. Kya haal banna rakha hai.”
Sherry didn’t argue.
She shook her head, exhaling sharply. “Ab sab tumhare haath me hai. Jo sab kuch itna bikhar chuka hai jaa kar use sameto.”
He swallowed hard, his pulse pounding, his chest too tight to breathe properly.
Zara turned slightly, half-checking over her shoulder, half-waiting for him to move. When he didn’t, she glanced back. “Tumhe pata bhi hai tum kya kahoge?”
His throat was dry. “Nahi.”
She muttered something under her breath, barely audible over the music drifting through the hallway. Then, just as she was about to step aside, she hesitated. Her voice softened. “Theek ho?”
A beat. A breath. This time, he couldn't help it.
“Lag raha hu?”
Something flickered across her face—something unreadable, too quick to catch. But she didn’t press, didn’t ask anything else. She just let out another sigh, stepped aside, and nodded toward the door.
“Tab jao, isse pehle ki bohot der ho jaaye.”
Sherry didn’t waste another second. He stepped in, the door clicking shut behind him, and the world inside shifted.
It was her room.
Sherry had never been in her room before.
It hit him the moment he stepped in—that quiet, startling realization that this was her space. Not her shop, not the streets where they argued, not the rooftop where they had found fleeting moments of peace. This was different. This was intimate. This was the place she woke up in, the place she retreated to when the world was too much, the place where she was simply Rakshi, without the weight of her shop, her family, or their tangled history pressing down on her.
And it smelled like her.
Not just her perfume—the subtle, familiar scent of citrus and sandalwood that had imprinted itself into his senses long ago—but something richer, warmer. The air was thick with sugar and saffron, cardamom and rose, the scent of warmth and home. It clung to the fabric of her curtains, soaked into the wooden shelves, settled into the very walls. The scent of her world, her craft, the very thing that had brought them together and torn them apart in equal measure.
For anyone meeting her for the first time, it would be impossible to believe that Rakshi owned a sweet shop. She was too sharp-tongued, too quick-witted, too fiercely independent. She met the world with a challenge in her eyes, stood with a defiance that made people think twice before crossing her.
She wasn’t the kind of person one would expect to sell sweetness for a living. No one could ever think that the girl who could cut through a conversation like a blade also spent her days folding sugar into dough, watching over boiling syrup with practiced ease, shaping sweetness into something tangible.
Naive, he had thought the same once too.
And yet, now that he was standing here, now that he had seen her—truly seen her—he couldn’t imagine anything more fitting.
Because Rakshi was like the sweets she made.
With a tough exterior, like the first crack of caramel before it melted on the tongue, she was layered, complex, never offering everything at once. She was stubborn like dough that needed to be kneaded, resilient like sugar that withstood the heat. But beneath all of it, beneath the fire and sharp edges, she was something soft, something warm, something that lingered long after it was gone.
Because Rakshi might have been sharp, but she had always been warm too. And maybe that was what made her sweets so unforgettable—what made her unforgettable. That contrast, that balance. That ability to be both things at once.
The room was bathed in warmth—not just from the pale yellow walls or the fairy lights casting a golden glow, but from something deeper, something inherently hers. It was the kind of space that felt like a sunrise, like stepping into the quiet comfort of morning light. Soft shadows stretched along the walls, flickering with every shift of the tiny bulbs strung across the room, their golden hue wrapping everything in a glow that felt almost alive.
The first thing that catches his eye is the black hoodie lay sprawled in the bedside, worn in the way only well-loved things could be. The fleece was uneven in places, the edges frayed—maybe from the way she always pulled them over her palms, a quiet habit he had noticed long ago. It was old, familiar. And the moment his eyes landed on it, recognition struck him.
The hoodie from the food fair.
There had been a time when he had thought any rivalry between them was impossible—not because they were too different, not because they clashed at every turn, but because, in his mind, he had always been a step ahead. He had never seen her as competition. Not really. But after that day, after the way the world had shifted on its axis, it was impossible for a different reason. Because whatever had existed between them before—annoyance, rivalry, whatever name he had once given it—had unraveled into something else entirely.
The way things had spiraled so fast—the sharp tension in the air to the rush of it to the flicker of fear in her eyes before he had stepped in to before everything had blurred into instinct and adrenaline when those bastards had surrounded her. He had barely thought, only moved, only done what felt right. But more than anything, he remembered after—how she had stood there, stubbornly composed but still shaken, and how later that night, when the world had given her another cruel twist, she had turned to him again.
He could never understand how she could have gotten locked in her own shop,but he wasn't complaining. She had asked for his help to be let out, asked him to drop her home before her Abba Ji reached. Of course, he had agreed. He was a gentleman. An ingenuous one, he later found out.
Her hands had been feather-light on his shoulders, barely there, but he had felt them all the same. He had told himself not to read into it, not to hold onto the way she gripped just a little tighter when they swerved past traffic, or the way her silence on that ride felt softer than words ever could. And yet, he hadn't been able to stop himself—not from stealing glances in the side-view mirror, not from memorizing the way the streetlights caught in her hair, not his chest from tightening as they neared her home, while the crease in her brow faded away, like, for once, she felt safe and finally, at ease.
He hadn’t wanted it to end. Hadn’t wanted to pull up to her gate and watch her step away so quickly. He had tried to stall, to keep her there just a little longer, but she had been quick—too quick. A fleeting glance, a quiet murmur of thanks, and then she was gone.
That night, when he had finally gone home, he couldn’t contain his smile. He felt weightless, as if his heart had never really settled back inside his chest. All night, his cheeks ached from grinning, and since then, they never truly stopped—not when he was around her, not when he was thinking about her, not when he caught himself wanting her.
And then, as if drawn by some unseen pull, his gaze shifted. From the bedside to the shelf. From the black hoodie to the flowers.
Near the mirror, a single shelf jutted out from the wall, cluttered with the small, unremarkable things that made up her world—hair combs, a few scattered pins, a small bottle of attar. But among them, standing quietly in the center, was a vase of sunflowers. Their petals had begun to wilt, their once-bright faces drooping toward the shelf, yet they still held onto the remnants of their former vibrance.
And beside them, barely noticeable at first, was the crumpled wrapping paper—the same one he had used that day. The day he had taken her out, the day he had looked into her eyes and spilled the words that had been pressing against his ribs for so long, offered her his heart, his truth. The day everything had been perfect, before it all fell apart. The last day that had felt untouched by regret.
His fingers clenched. The sight of them—the flowers, the wrapping, the way she had kept them, even as they withered—made something inside him twist. It was proof that she had held onto that day too, that it hadn’t just been him who had thought of it as something sacred.
For the past two days, he had felt untethered, like those very sunflowers without their sun, stretching toward an emptiness that gave him nothing in return. The warmth that had always been there, that had always drawn him in, was gone. And without it, without her, everything had felt cold, colorless. Meaningless.
But now, standing in the midst of all that golden light, there she was—his sun.
Her gaze was lowered, searching for something on the shelf beside the mirror. In the reflection, he saw her face—soft, focused, unaware of his presence. His breath hitched, but she, oblivious to the shift in the air, tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear and murmured, “Zara, kaha chali gayi thi? Mera necklace bandh nahi ho raha, madad kar do.”
Silence stretched between them. He couldn’t speak.
He was already breathless. The night had already stolen the air from his lungs, panic, guilt, and desperation weighing on his chest like a vice. He had barely noticed the ride here, barely felt the wind, barely resisted the burn in his legs when he had leaped off his bike and rushed through the back. But now, standing here, looking at her, she took his breath away again.
The pale blue of her salwar kameez draped over her frame like morning mist, delicate and weightless. Her dupatta barely clung to her shoulder, shimmering with faint embroidery, hand-woven and careful. (It must have been her grandmother.)
The soft glow of the fairy lights slipped against the gemstones, capturing golden specks onto her skin. Her reflection was poised, untouched by the very world that had swallowed him whole.
Impatience flickered across her face as she straightened, turning toward the mirror. “Zara, sunn bhi rahi ho? Jaldi karo—”
And then she froze.
Her breath hitched. The necklace slipped from her grasp, tumbling down, catching briefly on the fabric of her dupatta before landing softly on the floor.
Their eyes met.
In the golden glow of her room,, her surprise flickered like a candle caught in an unexpected draft. He saw it—the way her fingers stilled, the way her lips parted, the way her eyes widened just slightly, taking him in, as if unsure whether he was real or just another ghost conjured from the weight of the night.
And in that instant, everything else fell away.
No noise from the hall, no voices beyond the door. No weight of the past, no fear of the future.
There was just this.
Just her.
Sherry, who had been nothing but restless—shaken by guilt, unmoored by anguish—felt something within him still. He exhaled, slow and measured. Then, in that quiet, unhurried way of his, he crossed his arms.
Something flickered in her gaze, like a bird caught mid-flight. “Sherry?” she whispered, almost disbelieving, almost hesitant, barely carried through the space between them.
Her voice shaped his name, and it settled into him—into his ribs, his breath, the very marrow of him. Like something long-lost returning home.
And then, despite everything—despite the storm inside him, despite the desperation that had driven him here—his lips curved into something familiar, something effortless.
The same smile that had ghosted his lips outside her shop, the one that had softened his gaze on the rooftop and when they had watched the sunrise. The one that had lingered, unshaken, during stolen moments—on their not-quite-dates, in the hush of late conversations—when she had unknowingly made time bend around her.
A smile steeped in love, awe, reverence, devotion.
The chaos that had pushed him here, that had wrapped around his ribs and weighed down his every step, loosened its grip. The storm of guilt and unspoken words, the crushing weight of what-ifs, all of it quietened.
And then, like waves retreating from the shore, it began to disappear. The fight. The regret. Sultan. The engagement.
One by one, they unraveled, dissolving into irrelevance, until only one thing remained—undeniable, unshaken.
Like a sunflower finding the sun after days of storm, he found her back, the only place he ever wanted to belong—radiant, unwavering, and his.
A chant. A rhythm. A truth. A name that belonged to every breath he took.
Rakshi, Rakshi, Rakshi.