Enchanted pen

TERMS AND CONDITIONS

ANAYA

There are three kinds of bad mornings.

One — you wake up late.

Two — you wake up to bad news.

Three — you wake up, and the bad news has been sitting in a group chat since 4 PM yesterday, and everyone assumed you already knew, because you’re supposedly engaged to the source of it.

I was living the third kind.

Rhea’s text sat innocently on my screen.

Did you see this???

A link.

Business news. The kind of website I usually scrolled past without reading.

MALHOTRA GROUP NEARS FINAL TERMS ON HOSPITALITY ACQUISITION — INSIDERS CONFIRM DEAL EXPECTED TO CLOSE WITHIN WEEKS.

I read it twice.

Then a third time.

Because surely I was misunderstanding something.

I wasn’t.

The deal had a name attached to it, buried in paragraph four, the way important things always are.

Kapoor Estates.

My stomach did something complicated.

Not butterflies.

Something colder.

——

My father called forty minutes later.

Cheerful.

Completely, devastatingly cheerful.

FATHER 

“Beta, wonderful news about the partnership.”

ANAYA 

“What partnership?”

FATHER 

“The hospitality deal. With Veer’s company.”

A pause.

A very long pause, the kind that has its own zip code.

FATHER

 “You didn’t know?”

ANAYA 

“Of course I knew.”

I did not know.

FATHER

 “He didn’t mention it?”

ANAYA

 “He’s been busy.”

FATHER

 “Engaged men usually tell their fiancées about acquiring half their family’s company, Anaya.”

ANAYA

 “We have a very modern relationship.”

I hung up before my voice could do anything humiliating.

——

I sat on my kitchen floor.

Which was new.

I don’t sit on kitchen floors.

I sit on chairs like a person with dignity, except apparently today dignity required tile and the cold realization that I had been an idiot in a very specific, very expensive way.

Every scene replayed.

Bukhara.

The flowers.

His hand on mine at lunch, his thumb moving once, barely, just enough that I’d spent an entire night convincing myself it meant something.

I had been so busy noticing him noticing me.

I never once asked why a man who ran a multi-billion-dollar conglomerate had said yes to a fake engagement with zero hesitation after one phone call from his mother.

Powerful men don’t do things without reasons.

I just hadn’t asked what he was.

——

VEER

The morning started normally.

Coffee. Numbers. The particular silence of an office before anyone else has the nerve to walk in.

Then my assistant knocked.

ASSISTANT

 “Sir, the Kapoor Estates story is live.”

VEER

 “I know.”

ASSISTANT

 “It’s gaining traction.”

VEER

 “I know that too.”

ASSISTANT

 “Should we issue a statement?”

I looked up.

VEER

 “About what.”

ASSISTANT

 “The acquisition. Given the — personal context.”

The personal context.

That was one way to phrase six months of negotiation finally closing in the same week my mother had decided to plan a wedding.

VEER

 “No statement.”

She left.

I stared at my phone.

No messages from Anaya.

Which, for a woman who had texted me four separate paragraphs about flower arrangements two days ago, was its own kind of message.

I called her.

Straight to voicemail.

I called again.

Same.

Interesting.

Worrying.

Both, apparently, could happen at once.

——

ANAYA

He showed up at my apartment at 7 PM.

Unannounced.

Dressed like he’d come straight from a boardroom and lost the fight to take the jacket off — sleeves rolled to the forearm, top button undone, the kind of tired that still somehow looked deliberate on him.

I hated that I noticed.

I hated it more that noticing was apparently a full-time job my brain had assigned itself without consulting me.

I opened the door already mid-sentence.

ANAYA

 “Don’t.”

VEER 

“You didn’t let me say anything.”

ANAYA 

“I know what you’re going to say.”

VEER 

“You don’t.”

ANAYA

 “You’re going to say it’s complicated.”

VEER

 “It is complicated.”

ANAYA 

“See.”

His jaw did the thing. The tight, controlled thing it did when he was recalibrating mid-conversation, which he hated, which meant I had successfully ruined his evening, which felt like the first fair thing to happen all day.

VEER 

“Can I come in?”

ANAYA 

“No.”

VEER 

“Anaya.”

ANAYA

 “You acquired my family’s company and didn’t think that was relevant information.”

VEER 

“I didn’t acquire it. The deal isn’t even closed.”

ANAYA 

“Semantics.”

VEER

 “It’s not semantics, it’s the entire difference between—”

ANAYA

 “Veer.”

He stopped.

I’d used his actual name. No nickname, no sarcasm. Just his name, flat and final.

His eyes did something complicated when I said it. Like the name landed somewhere specific.

I let him in anyway.

Not because I forgave him.

Because my neighbor had checked her mailbox three times in the last two minutes, and some performances continue mid-crisis.

——

He stood in my living room looking entirely too large for it, the way he always did, like the furniture had been built for smaller problems than him.

ANAYA 

“Talk.”

VEER

 “The deal predates the engagement.”

ANAYA

 “How long.”

VEER

 “Eight months.”

ANAYA “You’ve been trying to acquire my family’s company for eight months.”

VEER 

“Trying. Yes.”

ANAYA

 “And then I show up, conveniently engaged to you, conveniently about to become Chairperson—”

VEER 

“That’s not what happened.”

ANAYA

 “Isn’t it?”

VEER 

“No.”

ANAYA

 “Then explain it. Slowly. Use small words. I’m having a very stupid day.”

He almost smiled.

Caught himself.

Smart man.

He took a step closer instead. Not dramatically. The kind of closer that just occurs, like gravity wearing a suit.

I could see the exact place his stubble started along his jaw. I could see he hadn’t shaved since morning. Could see, infuriatingly, that he smelled like cedar and the particular expensive nothing of a man who never tries and somehow always wins.

VEER 

“The deal was stalled. Your grandfather wouldn’t take meetings. The board was rejecting every proposal we sent. I’d given up on it months before the party.”

ANAYA 

“How convenient that I un-stalled it.”

VEER 

“You didn’t un-stall anything. You got engaged to me by accident, in front of two hundred people, and I said yes for reasons that had nothing to do with quarterly earnings.”

ANAYA 

“Did they.”

VEER

 “Yes.”

ANAYA

 “Prove it.”

Silence.

A real one. The kind with weight.

He reached out — slow enough that I could have stopped him, fast enough that I genuinely didn’t want to — and tipped my chin up with two fingers so I had to look at him instead of at the safer, less complicated middle distance I’d been addressing this entire fight to.

VEER

 “I can’t prove a feeling, Anaya.”

His thumb rested just under my jaw.

I forgot, briefly and completely, what we were arguing about.

ANAYA

 “Convenient,” I managed.

VEER

“It’s not convenient. It’s the truth. And I’m aware those don’t always look the same from where you’re standing.”

——

I stepped back.

Mostly to survive.

ANAYA

 “That’s a very good line. Did you practice it in the car?”

VEER

 “I don’t practice things.”

ANAYA

 “Everyone practices things.”

VEER 

“I don’t.”

ANAYA

 “Then how did that come out so smoothly?”

VEER

 “Because it’s true. True things don’t need practice.”

ANAYA

 “That’s almost annoyingly poetic for a man who talks about hospitality margins for fun.”

VEER

 “I contain multitudes.”

ANAYA 

“You contain a PowerPoint deck and very good cheekbones. That’s not the same as multitudes.”

That got him. A real flicker, quick, almost a laugh, gone before he let it land properly.

VEER

 “Noted. I’ll add it to the deck.”

ANAYA

 “Don’t you dare.”

——

VEER

 “What do you want me to do, Anaya? Walk away from a deal that makes sense for both companies because you’re upset about the optics?”

ANAYA

 “I’m not upset about optics. I’m upset that I found out from a news article instead of you.”

That landed. Properly this time.

Something flickered behind his eyes — quick, gone, but I’d gotten good at reading him in flashes, the way you learn a language out of necessity rather than interest.

VEER

 “That’s fair.”

ANAYA

 “I know it’s fair. I’m always fair. It’s deeply inconvenient.”

VEER 

“I should have told you.”

ANAYA

 “Yes.”

VEER

 “I didn’t, because I knew exactly how this conversation would go.”

ANAYA

 “And how is that going?”

VEER

 “Badly. Predictably badly.”

ANAYA

 “You could’ve prepared better.”

VEER 

“I prepared extensively. You’re just better at this than I accounted for.”

ANAYA

 “I contain multitudes too.”

VEER

 “Clearly.”

——

He stepped closer again. Close enough now that I had to tip my head back slightly to keep arguing with him properly, which felt like a design flaw in the conversation, possibly in the universe.

His eyes — and I will deny in court ever cataloguing this level of detail — were doing the thing they did right before he said something he actually meant. Less guarded. Darker, somehow, like the calm right before he stopped performing entirely.

VEER 

“I need you to understand something.”

ANAYA

 “I’m listening.”

VEER 

“I have spent eight months trying to get your family to take me seriously across a boardroom table. And then I met you across a coffee table instead, and somehow that mattered more than the deal ever did.”

ANAYA 

“That’s—”

VEER 

“I’m not finished.”

I shut up. Rare. Noted, probably, by both of us.

VEER 

“The business is real. I won’t pretend it isn’t. But it was never the reason I said yes. It was barely a footnote. You were furious and ridiculous and completely unprepared to be engaged to anyone, let alone me, and I said yes because some idiotic part of me didn’t want to be the reason you had to fix it alone.”

The room was very quiet.

His hand had found my wrist at some point during that sentence. I hadn’t noticed it happening. I noticed it entirely now — his thumb resting against my pulse, which was, unhelpfully, not behaving like the pulse of a woman who was still furious.

ANAYA 

“You could’ve led with that.”

VEER

 “I’m aware.”

ANAYA 

“Instead I had to find out from Forbes.”

VEER

 “Bloomberg, actually.”

ANAYA 

“Don’t correct me right now.”

VEER

 “Noted.”

——

Neither of us moved.

This was the part of the fight where, in any rom-com I’d ever half-watched while pretending to work, someone would close the remaining distance entirely.

I was extremely aware that I wanted that to happen.

I was equally aware that wanting it felt like losing an argument I hadn’t finished winning.

ANAYA

 “This doesn’t fix anything,” I said, to his collarbone, because looking at his actual face at this distance felt like a strategic error.

VEER 

“I know.”

ANAYA 

“I’m still angry about the deal.”

VEER

 “I’d be concerned if you weren’t.”

ANAYA

 “You still have to tell my grandfather you used me as a loophole.”

VEER 

“I never said—”

ANAYA 

“That’s the headline either way, Veer.”

He exhaled. Looked at me the way he had at that first members’ club — measuring, careful, like I was a problem he respected too much to solve carelessly. His hand was still around my wrist. Neither of us had addressed that.

VEER

 “Then we’ll handle the headline. Together. Like everything else.”

ANAYA

 “That’s annoyingly diplomatic.”

VEER

 “I’m an annoyingly diplomatic man.”

ANAYA 

“You’re really not. You’re just good at hiding the parts that aren’t.”

His thumb moved once against my pulse.

Barely.

Just enough.

I hated — hated — that I knew exactly what that meant now. That I had a personal glossary for Veer Malhotra’s smallest movements, compiled entirely against my will over the last three weeks.

——

VEER

She didn’t pull her hand back.

I noticed that the way I noticed everything about her — quietly, completely, against my better judgment, like a habit I’d developed without ever choosing to.

She was still angry. I could see it in the set of her shoulders, the careful inches she’d otherwise insisted on maintaining like a border checkpoint.

But her wrist was still in my hand.

That, from Anaya Kapoor, was practically a treaty.

VEER 

“I should go.” Testing.

ANAYA 

“You should.”

Neither of us moved toward the door.

ANAYA 

“The deal,” she said, looking up at me now, jaw set in the way that meant she’d decided to be furious and devastating simultaneously, a combination I had never once successfully defended against. “I want to see the terms.”

VEER

 “I’ll send them tonight.”

ANAYA 

“All of them.”

VEER 

“All of them.”

ANAYA

 “And Veer—”

VEER

 “Yes.”

ANAYA

 “If I find one clause that benefits you more than it benefits my family, I will end this engagement so fast your mother will need a sedative.”

VEER 

“Understood.”

ANAYA 

“Real or fake, doesn’t matter. I will do it publicly, dramatically, with excellent lighting.”

VEER 

“I’d expect nothing less.”

ANAYA 

“I’ll cry better than you did. Allegedly.”

VEER 

“I never cried.”

ANAYA

 “That’s not what the lunch said.”

She almost smiled.

Caught herself.

I noticed that too. I noticed everything. It had become, somewhere in the last three weeks, an occupational hazard.

——

ANAYA

He left an hour later.

My wrist still felt like it remembered something.

I sat back down on the kitchen floor — a new tradition, apparently, born this exact day — and thought about the sentence he’d said.

You were an accident I didn’t want to fix.

It was, infuriatingly, the most romantic thing anyone had ever said to me while also being the subject of an active business dispute and several news articles.

I thought about the deal. The eight months. The version of this story where he’d been circling Kapoor Estates long before he ever circled me.

Two things could be true at once.

He could have wanted the company.

He could have also, somehow, impossibly, wanted me more.

I didn’t know which one I believed yet.

But I knew, sitting there on my own kitchen floor at nine at night, still able to feel exactly where his thumb had rested, that I very badly wanted it to be the second one.

Which was its own kind of terrifying.

Because wanting something that badly meant I’d officially stopped pretending this was fake.

END.