And I don’t know what the hell is wrong with me, but suddenly, I want to protect him.
Which is laughable. Because if anyone here needs protection, it’s me.
But still. This man—this sharp, quiet, unbearably grumpy man who lives in a box with no softness and cooks poha like a monk—deserves better.
Not that he’d ever admit it.
I glance at him again, and my heart does that stupid thing where it twists.
He’s not lonely. Not exactly. But he’s... alone.
And maybe the worst part is that he’s chosen to be.
I look down at my plate, scooping up another bite, pretending my chest isn’t full of weird, protective instincts and slightly misplaced affection.
He doesn’t need saving.
But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to stand in front of whatever hurt him.
Even if he never lets me close enough to try.
CHAPTER 18
ABHIMAAN
If this had happened to any other employee, I would’ve done what protocol demanded—called emergency contacts, assigned someone from HR to handle it, maybe sent a fruit basket. I’ve seen accidents before. I’ve even had interns resign in the middle of panic attacks. And it never really... moved me.
I was never cruel, just clinical. Detached.
But Aditi?
She doesn’t let me stay detached. She just barges in—messy, loud, irritatingly bright—and starts taking up space like she belongs there. In my day. In my schedule. In my head.
And now, in my house.
What the hell am I doing?
I’ve never brought anyone here before. Not once. This space—this flat—isn’t meant to be shared. It's small on purpose. Quiet on purpose. Bare, because it's supposed to ground me. To remind me that no matter how many people I lead or how much I build, at the end of the day, I have no one.
No distractions. No attachments. Just a bed, a desk, and the wall I’ve built around myself over the years.
But now—now she's sprawled on my couch like she’s lived here for years, her laptop resting on her thighs, her bare feet tucked into the armrest. My eyes land on the cactus beside her, on my coffee table. It's not just my office anymore, or my coffee order. She felt my house was too plain; she ordered a cactus because:
1) It doesn’t need much care.
2) It won’t dry up if I am absent for a few days, her reasoning, not mine.
She also bought a panda print blanket because mine looks clinical according to her, and I also got to know pandas are her favorite animal apparently. She then proceeded to change all my utensils to those trendy pastel ones because she has always wanted those because they look cool. And the more alarming thing is I let it all happen silently; I accepted my fate. I could have put her in her place, but I didn’t. Because I liked it. And that's alarming.
I look at her. She's wearing one of my oversized shirts—black, sleeves nearly to her elbows—and a pair of shorts I dug up from a forgotten drawer. The waist is cinched so tight with the drawstring that it bunches up at her hips.
She looks...
Cute. I actually freeze mid-step when the word flits through my brain. Cute?
What the hell is wrong with me? I don’t do cute. I don’t think that word. I don’t feel this way. I don’t look at someone curled up on my couch and think about how her legs are too short for the cushions or how her hair’s tied in a lazy bun with half of it falling out and somehow still looking intentional.
And yet here I am. Losing my mind because her nose scrunches when the Wi-Fi lags and she mutters under her breath like the router is personally out to ruin her life.
