They closed the studio door behind them and the city sound damped into a private hush—paper rustling, a faint hum from the vending machine in the corridor, the distant clack of heels. Meera had meant to leave as soon as she packed her bag; instead she found herself lingering, fingers smoothing the edges of a print she didn't quite trust to look at alone.
Aarav was there before she reached the light switch, the way he always was: already occupying the space she imagined empty. He didn't turn on the lights. The dusk filtered through the curtained windows, soft and forgiving, and the room took on the color of film—sepia edges, the smell of fixer still clinging to racks.
"Sit," he said, voice low. "We need to talk."
She considered walking out into the night. Considered stepping away and letting the air decide whether they would exist in each other's orbits tonight. Instead she sat on the low stool opposite his, the wood creaking under her weight. Her hands folded in her lap, a small, deliberate anchor.
He watched her for a long moment, as if cataloguing her like a print he wanted to keep safe. "You've been jumpy," he said simply.
"You're not exactly subtle," she replied, because sarcasm was a reflex she still trusted.
A half-smile, almost a concession. "I'm not subtle because I don't think it helps you."
She opened her mouth to snap back—I don't need your protection—but the words didn't form. He had a way of saying certain sentences that left them sounding thin against the weight of what he meant. He'd been the architect of her life lately—helping here, nudging there—and even the resentment felt curated, framed.
Aarav stood and crossed to the desktop, turning on the small lamp that threw a warm pool of light over his papers. He reached into the drawer and pulled out a slim envelope, the color of old paper. She recognized the handwriting immediately—his, but softer than the clipped script she'd seen in his locker notes. Her name was on it: Meera.
"Open it," he said.
Her fingers trembled when she slit the flap. Inside lay a CD—archaic in an era of cloud drives—wrapped in a strip of printed paper. On the paper someone had written one word: Freedom.
Her throat closed. She remembered the folder, the midnight studio work, the pride she'd felt at having something secret and hers. The image of that folder—Freedom—had been a small act of defiance she'd cherished precisely because it felt like a place where Aarav could not go.
"He kept it," she said before she could stop the astonishment from slipping out.
Aarav sank into the stool across from her, his fingers steepled. "I did," he admitted. "A while ago."
"You kept my folder," she echoed, incredulous. "You kept photos I deleted. You—" Her voice fractured on the last word.
"I kept it because you named it Freedom." His voice was steady; the confession was simple, matter-of-fact. "I thought you might need it one day."
"You thought," she repeated. "You thought what? That I'd forget? That you could decide what I needed?"
"No," he said. "I thought you might forgive me later if I fixed what I could before you asked."
The words were a small, dangerous kindness. Meera felt dizzy in a way that had nothing to do with the dim light. "Fix what you could?" she murmured. "You deleted my choice, Aarav. You edited my life and then told me you were protecting it."
He met her eyes without blinking. "You called it Freedom. It felt wrong to let you keep a name that might become a lie."
"You had no right," she said, every line of her voice a blade. "No right to touch my files, to keep what I'd chosen to erase."
He nodded. "I know." He paused, and for the first time there was a rawness under his composed surface. "But I couldn't let go. I couldn't erase you from the things I wanted to remember."
The confession landed in the room like a stone in a quiet pond. It made concentric rings that spread and spread. Meera's hands, which had been resting in her lap, curled into fists. She had the sudden, fierce urge to throw the CD across the room, to shred it, to make a noise that matched the chaos in her chest.
Instead she lifted the disk up, turning it over under the lamplight. Her reflection ghosted faintly over the underside like a halo. She thought of the studio late at night, of the quiet clicking of shutter, the sense of control that had blossomed when she worked without audience. And she thought of Aarav, opening the drawer where her secret folder had waited.
"Why?" She had to know. "Why is this yours to keep? Why is my privacy your right?"
His voice broke just once. "Because I thought if I held it safe, I could protect the version of you that deserved light." His fingers found the edge of the table, knuckles white, not from force but from trying not to reach out. "I thought it would be better if I shaped the world to the version of you I could believe in."
Meera's throat hurt with the words unsaid. She wanted to say that protection didn't give anyone license to steal. She wanted to say that love that built cages was not love. Instead she found she was asking a quieter, more dangerous question: Who decided he could be the judge of what she deserved?
"That's not your decision," she whispered.
"Maybe not," he said. His eyes were wet, just at the rims, the slightest shadow of something like remorse. "Maybe not now. But I was terrified, Meera. If I hadn't… if I hadn't done anything, I would have felt impotent. I can't stand feeling impotent when you're in danger."
The admission—stark, shame-faced—was the first time he'd shown real fear without the armor of certainty. For a moment she saw the boy behind the polished exterior: small things, perhaps, that made him hoard safety like heirlooms.
She swallowed. The CD pulsed in her hand like a small, contraband heart. He was offering a doorway to a past she had intentionally closed, and at the same time asking permission to be the one who re-opened it.
"If I destroy this," she said slowly, testing the weight of the option in her mouth, "would that hurt you?"
His fingers tightened around the stool. "It would hurt me." He didn't add he thought it would hurt him because it would remove a tether to her—something that let him feel close without asking.
She closed her eyes. The air smelled like fixer and the faint copper of rain on concrete. There was a time when decisions had been simple. Take a photograph, post it, laugh. Now every motion felt freighted with consequence.
"You can't keep deciding for me, Aarav," she said at last. "You can't take things from me for my own good and then call it love."
"I know," he said. It was not the defiance she'd heard before; it was something nearer to pleading. "Teach me to stop. Teach me to let go. If you can."
The bluntness of the request unsettled her. It sounded like surrender, but not his. It sounded like an invitation into a project neither of them had agreed to: building a version of love that did not strangle.
She looked at him; the candle of lamplight rounded his face into honest planes. For the first time since the photo, his presence felt less like a claim and more like a question.
"Then start with one thing," she said. "Give me the CD. Let me decide."
He hesitated a fraction of a second that felt like an hour, then pushed the disk across the table. Her fingers closed around it.
"Destroy it?" he asked, voice small.
"I will listen to it first," she said. "But the decision will be mine."
He nodded and, with a care that felt almost sacred, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a tiny key—an old thing, simple and worn. "Then don't let me hide anything else," he murmured. "No more surprises. No more files I keep. No more gifts I use to bind you. Tell me where I cross the line, and I will stop."
Her laugh had no humor in it. "Promise?"
"Promise."
It sounded absurd—two people making promises in a dim studio, the city outside unruffled by their private treaties. But she kept the CD in her bag, the word Freedom close to her body like a secret talisman, and for the first time in weeks she felt the slow tick of a different kind of possibility. Not freedom given; freedom chosen.
They left the studio together into the mild night—no more words for a while, only the soft company of two people who had both seen how badly good intent could wound.