2

Chapter Two — Home Is a Stranger

Dev’s POV

The Sydney sky looked too perfect to be real — all open blue and streaks of white like someone had over-edited a photograph. Dev Raghuvanshi zipped up his last suitcase, closed the window, and let the curtain fall shut on four years of silence.

Graduation: done.
Degree: acquired.
Freedom: pending.

He stared at the tidy room that had held him like a hotel — temporary, neat, forgettable. No emotional clutter. No mess. Just the way he liked it.

Until now.

His phone buzzed with a message from Harsh.

“Your flight details are confirmed. We’ll be waiting at the airport. Trisha’s making your favorite. Can’t wait to have you back, son.”

Son.

Dev's jaw ticked.

It wasn’t that he hated the man. Harshwardhan was efficient, powerful, and annoyingly balanced. He hadn’t just married Dev’s mother — he’d rewritten her life. Dev should’ve been grateful. Maybe he even was, somewhere deep beneath the pride and unresolved resentment.

But he hadn’t expected him to remarry. Not so fast. Not so… fully.

And definitely not to her.

Trisha Agnihotri — once a name on gallery invitations, now the woman who signed his birthday cards in cursive. A famous painter. Cool, warm, sharp. She had a daughter. A girl who, back then, had been too young to really notice him.

Avika.

Thirteen, the last time he saw her. Hair in two loose braids. Always humming some tune. Always too close.

She used to follow him around the house like a shadow. Call him "Dev bhaiya" in that tiny voice. He never knew what to do with her.

And now? She's seventeen.

Almost an adult.

Dev exhaled slowly, dragging a hand through his hair. He didn’t know why his stomach tightened when he thought of seeing her again.

Maybe it was the awkwardness.
Maybe the fact that they were practically strangers now.
Or maybe… it was something else.

He didn’t like that thought.

Didn’t like that it came so uninvited.

Shoving it aside, he picked up his boarding pass and slipped on his black leather jacket. The same one he'd worn the day he left. A habit. A superstition.

He took one last look around the room — clean, finished, silent.

Then walked out without looking back.