The rain did not stop the next day.

It came down in thick, relentless sheets that turned the campus into a landscape of wet concrete, dripping leaves, and students sprinting between buildings with bags held over their heads. Ananya’s kurta was already damp by the time she reached her first lecture, the fabric clinging to her back and the soft undersides of her breasts. Every step made the wet cotton drag across her nipples. She had barely slept. Every time she closed her eyes she felt Rohan’s thumb again—slow, deliberate, devastating—brushing over the stiffened peak through her clothes.