Some things you only say in the dark. Some things you never say at all.Aarav Mehta is the boy nobody notices. He's thin and quiet, from a small-town family whose printing press is failing, and he's up at 5:30 every morning chasing a 95th percentile in the MAT. The exam is his one way out of a state engineering college and into the Institutes of Management.Meera Shah is the girl nobody really looks at. The ones who do can't look away.It starts with a bad mock score and a table under a broken library fan. Tuesdays and Thursdays. Seven o'clock. Two people who swore they were only studying.But Meera has already stood too close to Rohan Malhotra. He's confident and charming, and he once brushed a raindrop from her cheek in an empty seminar hall. He almost kissed her. He didn't.Aarav asks. Rohan never does.Then a power cut, a cold October rain and an empty hostel room turn one cup of tea into a night neither of them will forget. What follows is a secret affair of stolen afternoons, locked doors and mornings they don't want to end. Meera won't let anyone know. And Aarav can't stop wondering whether she's hiding him from her mother, or from the world.Then comes the exam that decides everything. Two of them will go to the same IMI. One won't.The Things We Never Said is Book One of The Shortlist, a steamy, emotional new-adult romance set in the pressure cooker of India's MBA entrance race. It's about first love, ambition, jealousy, and the distance between what we feel and what we dare to say.Content note: This book contains open-door sex scenes between adults and strong language. Recommended for readers 18+.
