Is she okay?
Of course she’s not!Why else would Kashvi be sending Liam to her at fucking five in the morning?
Shit.
Rohi deserves to be with someone who knows how to be there for her. Someone who doesn’t ruin everything he touches.
Someone who’s notme.
I sit there, motionless, as Liam grabs his keys and heads for the door.
He doesn’t say a word to me. Doesn’t evenlookat me.
And honestly?
I deserve it.
TWENTY
Aarohi
It’s strange, the way devastation moves through the body.
It doesn’t arrive with fanfare. Doesn’t claw or scream. It just... settles. Quietly. Deeply. In your throat. In your gut. In the joints that once moved without thought.
Like a faint throb of numbness that gives you a false sense of strength.
I told Kashvi everything.
I didn’t mean to.
When I texted her—Do you have 8 minutes?—while sitting in that grimy park, I just needed a lifeline. Something to anchor me through the rising panic.
But once the words started, they refused to stop.
I told her everything. The whole sordid story. The disaster of a night. A carefully curated betrayal disguised as affection. A lie dressed up to feel like safety.
She didn’t interrupt. Not once.
I didn’t cry. Icouldn’t.
I’d already spent my tears—on the long walk home, in the silence of the park bench, in the bathroom where I washed my face and stared at the stranger in the mirror.
But Kashvi cried. Loudly.Angrily.
“That fucking piece of rotting shit,” she’d hissed. “With hisI’m so brokenbullshit. You were healing. You were—yaar, Rohi, you were getting better.”
I was.
And now I’m not.
We hung up a few minutes ago. Said she needed to go“breathe before committing an actual felony.”She told me to sleep. I didn’t argue, just nodded and said I’ll try. I was lying though.
Sleep isn’t going to bless me anytime soon. And I have no plans to try.
The apartment’s empty now. Charlotte’s away visiting her parents, so it’s just me, curled up in my bed, replaying everything in agonizing detail. Not the night itself—but the softness leading up to it.
The moments that made it so easy to believe. He was good—too goodwith his pretense.
