The knowledge that Vivaan was awake was a tiny, defiant flame in the vast, cold darkness of my prison. He was alive. He was conscious. It was the only thought that allowed me to breathe, even as the walls of my gilded cage pressed in tighter.

A week passed. The wedding machinery ground on, relentless and efficient. My mother and Mrs. Raichand had become a planning juggernaut, their conversations a dizzying whirl of menus, guest lists, and color schemes. I nodded and smiled, a hollow mannequin in a bridal boutique.

Rohan’s surveillance was constant and subtle. His calls were always to check in, his texts always about wedding details. He never asked how I was, not really. He was assessing my compliance, ensuring the cracks in my facade were properly plastered over.

I was dying inside. The not-knowing was a constant, gnawing ache. Was he recovering? Was he in pain? Did he remember the accident? Did he remember… us?

The answer came from the most unexpected of sources.

I was at a mall with my mother, being dragged from store to store for wedding shopping. She was in a fitting room, and I was clutching a pile of garish lehenga fabrics that weren’t me, my mind a million miles away in a hospital room.

“Ananya Ma’am?”

The voice was hesitant, female. I turned. A girl was standing there, maybe nineteen, with kind eyes and a nervous smile. She looked familiar. One of Vivaan’s friends from college. I’d seen her with him sometimes.

My heart leaped into my throat. “Yes?”

She glanced around furtively. “I’m Myra. I’m a friend of Vivaan’s.” She lowered her voice. “He… he asked me to find you. To talk to you.”

The world narrowed to her, right there in the middle of the bustling mall. He asked for me. The flame inside me flared, bright and dangerous.

“Is he okay?” The question tore from me, desperate and raw.

“He’s… better,” she said carefully. “The physical stuff is healing. But he’s… different. Quiet. He’s not the same Vivaan.”

The words sent a chill through me. Quiet. Not the same.

“He remembers everything,” Myra whispered, her eyes filled with a knowing sympathy that told me Vivaan had confided in her. She knew. She knew our secret. “He remembers the accident. He said he wasn’t paying attention. He was… upset.”

The guilt was a physical blow. Upset because of me. Because I sent him away.

“He wants to see you,” Myra said, her voice dropping even lower. “He’s being discharged tomorrow. His family is keeping him at home, but they’re all going to a puja at the temple the day after tomorrow for his recovery. In the evening. The house will be empty for a few hours. He said… he said you’d know how to get in.”

The window. He was telling me to come to his window, just as he had come to mine.

A torrent of emotions—elation, terror, hope, dread—crashed over me. To see him. To touch him. To know he was real.

But Rohan’s warning was a cold hand around my heart. You will stay away from him. The consequences of disobeying would be catastrophic.

Myra saw the conflict on my face. “He needs to see you, Ma’am,” she pleaded softly. “I think… I think he needs to know you’re still there. That you still…” She trailed off, too polite to say it.

That I still care. That I still feel.

My mother emerged from the fitting room then, holding up a red saree. “Ananya, what do you think of this one for the reception?”

The real world crashed back in. The bright lights, the chatter, the promise of a wedding that felt like a execution.

I looked from my mother’s excited face to Myra’s anxious one. I was standing at a crossroads. One path was safe, predictable, and soul-destroying. The other was reckless, dangerous, and utterly, terrifyingly real.

I made my choice.

I turned to Myra and gave a tiny, almost imperceptible nod. Her face relaxed in relief.

“I have to go,” she murmured, and melted back into the crowd.

“Who was that, beta?” my mother asked, distracted by the saree.

“No one, Mummy,” I said, my voice surprisingly steady. “Just a student. Asking about an assignment.”

I took the red saree from her hands. “It’s beautiful,” I said, and for the first time, my smile felt real. It was the smile of a prisoner who had just been passed the key to her chains.

The next two days were an eternity. I performed my duties with a new, eerie calm. I discussed floral arrangements. I sampled desserts. I listened to Rohan’s plans for our honeymoon in Bali. I agreed with everything. I was the perfect, compliant fiancée.

But inside, I was a live wire. Every tick of the clock was a countdown. I was going to see him. I was going to defy Rohan. I was going to choose us, if only for a stolen hour.

The evening of the puja arrived. I told my parents I was going to Jia’s house to study wedding invitations—a lie that came easily now. My hands didn’t even shake as I hailed a rickshaw and gave the driver the Raichands’ address.

The familiar, palatial bungalow was dark and silent, just as Myra had said it would be. The family car was gone. My heart hammered against my ribs as I slipped through the side gate and into the garden, my footsteps silent on the damp grass.

I found his window—a large, first-floor window at the back of the house, partly obscured by a large neem tree. A light was on inside.

This was it. The point of no return. Again.

I picked up a small pebble and, with a trembling hand, threw it at the glass.

Tap. Tap.

Just like he had done at my window.

For a heart-stopping moment, nothing happened. Had I gotten the wrong window? Had he changed his mind?

Then the curtain was pulled back.

And there he was.

Vivaan.

He was leaning on a crutch, his other arm in a sling. A bandage was wrapped around his head, and a vivid bruise bloomed across his temple, fading into yellow and green at the edges. He looked thinner, paler, older.

But his eyes. His eyes were the same. They locked onto mine, and in them, I saw the same storm of emotions that was raging inside me: pain, relief, fear, and a love so raw it stole my breath.

He fumbled with the latch, his movements awkward with his injuries. The window swung open.

“Ananya,” he breathed, my name a prayer on his lips.

That one word, the sound of his voice, broke me. The dam holding back my emotions shattered.

“Vivaan,” I sobbed, the tears coming in a flood I could no longer control.

He reached his good arm out through the window. “Come inside. Quickly.”

I didn’t need to be told twice. I found footholds in the stonework and the tree, hauling myself up and through the window, tumbling gracelessly into his room.

I landed on the floor at his feet. I looked up at him, this beautiful, broken boy, and everything else vanished. The wedding, Rohan, the consequences—none of it mattered. There was only him.

He dropped his crutch with a clatter and sank to his knees in front of me, wincing in pain but ignoring it. His good hand came up to cup my face, his thumb stroking my cheek, wiping away my tears.

“You came,” he whispered, his own eyes glistening. “I was afraid you wouldn’t come.”

“I will always come for you,” I said, the truth finally, freely spoken. “Always.”

And there, on the floor of his bedroom, surrounded by the evidence of his interrupted life—textbooks, a guitar, a half-built model airplane—we held onto each other as if we were the only two people left in the world. The whispered truths of our hearts were finally louder than the shouted lies of our reality. For this one, stolen moment, we were free.