For a long moment, we just knelt there on the floor, holding each other. His good arm was wrapped around me, his face buried in my hair, breathing me in as if I were oxygen. I clung to the solid warmth of him, my fingers gripping the soft cotton of his t-shirt, feeling the steady, miraculous beat of his heart against my palm. He was real. He was alive. He was here.

The scent of him was different—mingled with the sterile smell of antiseptic and hospital—but underneath it was still him. The reality of his injuries was stark up close. The purpling bruise on his temple, the way he held his body stiffly to protect his ribs, the sling cradling his arm. A fresh wave of guilt, sharp and acidic, washed over me.

“I’m so sorry,” I choked out, the words muffled against his shoulder. “This is all my fault. If I hadn’t…”

“Shhh,” he murmured, his lips against my hair. “Don’t. Don’t do that. I was the idiot on the bike. I wasn’t looking. I was… thinking about you.” He pulled back slightly, his gaze intense. “About us. About you telling me not to contact you. I lost focus for a second. That’s all it takes.”

His absolution only made the guilt worse. He was protecting me, even now.

He struggled to his feet, using the bedpost for support, and held out his hand to help me up. “Sit with me. Please.”

We settled on the edge of his bed, our sides touching, his good hand finding mine and lacing our fingers together. The simple contact sent a current through me, a painful, beautiful reminder of everything we were risking.

“Tell me everything,” I said softly. “What did the doctors say?”

He gave a half-shrug, a ghost of his old careless attitude. “Bruised ribs, a concussion, a dislocated shoulder. Lots of spectacular scrapes and bruises. My brain got a bit scrambled, but they say it’ll unscramble. I have to take it easy for a while.” He looked down at our joined hands. “They don’t know why I was driving like that. My family… they think it was just me being reckless Vivaan.”

“And Rohan?” The name felt like a betrayal on my lips in this room.

Vivaan’s expression darkened. “Rohan doesn’t say much. He just… watches. He’s been different since the accident. Cold. He was at the hospital, but it was like he was there out of duty, not…” He trailed off, then looked at me, his eyes searching. “He knows something, doesn’t he?”

I nodded, my throat tight. “He suspects. He found me at the hospital. He saw how… upset I was. He told me to stay away from you. He said… he said I would marry him and be a sister to you. Nothing more.”

Vivaan flinched as if I’d struck him. The word “sister” hung in the air between us, ugly and wrong.

“He said that?” His voice was low, dangerous.

“He’s trying to protect the family,” I said, though the words tasted bitter. “He’s trying to make everything go back to the way it was.”

“It can’t!” Vivaan’s voice rose, edged with frustration and pain. He winced, his hand going to his ribs. “It can’t go back, Ananya. Don’t you see? This…” He gestured between us, to our joined hands. “…this is the only real thing in this whole fucking mess! The wedding, the plans, the perfect Raichand-Sharma alliance—it’s all a show! A beautiful, empty show!”

His words were a mirror to my own soul. He was saying everything I had felt but had been too terrified to acknowledge.

“What choice do we have, Vivaan?” I whispered, the hopelessness of our situation crashing down on me again. “If we tell the truth, we destroy our families. The scandal… my parents… your mother… they’d never recover.”

“And if we don’t, we destroy ourselves!” he argued, his eyes blazing with a fervor I’d never seen before. The accident, the brush with death, had stripped away his playful facade, revealing a core of steel. “I almost died, Ananya. Lying in that hospital bed, all I could think about was you. All I could regret was that I never fought for you. I never told you the truth.”

“What truth?” I breathed.

He turned to face me fully, his gaze holding mine captive. “That I’m in love with you.”

The air left my lungs. The world stopped. He said it without teasing, without a smirk, without any filter. It was a raw, honest, devastating confession.

“I think I have been since the first day I walked into your class and you threw me out for asking about electrostatic attraction,” he continued, a faint, sad smile touching his lips. “I just didn’t know it. I drove you crazy because it was the only way I could get you to really see me. And then, at that dinner, when I saw you… I felt like I’d been struck by lightning. You were supposed to be mine, and my brother was putting a ring on your finger.”

Tears streamed down my face freely now. He was giving words to the electric current that had always arced between us, to the unspoken understanding that had terrified and exhilarated me from the start.

“I love you, Ananya,” he said again, his voice firm. “Not as my teacher. Not as my sister-in-law. As the woman who makes my heart stop and start again. As the only person who has ever seen the real me hiding behind the jokes. And I think… I know… you feel the same way.”

He was laying his heart bare, risking everything. He was giving me the courage I couldn’t find on my own.

I thought of Rohan’s cold ultimatum. I thought of my parents’ proud faces. I thought of a lifetime of silence and pretending, of living in a gilded cage as Mrs. Rohan Raichand, slowly suffocating.

I looked at Vivaan—broken, brave, and utterly sincere—and I knew. I could no longer deny the most fundamental law of my own universe.

I brought his hand to my lips and kissed his knuckles, each one a promise.

“I love you, too,” I whispered, the words feeling like the truest thing I had ever said.

A sob of relief escaped him. He pulled me into a careful, desperate kiss. It was different from the others. It wasn’t a kiss of passion or despair. It was a seal. A vow. A commitment.

When we broke apart, we were both crying.

“So what do we do?” I asked, my forehead resting against his.

“We fight,” he said, his voice filled with a new, determined strength. “We don’t run away. We stay, and we tell the truth. It’s going to be a war. It’s going to be ugly. But we do it together.”

The idea was terrifying. Facing the fury, the disappointment, the scandal… it was my worst nightmare.

But looking into his eyes, seeing the love and the resolve there, a strange sense of calm settled over me. The lying was over. The pretending was over.

We had chosen our side. We had chosen each other.

The sound of a car door slamming outside made us jump apart. Headlights swept across the window.

“They’re back early,” Vivaan said, his eyes wide with alarm.

Panic surged through me. I was in his bedroom. If they found me here…

“Go,” he urged, nodding towards the window. “Go now. I’ll text you. We’ll figure this out. I promise.”

I gave his hand one last squeeze, then rushed to the window. I could hear voices at the front door—Mrs. Raichand’s cheerful tone, Rohan’s lower murmur.

I slipped out onto the ledge, my heart pounding. I looked back at him one last time. He gave me a small, fierce nod.

As I climbed down and melted into the shadows of the garden, I wasn’t the same woman who had climbed up. I was no longer a prisoner. I was a soldier. I had my orders. And I had my partner.

The war for our future was about to begin.