DCP Sir ❤ I Luv U (Completed)

Chapter 18

______๑♡⁠๑______

For Fear (ᵕ•_•) to Feelings (◕ᴗ◕✿).

______๑♡⁠๑______

The room had finally fallen silent. It was the kind of silence that comes only after a catastrophic storm—heavy, fragile, and thick with the scent of rain and exhaustion.

Mythili lay on the bed, her was breathing slow and even, her face finally at peace after hours of trembling fear and tears. A few strands of her hair rested messily across her forehead, and the faint marks on her skin told a story no one wanted to hear... but everyone could feel.

He sat beside her. He was still. Unmoving. A statue of duty and something far more primal. His eyes didn't leave her face for a single second, as if he were convinced that if he blinked, the shadows would return to take her again.

There was a strange, suffocating tightness in his chest—a feeling he couldn't categorize. He had seen hundreds of victims in his career. He had handled cases that were objectively more brutal, more gruesome than this. But this... this felt like he was the one being bruised. 

Because it was her. 

Slowly, he reached out and adjusted the blanket over her, careful not to wake her. His fingers hovered near her cheek for a brief second before he pulled them back, clenching his jaw.

Control, Ram. Stay in control.

He turned away abruptly, running a frustrated hand through his hair and exhaling a sharp, jagged breath. After one last, lingering look at her sleeping form, he walked out of the room.

The moment the door clicked shut, two pairs of eyes landed on him like heat-seeking missiles. Sowmya and Sandhya. They hadn't moved from the hallway. Sowmya was the first to react, her arms crossing over her chest, her expression shifting from worry to a very pointed, sharp-eyed suspicion.

"DCP sir..." she began slowly, dragging out the syllables like a prosecutor. "You hugged her."

He turned his head slightly, his expression shifting back into the cold, impenetrable mask of the law. He raised a single, arrogant eyebrow. "So?"

Sowmya blinked, taken aback by his bluntness. "So??" she repeated, her voice rising in indignation. "You just... walked in and hugged her like that! In front of us! Just like that!"

He leaned casually against the wall, folding his arms, completely unfazed. "She needed it."

Sowmya opened her mouth to argue. Closed it. Opened it again. No words came out.

Sandhya bit her lip, looking at the floor as she tried—and failed—to suppress a laugh at Sowmya's rare speechlessness.

Sowmya wasn't ready to retreat just yet. "Still... without permission... it's a bit much, don't you think?" she tried again, though her voice had lost its sting.

Ram tilted his head, his gaze steady and piercing. "Did she complain?"

Dead silence.

"No..." Sowmya murmured.

"Then what exactly is your problem?"

Sandhya let out a small, genuine laugh this time, earning a deadly glare from Sowmya.

"You are taking advantage of the situation." Sowmya muttered, throwing one last desperate punch, though she knew she had already lost the round.

Ram's lips twitched—a ghost of a smirk that lasted less than a second. "For someone who calls herself her best friend..." he paused, looking Sowmya straight in the eye, "...you're quite slow."