**Winner 2024 Amby Awards**
Fiza has everything planned-medical school, a respectable future, and an engagement she never wanted. Determined to escape a loveless match, she creates a checklist to find the perfect husband her father will approve of.
...
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I woke up the next morning with a smile already on my lips. Last night had been everything I had ever dreamed it would be. I had given myself to my best friend, to the man I loved. My best friend, who was now... my boyfriend? The thought sent a fresh wave of excitement through me.
Lying there, I replayed it all—the emotional depth, the breathtaking beauty of it, how he had been so tender and careful while I had completely, trustingly, let go. A brief shadow of guilt and fear had tried to creep in afterward, but he'd held me close, his whispering reassurances. He had been everything I needed.
Hoping to see that same tenderness in his eyes, I skipped to the bathroom. He was at the sink, shaving. I smiled at his reflection in the mirror, finding him adorable with the white foam clinging to his dimpled chin.
"What?" he sneered, his voice cold, his eyes meeting mine in the glass with none of the warmth from hours before.
The word hit me like a slap. My smile froze and then died. A tremor ran through me, and my heart began to race with a sickening uncertainty. A cold knot formed in my stomach. Had something gone wrong? Did he regret it? Was last night just... a mistake for him?
My voice trembled as I forced the words out, barely a whisper. "I... I just wanted to talk to you about last night."
I was pleading now, desperate for any sign—a soft look, a gentle touch—that he felt the same soul-deep connection I did. I needed him to reassure me that I hadn't misread everything, that he still cared for me as profoundly and desperately as I cared for him. But all I saw was the hard line of his jaw, clean now of foam, and the distance in his eyes.
He turned around and looked me full in the face, his expression closed and cold. "There is nothing to talk about. You want to be fucked and I fucked you," he said, his voice flat. "Don't make it out to be bigger than it is."
The air left my lungs, and an unbearable pain tore through my chest. I struggled to hold back the tears, my vision blurring.
I wanted to scream that he didn't mean it, to find the gentle boy from last night hidden somewhere in his hardened gaze. But as he turned back to the mirror, dragging the razor down his jaw and refusing to look at me, a corrosive doubt began to eat away at my soul.
I wanted to shake him and demand the truth.
Was it all a facade? Was every tender word, every careful touch, just a performance to get what he wanted? Had I just been a conquest, a challenge finally overcome?
A sob mixed with a scream escaped my lips before I could stop it.
Without another thought, I turned and ran. I had to get away from him, from the room that now felt like a crime scene, from the weight of my own foolish hope.
I ran down the hall, clad only in his shirt. All I felt was a deep, searing shame and a regret that seemed to sink into my bones. This was what I got. This was the price. The rules I had set, the walls I had built, existed for a reason. And I had broken them all, only to be left shattered on the other side.
