Blossom and Burn

Chapter 45: Love heals?

A year later,

Veer:

I always believed love would never work out for me. It was the worst thing in the world but that was never the case.

Her love healed me, but I chose to be the undeserving one and threw it away.

Probably why I just can't forget her cause my heart still remembers the love she gave to me, perhaps she was too beautiful to be mine.

The world sprawls beneath me like an endless sea of glitters and lights, but up here, in my life, everything is quiet. Too quiet. I used to love the silence, the way the world below felt small, like I could crush it with a single thought. Now? It's suffocating.

The penthouse feels more like a cage than a home. It's the same place I have lived in for years, the same sleek furniture, the same cold marble floors, and floor-to-ceiling windows. But everything feels different now. Sterile. Hollow.

I have cut everyone off - family, friends, anyone who tries to get close. Even Aavyansh bhaiya stopped visiting a while ago, not that I blame him. He thought I need time and space to come out of this zone maybe but I am fine here. I didn't need anyone's pity, their questions, their well-meaning concerns. All I need is focus.

I wake up to the same four walls, the same suffocating silence, and the same unspoken resentment hanging in the air.  I don't even allow the sun in my space. Darkness - that's what I have found my solace in.

I shifted back to my penthouse when she left. My family, they don't say it outright, but their disappointment, their anger, it's like a weight on my chest every time I see them. I know what they think, I knew they too consider me to be the villain so I avoid them too because it makes me feel and feeling is not good.

I am not ruining things for anyone anymore. I am ruining them for myself. No one understands. Hell, I don't even understand myself anymore.

I sit up, my body heavy with the weight of a sleepless night. Another one. I don't remember the last time I actually slept. I get by, of course. I do what needs to be done. I still show up to work, still maintain the business, but it's mechanical. I am there, but I am not really there.

My heart just won't stop yearning for her and unlike the cruel words I had spoke, I don't have the strength in me to remove her from my heart cause it beats for her, no matter how much I lie to myself.

It's been a year since she left. A year since I told myself I didn't need her, that I was better off without her. A year of lying to myself. She didn't fight back when I accused her of betrayal. She just… left. And I refused to even talk about once she left. I still want to believe that she did betray me, need to believe that, because the alternative is too painful to face.

But there are moments when the doubt creeps in. Moments when I wonder if I pushed her away, if my anger blinded me. If it's all my fucking fault for pushing my Sonpapdi away and unleash this hell on myself.

My family feels sad for me, they are concerned I see it but I can't even take a breath properly, how am I supposed to live like everyone is fine. Like I am fine?
They don't get it, No one does. They only see my own mistakes.

I stand up and drag myself into the bathroom. The mirror catches my reflection, but I barely recognize the man staring back at me. My hair is longer, my eyes darker, surrounded by shadows from too many sleepless nights. I splash water on my face, trying to wash away the exhaustion, but it's deeper than that. It's in my bones.

A knock on the door pulls me from my thoughts. It's Yug. He visited last night and since it was too late and knowing Jyeshtha would create a fuss if I let him drive at 3:00 am in the night, I just let him stay.