The Charade

56 | 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖊 𝖙𝖔 𝕭𝖗𝖊𝖆𝖐

Chapter 57 and 58 are available on Scrollstack.

ADHIKRIT

I sat in the car, staring blankly at the windshield as droplets of rain traced slow, curving paths down the glass. The silence inside the car was suffocating, yet it was nothing as compared to the chaos roaring inside me.

She didn't understand. She couldn't. How could she know the depth of what I felt for her? How could she comprehend the lengths I'd gone to ensure her safety, her happiness—even when it meant destroying every sane part of myself in the process?

My hands tightened around the steering wheel, the leather creaking under my grip.

I didn't want this, Sweetheart. I never wanted her to get on the field and fight.

I wanted to be the man who could cherish her, the husband who could simply hold her in his arms without caring about the world. But life never worked that way—not for me. Love, for me, had always been war. And for Kashi, I had waged every war imaginable.

I leaned back in my seat, my head hitting the headrest with a dull thud. When did I become this man? This version of myself who had no hesitation in crossing every moral line if it meant keeping her by my side?

Was it that night when I saw her broken, lying on that hospital bed, and realized I'd failed her? Or was it the moment I first noticed the fire in her eyes—the spark that made me want to protect her from everything, even herself?

I wasn't sure anymore. All I knew was that every decision I made since meeting Kashi was fueled by one constant: I love her. Desperately. Obsessively. Relentlessly.

And that love—it terrified me.

I remember the first time I saw her. Her serene face stirred something unfamiliar in my heart, softened the hard edges of my gaze, and sent a peculiar crawling sensation through my chest, forcing me to pause, to simply breathe. She was being dragged by that wretched sister of hers, tears streaming down her face as she screamed for her to let go of her wrist. In that moment, I felt unmoored, detached from reality. And when she spoke to her father, I was paralyzed. My eyes couldn't leave her; it was as if she was the only person in the room, the only one who mattered.

The days that followed were a haze of vulnerability. Every moment was spent scheming, trying to find a way to make her mine without pushing her away, without making her despise me. In doing so, I lost something I didn't even realize I possessed—a capacity for genuine, selfless love. That part of me died the day we married others, those strangers who shattered everything we could have been.

What replaced it was a selfishness that haunts me to this day. I became a man willing to do anything for her, but not in the way I once dreamed. I hurt her, over and over again, and I know it. I see the pain in her eyes, yet I can't stop. I ask myself why—why am I like this? Why can't I be the man who simply loves her without breaking her in the process? Why do I wound her, knowing how much she gave up for us?