Her Deviant Husband | [✓]

Chapter 39 (Pt-2)

"Dil se dil ka rishta hota hai, shabdon ka nahi."
- Dil ka Rishta (Movie)

Athira's pov.

I'd been standing there for way too long, eavesdropping like some idiot in a soap opera. I should've left the second I heard his voice, but no, I had to stay. I had to listen, didn't I?

"Do you love Athira... or is it all still revenge to you, Reyansh?" Jai's voice cut through the silence, his arms crossed over his chest in that familiar, accusatory way.

I stayed motionless behind the wall, every fiber of my being screaming for an answer, but all I could do was hold my breath, waiting.

Please... please don't say it's revenge. Please don't break me.

The words that left his mouth hit harder than I could have prepared for.

"I can't love her."

And just like that, the wall I'd carefully built around my heart crumbled, piece by piece. I didn't know which was worse—the numbness that followed, or the emptiness that swallowed me whole.

The bastard.

I should've left.
I should've left him.

I can't love her.

The words pierced me, sharper than any blade ever could. Sharper than anything he could have said. If he said I don't love her... it means I still had hope for a future where he may come to love me with time just how I had come to love him with time.

But can't love her... meant there was no future.

This was the end of the rope.

My breath caught, and my heart—God, my heart—stopped beating for a moment before it started pounding, erratic and wild, as though it was trying to remind me I was still alive.

But I didn't feel alive. I felt like a ghost, something unseen and unacknowledged, drifting in the space where I thought love might have existed.

It wasn't the words alone that hurt me—it was the way he said them.

Detached.
Cold.

Like they were nothing more than a fact to him. Like I was nothing more than a fleeting thought.

I wanted to cry out, wanted to scream, but no sound came.

What happened to all the times he told me that I drove him insane? What happened to all the times he pushed into my life until I had to let him in.

You came in my life first Reyansh.

Then why did I give my heart up first!

The betrayal felt too deep, too raw, strangling my voice before it could rise.

Tears burned hot trails down my cheeks, but I didn't wipe them away. I couldn't. It was as if they were the only proof I still existed, that I hadn't been completely erased by his words.

My legs trembled, barely holding me up, and I pressed a hand against the wall for support. I wanted to stop listening, but I couldn't move. I couldn't do anything but stand there and drown in his voice, in the destruction he was wreaking on my soul.

"I can't love her." The words repeated in my head, relentless, each echo more brutal than the last. I felt the cracks deep inside me, felt myself breaking apart piece by piece.

I must have made a sound—a sharp intake of breath, a gasp I couldn't suppress—because he froze. The room stilled, the tension thick and suffocating, like the entire world held its breath.