STRICTLY PROHIBITED

I was raised to follow rules.
To speak softly. Sit straight. Smile only when appropriate.
My life was a checklist of rights and wrongs - carefully drawn lines I was never meant to cross.

College was supposed to be the same - predictable, measured, safe. Until he walked in.

Mivaan Malhotra.
He was everything I wasn't allowed to be - loud without words, careless in ways that felt deliberate, and impossible to ignore even when I tried.

It started with glances - the kind that last too long, like gravity catching you mid-breath. Then came the moments that shouldn't have meant anything... but did.

Maybe it was curiosity. Maybe rebellion. Maybe the way he saw through every version of me I'd been told to be.

All I know is - the closer he got, the harder it became to remember who I was before him.

And maybe that's the most dangerous part.
Because the things we're warned to stay away from aren't always the ones that break us.
Sometimes, they're the only ones that make us feel alive.