Game of love

Swara Tripathi tells herself she has moved on. She tells her friends, too-like a mantra, like a prayer, like a desperate attempt to turn a lie into the truth.

But has she really?

She is no longer the naïve 15-year-old girl who let herself be fooled by a boy with an easy smile and a cruel heart. No longer the girl who stood frozen as laughter echoed around her, humiliation sinking into her bones.

She is 25 now. A woman who built herself from the ground up, an assistant researcher for one of the London's biggest pharmaceutical company, living the life she once dreamed of. She is successful, independent, untouchable.

And yet-one look at him, and she feels it.

A dangerous poison, simmering in her veins, ready to consume her sanity.

Anger.

Not just at him, but at the sheer nonchalance in his gaze, the way he looks right through her as if she's just another face in the crowd. As if she's nothing.

As if he doesn't remember.

As if she's the only one who was left to carry the scars while he walked away, untouched, unaffected.

Her fingers curl into fists. The room around her blurs. The past and present collide in a single breath.

Jai Oberai might have forgotten.

But Swara never will.