Marham

She wore her tragedies in silence not because they didn't deserve to be heard,
but because she no longer knew how to speak them out loud.

A thousand unshed tears clung behind her eyes.
And in the place where hope should've lived, there was only a hollow ache.

When a nearly-fatal accident binds Leyla to Ehan. Her husband in name, and stranger in every other way.
she wakes into a world she no longer recognizes.

Bound by a marriage written in guilt instead of gold,
Leyla is thrown into rainy afternoons and long nights that aren't so cold anymore...
but they're still not warm.

She has survived.
But is she truly alive?

Ehan has ghosts of his own. Wounds from a love that didn't just leave, but wrecked him and now he looks at her like she's the answer to a prayer he never dared to say out loud.
Too intense.
Too careful.
Too late.

Each time he says, "My wife deserves the world,"
Leyla wonders if he's trying to heal her-
or just trying to forgive himself.

Because he ties gajras around her wrist like apology.
Buys her books like prayers.
Flowers like offerings for a temple he doesn't know how to enter.
He gives her a novel and a life she never even dreamed of-
and for a moment, she forgets what it's like to be unwanted.

Until the silence grows teeth.

Until the truth begins to rot under all the beauty.

And then, on one of those too-quiet nights,
her voice breaks the stillness like glass:

"You should've let me die, Ehan."

And he doesn't flinch.
Doesn't deny it.

He just stares at her with something aching in his chest, and whispers back-
"I don't know if I saved you... or just cursed us both."

Because love wasn't supposed to look like this.
Because guilt should've never led them to this doorstep.
Because what happens when he finally learns what broke her-
truly broke her?

And worse
Will he stay?
Or will he leave... just like everyone else.