Chapter 52

I wake up to warmth and weight and the very disorienting realization that I am not alone.

There’s an arm draped over my waist. A familiar one. A heavy one. There’s a chest pressed against my back, slow and steady breaths fanning against my neck.

I blink, trying to shake off sleep, and roll over—

Raj is awake.

Propped up on one elbow, hair an absolute war zone, eyes on me like I’m something he’s trying to memorize.

“Morning,” he says, voice rough with sleep. His mouth curves slightly. “Still can’t believe you’re here.”

And just like that, I forget how to be a person.

It’s too early for this. For him to be looking at me like I matter.

I look away, already feeling the static build behind my ribs. The panic is there, quiet and old and familiar—what are you doing, you don’t belong here, you’re going to ruin this too.

But I don’t move. I don’t flinch.

Because he’s not asking me to be anything right now.

He’s just… looking.

Like he’s grateful. Like he’s relieved.

So I clear my throat and say, “We should get moving. Arya will actually commit murder if we’re late.”

Raj lets out a laugh against my shoulder. It vibrates through my chest. “Can’t wait to be strangled with a measuring tape.”

I smirk. “Fashionable way to die, at least.”

He shifts closer, his hand splayed across my stomach now, thumb grazing the hem of my shirt. “Hey.”

I turn my head.

His voice is quieter this time. No teasing. Just truth.

“Thank you. For last night.”

And then—

He leans in and presses a kiss to my forehead.

Not playful. Real.

Like he couldn’t not do it.

My heart does something strange and painful and warm. Like it wants to bolt and stay all at once.

He pulls away and tosses the blanket off, heading to his closet. “You can borrow something of mine. Should be illegal for someone to own this many black t-shirts but—here we are.”

He throws me a shirt and sweats.

They hit me in the face.

“Thanks,” I say flatly. “You’re a prince.”

Raj is smirking now, fully awake, leaning against his dresser like he owns the room and the moment and maybe even me. “You’ll look hot in it.”

I stare at him.

He says it like it’s obvious. Like it’s fact.

And for a second, I want to run.

Because no one is supposed to look at me like that.

But then—

He walks over. Brushes past me. His fingers trail the edge of my wrist for half a second; intentional, casual, devastating.

And I stay.

In his clothes. In his room. In this moment that feels too soft to survive.

But I stayed and I survived.

***

The house is too bright. Too normal.

Like it doesn’t know something cracked open last night.

Raj is ahead of me, one hand gripping the costume bags, the other stuffed in his hoodie pocket like if he holds himself together hard enough, he won’t split in half.

We’re halfway to the door when I hear it—

The low clatter of a spoon against a pan. The scent of something frying.

His dad.

Cooking breakfast.

Like he didn’t just detonate his own family.

Raj’s back stiffens, barely.

He doesn’t pause. Doesn’t speak. Just keeps walking like the front gate is the only thing keeping him upright.

But then—

“Raj.”

His voice.

Calm. Practiced. The kind of calm that says I’m hoping if I sound steady, you won’t notice I ruined everything.

Raj doesn’t turn around.

“Raj, just—please. Let me explain.”

That makes him stop.

Not because he wants to hear it.

Because I think he already knows what’s coming.

Mr. Mehra steps into the hall, wiping his hands on a kitchen towel like that’s going to make this clean. Like the stain of two decades can be washed off with warm water and apologies.

“I didn’t know she was pregnant,” he says, like that’s the magic phrase that absolves him. “It was before I met your mom. I was young. I didn’t–”

Raj turns slowly.

And the look on his face…

It’s not anger.

It’s not grief.

It’s something quieter. He looks hollow.

“You didn’t know?” Raj echoes, voice flat. “That’s the excuse you’re going with?”

Mr. Mehra’s mouth opens, but Raj doesn’t let him speak.

“You don’t just disappear from someone’s life just like that.”

The words hang in the air. Sharp. Heavy.

“You don’t walk away without saying goodbye, dad. Everyone deserves a goodbye,” Raj says. His voice doesn’t waver, but his hands do. Just a twitch. Just enough to give him away.

“If you’d bothered to look back, even once, if you’d said goodbye, you might’ve seen she was pregnant. That she was scared. That she was carrying your son.”

Mr. Mehra looks like someone pulled the floor out from under him.

And Raj doesn’t even look triumphant.

He just looks tired.

He turns back around, heads for the door.

And something inside me, something old and unfinished, fractures.

Everyone deserves a goodbye

It hits me. Hard.

Because Amit didn’t say goodbye.

He just vanished.

Just a note and a guitar.

And just like that… gone.

And maybe he didn’t owe me anything. But that didn’t make it hurt less.

And suddenly I feel it. That old familiar cold.

The kind that starts in your chest and crawls outward, filling every inch of your skin with that quiet, ugly ache of being left behind.

Raj opens the gate and steps outside.

I follow.

Not because I know how to fix anything. Or because I have the right words. But because some people leave.

And some people stay.

And right now, I am choosing to stay.

***

The morning slips in soft and cold through the car windows. The sky is this pale, washed-out blue—empty in the way only early mornings can be.

Raj hasn’t said a word since we got in the car.

He’s driving like he’s somewhere else. Hands tight on the wheel. Jaw locked. Not even fidgeting like he usually does. Just still.

And that stillness? That’s what scares me.

We stop just before school. The gate’s in front of us. Rehearsal’s waiting.

But Raj doesn’t move.

He’s staring ahead like the building might bite.

“What if he’s in there?” he says, and his voice is so quiet I almost miss it.

“Aman.”

I look at him.

“What if he’s there, just… sitting there like nothing’s happened? How am I supposed to look at him and not see everything I didn’t know? Everything I should’ve known? What the hell do I even say to him?”

His voice breaks halfway through. He bites it back like it’s shameful.

And something in me just cracks.

Because I know that feeling.

That suffocating, skin-crawling feeling like you’re made of all the wrong things.

Like someone’s going to look at you and know that you don’t deserve to be standing where you are.

He’s spiraling.

And I can’t watch it.

“Raj,” I say, and my voice comes out rougher than I meant it to. “Stop.”

He blinks. Slowly turns to me. His eyes are wide, wet at the corners.

“You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I’m his—what? Brother now?” Raj says, staring straight ahead like the windshield is going to give him answers. “And I didn’t even know he existed.”

His voice is cracking at the edges now. Too sharp. Too soft. Like he doesn’t know which way to fall.

He laughs. One of those bitter, breathless sounds that sounds like choking on regret.

“I got everything, Dev.”

He shakes his head.

“A car. A house big enough to lose people in. Dad who could afford to forget me and I still had it better than him.”

His hand leaves the wheel, runs through his hair, then grabs the steering again like he’s grounding himself.

“He was out there struggling with a single mom, figuring out life on his own while I was busy being pissed about… what? Wrong colour for my first car?”

He turns to me suddenly, eyes wide. Wet. Unsteady.

“I treated him like shit, Dev.”

His voice breaks right down the middle this time.

“Because I thought he hated me. I thought he was being a jerk for no reason. So I gave it right back. I made it a game. I mocked him.”

He lets out a breath like he can’t hold it anymore. Like it’s all just pouring out now and he doesn’t know how to stop it.

“And the whole time—he’s my brother.”

He hits the steering wheel once. Not violently. Just enough.

Enough to tell me he’s coming undone.

I feel it in my chest. This tight, awful ache. Because I’ve been there. Maybe not exactly there, but close enough to recognize the spiral.

The kind where guilt wraps itself around your ribs like barbed wire and convinces you you’re the villain in a story you didn’t know you were part of.

“Raj,” I say, gently.

But he’s not done.

“He probably thought I had this perfect life,” he says. “Which—fine. Maybe I didn’t. I lost my mom and dad became emotionally unavailable. But compared to him?”

He looks at me again. Eyes rimmed red.

“I still had a dad.”

He swallows hard.

“I had a fucking room with fairy lights and a mini-fridge and a drum set I never played just because I told my dad I might want one.”

His voice drops. “And Aman was out there buying secondhand notebooks. Probably pretending he didn’t care.”

His hands fall into his lap, and for a moment, he just stares at them like he doesn’t recognize they’re his.

“I feel like I stole something.”

That line hits like a punch.

And I can’t…I can’t let him believe that.

“Raj,” I say, firmer this time. “You didn’t steal anything. You didn’t take his life. You just lived the one you were given.”

“But—”

“No. No ‘but.’ Don’t rewrite your whole existence because of a truth someone else kept from you. You didn’t choose this. You didn’t hide anything. You were a kid. Just like he was.”

Raj looks at me, and I swear something in him shudders.

“You’re allowed to hurt too,” I say. “You don’t have to measure your pain against his like there’s a scoreboard. You both got f**ked. Just… in different ways.”

“But I treated him like shit and I didn’t even kno—”

“Yeah, and whose fault is that?” I shoot back. “Because it’s sure as hell not yours.”

He looks away again, and I can see the way his fingers are shaking just slightly. Just enough to give him away.

“I get it,” I say, quieter now. “Guilt’s a bitch. It eats you from the inside. Makes you think everything is your fault, even the stuff you had no control over.”

He doesn’t answer. Just breathes. Shallow. Careful.

I swallow. “But you don’t get to bleed for someone else’s choices. That’s not yours to carry.”

His throat moves like he wants to say something, but nothing comes out.

“I know what it’s like,” I add. “To sit with something that feels like it’s rotting you. To want to rip yourself open just to make it stop.”

His head turns. Slowly. Carefully.

“And I wouldn’t wish that on anyone,” I finish. “Especially not you.”

He stares at me. And it’s different now.

Not just gratitude. Not just relief.

It’s this—stillness in his eyes. Like something that was screaming inside him just went quiet.

He looks at me like he’s seeing me for the first time. Like he’s realizing I’m not just here. I get it.

And something in that moment shifts.

Subtle. Heavy. Unspoken.

His voice is barely a whisper. “How do you do this?”

“Do what?”

“Make everything seem easier.”

I try to smile. It feels tired. “It’s easier to fix someone else than fix yourself.”

He lets out a breath that could be a laugh or a sob or both.

Then, without a word, he reaches across and puts a hand over mine.

Not tight. Not dramatic. Just there.

And I let it stay.

Because maybe we’re both still bleeding.

But in this moment,

at least we’re not doing it alone.

***

Aman wasn’t in school today.

Maybe he’s still with his mom. Maybe he couldn’t bring himself to walk into the same halls as Mehra’s son.

I messaged him in the morning—How’s your mom?

He left it on read.

Thirty minutes later, I got one word.

Fine.

And nothing else.

No dot-dot-dot typing bubble. No emoji. No period. Just that. Cold. Clipped. Fine.

I didn’t reply. What would I even say?

The school day is a blur.

Three days until the fest.

Arya is a firestorm in eyeliner and a clipboard.

Jasir lost half the props list and lied about it.

Song practice for the climax of the play.

Priya showed up finally after that day but sat in the back watching everything with a tight smile, accepting that Arya went with the idea of a musical climax.

Raj was there. Of course he was. Watching over everything like the student body’s unofficial monarch—lording over chaos, except this time he isn’t smirking. He isn’t smug.

He’s watching. Carefully. Quietly.

And every time his eyes land on me, I feel it.

Not like a burn. Like sunlight.

Soft. Warm. Undeniable.

Like he doesn’t just see me—he’s choosing to.

He caught my eye once across the auditorium. I was crawling under the stage looking for a fake sword. I looked up and there he was, leaning against the wall like he’d been there all along, like he meant to be looking at me.

And he smiled. Just a little. That stupid half-smile of his, like something about me amused him. Or maybe amazed him.

And for a moment—

My heart flipped.

That’s the problem.

Every time Raj smiles at me like that, like I’m something good and I feel the urge to run.

Because he doesn’t know.

He doesn’t know what I did.

What I carry.

He doesn’t know I once ruined a boy who trusted me.

That he lost everything, and I’m still here. Breathing. Pretending.

***

By the time I get home, the sky’s dimmed into that soft grey-pink that makes everything feel quiet, even the air. The front gate creaks when I push it open, and the gravel crunches under my shoes louder than it should.

The lights are on. She’s home.

I already know she’s going to ask.

The second I step inside, I hear her voice from the kitchen—sharp, not angry, just… worried in that particular way moms get when they’ve already imagined seventeen different versions of you dead in a ditch.

“Where were you?”

I kick off my shoes. “School.”

She walks into the hall, wiping her hands on a towel. Her forehead’s creased, lips tight.

“I called you three times. Why wasn’t your phone on?”

“It died.”

Her arms cross. “And you couldn’t call me from someone else’s? Just to say you were okay? You didn’t come home last night at all, Dev. We were worried.”

“I was with a friend.”

“You could’ve told me that.”

There’s no bite to it. Just tired. And that’s worse, somehow.

She stares at me for a beat longer. “Dev, what’s going on?”

I look at her—really look at her.

The lines around her eyes. The apron still tied at her waist. The slight slump in her shoulders.

She’s been trying. Trying in the way people do when they know they’ve missed too many moments and are afraid they won’t get more.

And for a second, I want to tell her.

I want to tell her I’m tired.

That I’m carrying too much.

That I’m scared I broke something in me too young, and now nothing feels real.

That there are nights I curl into myself and wonder how the hell I’m still here.

I want to tell her I don’t know what love feels like without guilt.

That I think I’m letting someone new in, and it feels like cheating on a ghost.

That I miss being a version of myself that didn’t flinch when someone got too close.

I want to tell her I’m drowning in silence, and no one notices because I still laugh at the right moments and answer texts on time.

I want to tell her that sometimes I can’t breathe and I don’t even know why.

But I don’t.

I swallow it down.

Like always.

“I’m fine,” I say.

And before she can ask again, I slip past her.

Walk down the hall.

My room is dark and still and mine.

I shut the door behind me, lean against it for a moment, and close my eyes.

Fine.

Just fine.