He looked away, toward the window, toward anywhere but my face. "It was nothing."

Three words.

That was all it took for the wall to slam back into place — the same wall he had spent yesterday tearing down brick by brick. The dismissal hit me harder than any cruel word he had ever spoken. Because I had heard what he sounded like when the wall was gone. I had felt his hands tremble. I had heard him say my name like it was the only word he knew. And now he was standing on the other side of the wall again, looking at me like I was a stranger who had inconvenienced him by existing.

"You're pushing me away again." My voice cracked despite my best effort.

"I'm not." He sat up, wincing at the light, running a hand through his messy hair. "This is just the way I am."

"Oh, really?" I sat up too, pulling the blanket around my shoulders like armor. "You were the one who couldn't stand me leaving. You blackmailed me, stole my room, marked my neck, told me you were drowning without me. And now that I'm here — actually here, in your bed, trying to understand what the hell we are — you're giving me attitude and telling me it was nothing?"

He didn't answer. His jaw tightened, the muscle jumping beneath his skin.

"Because you insisted on leaving." His voice was quiet. Dangerous. "You were packing. You called your father. You were going to move in with him — with Sahil — and leave me in this flat with your ghost."

"Yes!" The word tore out of me, sharp and jagged. "Because you were the one who called me a burden. A responsibility. Nothing more. You carved that into me, Advik. You made me feel worthless. So I tried to do exactly what you wanted — I tried to ease your precious burden. I was trying to give you your freedom."

I couldn't take it anymore.

To hell with this man. With his hot and cold, his possession and his rejection, his I want you and his stay away , his teeth on my throat and his back turned in the morning. I was done being the only one fighting for whatever this was. I was done interpreting his silence and decoding his cruelty and hoping that buried beneath it all was something that looked like love.

I threw off the blanket and stood up.

My legs were unsteady, my heart hammering, but I was upright. I was moving. I grabbed my pillow — the one that smelled like him, like us, like everything I was about to walk away from — and headed for the door.

"I'm done," I said, my voice steady despite the tremor in my hands. "You want the wall? Keep it. I'm not going to keep breaking my knuckles trying to climb over it."

My hand found the doorknob.

But this time, he moved faster.

Not a grab. Not a drag. Not the wrist-capturing, door-slamming violence I had grown used to.

He fell.

He dropped to his knees on the carpet in front of me, his head bowed, his shoulders hunched, his hands reaching for mine with a desperation that looked almost like fear. The man who had never bent for anyone — who had never apologized, never explained, never bowed — was kneeling at my feet in yesterday's wrinkled clothes, his hair a mess, his eyes red-rimmed and raw.

"I'm sorry." His voice cracked — actually cracked, breaking apart like dry earth under rain. "I called you a burden. I was angry that night. I saw you with him, and I couldn't —" He stopped, his fingers tightening around mine, his knuckles white. "I couldn't see straight. I wanted to hurt you before you could hurt me. I wanted to push you away so hard that you'd have no choice but to stay gone. Because if you stayed — if you kept looking at me like you used to — I knew I'd never be able to let you go."

He looked up at me then, his eyes swimming with something I had never seen in them before.

Shame.

"I was wrong," he whispered. "Please don't leave."

"I drank that much," he said, his voice rough against the silence, "because I heard you. Last night. When you were talking to Sahil in the living room." His grip on my hands tightened, his knuckles white, his eyes glistening in the morning light. "You said I was forcing you to live here. That you had no choice. And I thought —" He stopped, his jaw clenching, his throat working. "I thought you finally had enough of me. That you were counting the days until you could run."

He looked up then.

His eyes were wet — not crying, not exactly, but close enough that I could see the tears threatening to spill over, held back by nothing but pride and terror. His grip on my hands felt like a drowning man's grip on a lifeline, like if he loosened his fingers for even a second, the current would sweep me away.

"Please, Hazel." His voice cracked, breaking apart on my name. "Don't leave. If you want your own flat — your own space, your own door with a lock — I'll buy you one. I'll pay for it. You can live wherever you want, anywhere in this city, anywhere in the world. Just don't stop seeing me. Don't stop being mine."

And I stood there, staring down at the boy who had been my tormentor, my protector, my warden, my everything — reduced to his knees by nothing more than the thought of losing me.

My heart broke and healed in the same breath.

Shattered because he had put us here. Because one cruel sentence — you don't have that much value — had set off a chain reaction that led to this moment, this ruin, this man bleeding out on the carpet. And healed because he was bleeding. Because he was showing me the wound. Because for the first time, I wasn't the only one drowning.

His eyes were moist, a tear threatening to spill over and roll down his cheek.

Was this man crazy? Was he stupid? How could he make assumptions based on one sentence overheard through a door? How could he destroy everything — my room, my peace, my sense of self — because of a fragment of conversation he didn't even understand?

I wanted to make him kneel longer.

I wanted to stand over him and list every cruel word, every shove, every time he had looked through me like I was glass. I wanted to make him feel the full weight of what he had done, to let him marinate in the fear that I would actually walk out and leave him with his whiskey and his silence and his empty flat.

But I couldn't see him like this.

Broken. Vulnerable. Begging.

It hurt worse than any of his cruelty.

I went to him — not gracefully, not with dignity, but with the desperate momentum of a woman who had already lost too much to pride. I dropped to my knees in front of him, my knees hitting the carpet hard, and I framed his face with my hands. My palms cradled his jaw, my thumbs brushing the tracks of tears he hadn't let fall, and I pressed my forehead against his.

"I'm not going anywhere," I whispered, my voice shaking. "Especially not leaving you."

He pulled back slightly, just enough to search my eyes. His gaze darted between them, hopeful and terrified all at once, like he was waiting for the punchline.

"So you forgive me?"

I looked at him — at the red rims of his eyes, at the mess of his hair, at the man who had knelt for me.

"I don't know if I forgive you," I said, and the honesty tasted like salt and copper. "But I can't leave you. I tried. I can't."

His eyes closed for a long moment, his chest shuddering with a breath he seemed to have been holding for years. When he opened them again, something had shifted — not resolved, not fixed, but acknowledged.

"Give me my room back," I said, my thumb tracing his cheekbone. "I want my own space. My own bed."

"Fine." His voice was hoarse, stripped raw. "I'll have her shift her things out. Give it a day or two. The room is yours."

I stared at him for a long moment, at the boy who had stolen my sanctuary and was now handing it back like a gift. My fingers slid into his hair — not a pat, not a ruffle, but a slow, deliberate grip at the nape of his neck, feeling the damp strands between my knuckles, the heat of his scalp beneath my palm.

"Good boy," I murmured.