Advik grabbed my hand.

His grip was iron-tight, his fingers crushing my bones, his jaw set like stone. He dragged me toward the exit, through the stunned silence of the crowd, past the security guard who suddenly found something very interesting to look at on his phone. He pushed me into the car and slammed the door hard enough to make the frame shudder.

I tried to calm him. I reached for his arm, my fingers brushing the sleeve where Sahil's fist had landed.

I could feel his rage vibrating through every inch of him — a live wire, a bomb, a pressure cooker with the valve welded shut. His knuckles were white on the steering wheel. A muscle jumped in his temple. He was breathing through his nose, slow and deliberate, and each exhale sounded like a threat.

He didn't beat Sahil.

He wanted to. I could see it in the way his eyes had tracked Sahil's retreating back, calculating the distance, measuring the time. But he didn't. Because he knew I wouldn't have liked it. Because for the first time in his life, he was choosing what I wanted over what he needed.

And somehow, that made the car ride home feel more dangerous than any punch ever could.

When we reached the flat, he didn't bother with the lights. He lifted me into his arms without a word, bridal-style, his grip fierce and shaking, and carried me up the stairs like I was something he had stolen and was afraid to put down. Inside the bedroom, he laid me down on the bed — not gentle, not rough, but desperate, like he needed me under his hands to believe I was still his.

He removed his jacket, tossing it aside, and kissed me.

Hard enough to bruise. Hard enough to erase every trace of Sahil's words, his touch, his memory. His mouth was a brand, a punishment, a prayer — all at once. I felt it in my bones, the way he was trying to crawl inside my skin just to make sure no one else had left a mark.

But he suddenly stopped.

He pulled back, his breathing ragged, his hands trembling where they gripped the sheets on either side of me. He didn't look at me. His eyes were fixed on some distant point beyond my shoulder, his chest heaving like he was fighting a war inside himself that I couldn't see.

"Advik?"

He didn't answer. He just hung his head, his hair falling over his eyes, his shoulders sagging under a weight I couldn't name.

"Talk to me." My voice cracked. "Please."

A long silence. Then —

"He was right."

His voice was barely a whisper, broken and hollow, like it had been dragged out of him against his will.

"I played with others while you were right there. I hurt you. I called you a burden because I was too much of a coward to admit what you meant to me." His hands tightened on the sheets, his knuckles white. "And now that I have you... I'm terrified that his words are true. That I'll swallow your light. That I'll make you lose every color until you don't recognize yourself anymore."

And then he was gone.

Not physically — he was still hovering over me, still caging me in — but mentally, he had retreated to some dark corner where I couldn't reach him. He sat back on the edge of the bed, his shoulders hunched, staring at the floor like it held the answers he was too afraid to find.

I went to him.

Slowly. Deliberately. I crawled across the mattress and into his lap, my knees settling on either side of his hips, my hands resting on his shoulders. Our faces were inches apart now. Close enough to share breath. Close enough to see the storm raging in his eyes — the fear, the shame, the desperate hope that I would run before he could destroy me.

He looked stunned.

He didn't expect this. Not now. Not when he had just bared his ugliest fears and handed me the knife to cut him loose.

I started kissing his neck.

Slow. Soft. Trailing my lips along the column of his throat, feeling his pulse hammering wildly beneath my mouth — frantic, erratic, alive. I noticed his Adam's apple move, bobbing with a hard swallow. I kissed it, lingered there, and gave it a long, deliberate lick, tasting the salt of his skin and the faint trace of rain from the outside air.

His hands found my waist.

Not pulling. Not pushing. Just holding on, his fingers digging in like I was the only thing keeping him from drifting away.

"Hazel." My name came out strangled, raw. "You should hate me."

I pulled back just enough to look at him. Really look at him — at the red rims of his eyes, at the bruise blooming on his jaw where Sahil's fist had landed, at the boy who had spent his whole life breaking things before they could break him.

"I tried," I whispered. "I really tried."

Then I kissed him.

Not like he had kissed me — not desperate or punishing. Soft. Deliberate. A promise that I was still here, that I had heard every ugly thing he said about himself, and I was choosing him anyway.

His arms wrapped around me, crushing me against his chest, and I felt the first tremor rack through him — a shudder that started in his shoulders and traveled down his spine like an earthquake. He buried his face in my neck, his breath hot and ragged against my skin, and he held me like a drowning man who had finally reached the shore.

"Don't leave," he whispered into my hair. "Please. Even when I make it impossible. Even when I deserve it. Don't leave."

I didn't answer.

I just held him tighter, my fingers threading through his hair, my heart beating against his, and let the silence say everything I couldn't.

Advik's grip tightened around the bedsheet, his knuckles whitening.

"What are you doing?"

"Proving that I choose this myself." I pulled back just enough to meet his eyes, my fingers threading through his hair. "You don't get to decide what is right and wrong for me."

I held his gaze, unflinching.

"I accept I hurt him. If I look back at it clearly, I used him to make you jealous. So we both deserve his bitterness. But that doesn't mean he is always right."

"So you used him, huh."