The rain came that night again.Not as thunder or drama — just the soft, relentless kind that seeps into everything, until even silence feels wet.
Meera's apartment smelled faintly of coffee and developer fluid — a mix of her two worlds. She had tried to work after leaving the café, but her hands wouldn't steady on the camera. Every click of the shutter sounded too loud, too deliberate. Every image she framed looked like someone trying too hard to prove she was okay.
She set the camera down and sat on the floor.
For months, she had survived on controlled numbness — order, schedules, work. But confrontation had a way of reopening what time tried to cauterize.Hearing him admit the things she'd buried, saying them out loud, with that hollow sincerity… it had shaken something loose.
For hours, she just sat there, back against the wall, staring at the ceiling. She didn't cry — not at first. Then one small sound escaped, something halfway between a breath and a sob.And that was enough.
The dam broke.
Tears came without warning — heavy, uneven, ugly. The kind that hurt your ribs because they weren't only about sadness, but exhaustion, fear, and the ghosts of choices you never really made.
She cried for the girl who had once been flattered by attention that felt like protection.She cried for the woman who had to learn how to be alone without mistaking silence for peace.And somewhere, she cried for him — not out of love, but for what he could have been if he'd known how to love without control.
By the time her body ran out of tears, the clock read 2:47 a.m. The storm outside had softened to drizzle. The city was a quiet hum.
Then — a knock.
Soft, hesitant.Once.Twice.Then silence.
Her breath hitched. She almost didn't move. But some instinct — the kind that remembers patterns long after logic rejects them — pulled her to the door.
When she opened it, he was there.Aarav.
Soaked through. Shirt clinging to his skin, hair plastered to his forehead. But it wasn't the old version of him — not composed, not sharp-edged. He looked wrecked, human, trembling.
"I'm sorry," he said first, his voice raw. "I shouldn't be here. But when you left… you looked like you couldn't breathe."
She stared at him, half in shock, half in disbelief. "So you followed me?"
He shook his head quickly. "No. I just… walked. And somehow ended up here."
Her anger didn't come — only confusion. "You're shivering. Come in before you drown in guilt out there."
He hesitated, then stepped inside. The room filled with the smell of rain and the faint warmth of electricity from the desk lamp.
They stood awkwardly, like two people occupying a space that remembered too much of them.
Meera grabbed a towel and threw it at him. "Sit," she said quietly. "And don't say anything dramatic."
He almost smiled. "I won't."
For a while, there was nothing but the sound of rain tapping against glass.Aarav sat on the couch, drying his hair with clumsy, nervous movements. Meera made coffee — strong, black, the way she liked it — and placed a mug in front of him.
He didn't touch it. "You were right," he said softly. "About everything."
"I know," she replied.
"No," he said, shaking his head. "You don't. You think I only wanted control. And maybe that's true. But when I said I couldn't stand seeing you hurt — that was real. It doesn't excuse anything. I just… needed you to know it wasn't all manipulation. Some of it was fear. Some of it was love I didn't know how to give without breaking things."
Meera looked at him — at his wet hands, his eyes rimmed red. This wasn't the calculated Aarav she'd known. This was the aftermath of him.
"Why are you telling me this now?" she asked. "You already said sorry."
He stared into the steam of the untouched mug. "Because I realized apologies don't heal. Actions do. But I don't know what action looks like when you're not allowed to fix things anymore."
The line cut straight through her.
For a long time, she didn't answer. She just sat beside him, both of them looking at nothing.It wasn't forgiveness. It wasn't reconciliation. It was shared exhaustion — the kind that happens after every storm when there's nothing left to destroy.
At some point, she realized his breathing had evened out. He'd fallen asleep, head tilted against the couch, fingers still curled loosely around the mug.
She could have woken him. Could have told him to leave. But something inside her — the same part that had spent so long hating him — softened for just one night.
She placed a blanket over him, brushed his damp hair back, and whispered,
"You don't get to fix me. But you can rest now."
He didn't stir.Maybe he didn't hear her.Or maybe he did.
When dawn came, the rain had stopped.Aarav was gone.
On the table sat his untouched coffee and a folded napkin, ink smeared from water.Two words scrawled across it in his uneven handwriting:
Thank you.