I threw up in the coffee shop bathroom.
Not because I was sick. Because I was scared. The kind of scared that lives in your bones, that makes your hands shake and your vision blur and your stomach empty itself whether you want it to or not.
Someone was watching me.
Someone had been inside my apartment—or close enough to take a photograph through my window. Someone knew where I lived, where I slept, where I changed my clothes and brushed my teeth and cried into my pillow at 2 AM.
Someone had been there.
And I hadn't even known.
I splashed water on my face. Looked at myself in the mirror. My reflection stared back—pale, wide-eyed, lipstick long since faded. I looked like a ghost. Or someone about to become one.
Get it together, Maya. You can fall apart later. Right now, you need to think.
I dried my face with a paper towel. Took three deep breaths. Opened the door.
Aarav was waiting outside, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed. The three men in suits were gone. The coffee shop was empty—the other customers had cleared out sometime in the last ten minutes, probably scared off by the men in sunglasses.
"The photograph," I said. "Your father—"
"He's been watching you for months." Aarav's voice was flat. Emotionless. Like he was reciting facts instead of confessing something terrifying. "Ever since I started looking for you, he's had people following you. Tracking you. Making sure you didn't... make trouble."
"Making sure I didn't find out the truth."
"Yes."
I pressed my back against the wall. The cold seeped through my shirt, grounding me. "Why are you telling me this? You could have just... not shown up that night. You could have let me keep living in the dark."
Aarav pushed off the wall. Took a step toward me. Close. Too close. Close enough that I could smell him—something clean and woodsy, something that made my chest ache even though I didn't want it to.
"Because the dark is killing me," he said. "And I thought—I hoped—maybe you could help me find the light."
"That's a terrible line."
He almost smiled. Almost. "I know. I've never been good with words."
"Then show me." I don't know why I said it. I don't know where the words came from. But once they were out, I couldn't take them back. "Show me you mean it. Show me you're different from them."
Aarav looked at me for a long moment. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a key.
"My apartment," he said. "I have files there. Documents. Everything my father tried to hide. The real results of the clinical trial. The names of everyone involved. The payments. The cover-ups."
I stared at the key. "You want me to come to your apartment."
"I want you to see the truth."
"And if I say no?"
He shrugged. "Then I'll burn it all. Every piece of evidence. Every confession. Everything I've spent five years collecting." He met my eyes. "But I won't stop trying to find another way. I won't stop trying to make this right. Even if you never speak to me again."
"You barely know me."
"I know enough."
"You don't know anything about me."
"I know you're wearing mismatched socks," he said. "One blue, one gray. I know you bite your lip when you're nervous. I know you almost didn't come back here today—you stood outside for seven minutes before you walked in."
I stared at him. "How do you know that?"
"Because I was watching."
My heart stopped. Then started again, faster than before. "That's not—that's not romantic, Aarav. That's stalking."
"I know." He didn't look away. Didn't apologize. Didn't do anything but stand there, waiting, with his hand outstretched and his heart—I don't know—maybe his heart was doing the same thing mine was. Breaking and healing at the same time. Terrified and hopeful and completely out of control.
"Give me the key," I said.
He placed it in my palm. His fingers lingered against my skin.
And I felt it again—that spark. That connection. That impossible, inexplicable pull toward someone who should have been my enemy.
What is wrong with me?
What is wrong with him?
What is wrong with both of us?
His apartment was nothing like I expected.
I don't know what I thought—maybe something cold and corporate, all glass and steel and expensive things arranged just so. But this... this was different.
Books everywhere. Stacked on tables, piled on the floor, crammed into shelves that bowed under the weight. A guitar in the corner, missing a string. Dishes in the sink—not because he was messy, but because he'd been too busy to wash them. A photograph on the wall of a woman who looked like him, older, softer, with kind eyes and a tired smile.
"Your mother?" I asked.
He nodded. "She died when I was nineteen. Cancer."
"I'm sorry."
"It was quick. Three months from diagnosis to..." He trailed off. Shook his head. "I'm still not sure if that's better or worse."
"Worse," I said quietly. "Watching someone fade slowly—it's worse."
He looked at me. Something passed between us—understanding, maybe. Recognition. Two people who knew what it was like to lose someone they loved, who knew the shape grief carved into a person, who knew that some wounds never really healed.
"Your mother's room was next to mine in the ICU," Aarav said. "I used to hear you talking to her. Through the wall."
I froze. "You heard me?"
"Every night. You'd read to her. Old stories. Children's books. Things she used to read to you when you were little."
"The Little Prince," I whispered. "Charlotte's Web."
"Goodnight Moon." He smiled—a real smile this time, small and sad and beautiful. "You read Goodnight Moon to her the night she died."
I didn't remember that. I didn't remember much from that night—just the beeping of the machines, the coldness of her hands, the way the nurse had looked at me with pity I couldn't stand.
"You were listening," I said. "All that time. You were listening."
"I couldn't help it." He moved deeper into the apartment, toward a door at the end of the hall. "The walls were thin. And your voice... it was the only thing that made sense in a world that had stopped making sense."
I followed him. I shouldn't have. Every instinct I had was screaming at me to leave, to run, to get as far away from this man and his secrets as possible.
But my feet kept moving.
My heart kept beating.
My hands kept reaching for him, even though I wasn't touching him at all.
He opened the door.
Inside was a small room—an office, maybe, or a study. But instead of a desk or a computer, the room was filled with files. Boxes and boxes of files, stacked to the ceiling, labeled with names and dates and medical terms I didn't understand.
"What is all this?" I asked.
"The truth," Aarav said. "Every clinical trial Ahuja Industries has run in the last ten years. Every death. Every cover-up. Every lie we've told to protect the company."
"We?"
He looked at me. His eyes were dark, unreadable, full of things he couldn't say.
"My father isn't just the head of the company," he said. "He's the one who started all of this. The fake trials. The bribed doctors. The deaths." He swallowed. "And I helped him. For years, I helped him."
"Why?"
"Because he's my father. Because I wanted his approval. Because I was young and stupid and I didn't want to believe that the man who taught me to ride a bike was capable of..." He stopped. Pressed his palm against the wall. "I don't expect you to understand."
"I understand more than you think."
He turned to look at me. "How?"
"Because my mother wasn't perfect either." I walked over to one of the boxes. Ran my fingers over the label. Clinical Trial 7B. Subject 14. Meera Sharma. "She drank too much after my father left. She said things she didn't mean. She pushed me away when I needed her most."
"But you still loved her."
"Of course I loved her." My voice cracked. "She was my mother."
Aarav moved closer. Slowly. Carefully. Like he was approaching something fragile.
"And if you found out she'd done something terrible?" he asked. "Something unforgivable? Would you still love her then?"
I thought about it. Really thought about it.
"I don't know," I said honestly. "But I'd want to know the truth. Even if it destroyed me."
He stopped in front of me. Close. So close I could see the flecks of gold in his eyes, the small scar above his eyebrow, the way his chest rose and fell with every breath.
"The truth will destroy you," he said.
"Maybe." I looked up at him. "But so will the lies."
Something broke in his expression. Something he'd been holding together for a long time. His hand came up—slow, trembling—and touched my face. The same way he'd touched me that night in the rain. Cold fingers. Gentle pressure. The ghost of a touch that felt like everything.
"Okay," he whispered. "Okay."
And then he kissed me.
CLIFFHANGER:
I kissed him back.
For one perfect, terrible moment, I kissed him back.
And then—
"Aarav." A voice from the doorway. A woman's voice. Cold. Familiar. "I see you've found her."
I pulled away.
Standing in the doorway was a woman I recognized. A woman I'd seen in photographs. A woman I'd read about in articles and interviews and gossip columns.
Aarav's sister.
And the woman my ex-boyfriend Rohan was currently dating.
"Maya," the woman said, smiling. "We need to talk."