Chapter 20
TWENTY
Advik
I blink awake with a strange heaviness pressing into my chest. Not pain—not initially. But panic. The leftover kind. Like I’ve just lived through a nightmare and only now remembered how to breathe.
The first thing I see is light. White, sterile light that pierces straight into my skull. My eyes instinctively want to shut again.
The next thing I feel is a tug in my hair.
Gentle. Familiar.
I tilt my head slightly, wincing at the stiffness in my neck.
I’m in a hospital bed, for sure. Monitors beeping somewhere close.
My skin smells like antiseptic and blood.
But what arrests my attention is the beautiful, scarred woman with her cheek pressed to my hand—her fingers threaded through my hair.
Even asleep, mouth parted, dried drool darkening the edge of my hand—fuck, she’s still stunning.
But then it hits me.
Why I’m here. Why there’s pain. Why there’s her.
I remember the red dot. How it jittered across her body. The pure fucking terror. The only thought in my head being: push her out of the way.
Then... nothing.
Did I fall? Did I hit my head?
My eyes dart to the bandage on my shoulder.
Right. The shot. I’m fine, maybe. Judging by how I can still move. But I remember the pain. I remember her eyes when I dropped. She’s going to fucking kill me for this.
I sigh.
Another jolt of panic sizzles through my ribs at the thought of my brother being here. He’s my emergency contact.
I strain my neck—slowly—scanning the room.
Empty.
Relief floods me.
But apparently all my movement was enough to rouse the sleeping panther.
Wrong. Explode the panther.
She jumps to her feet like she’s ready to engage, one hand flying to her waist. Is she always carrying? Even in a hospital?
Her eyes land on mine, still wide with disbelief... quickly morphing into something unreadable. Guarded. Uncharacteristically wary.
“Hey,” she whispers, voice surprisingly soft. “Pain?”
I blink. Then register it. Yes. My shoulder burns like a red-hot iron is embedded in it.
“I’m...” I croak. “It’s fine.”
She nods, immediately reaching for a cup with a straw and guiding it to my mouth. I sip with effort, but the cool water helps ease the sandpaper panic scratching down my throat.
“Do you remember anything?” she asks, slipping on that tight, professional frown I’ve grown used to.
“I... remember running to you. The shot. Then... nothing.”
She lets out a quiet sigh. One that sounds too much like relief.
“What...” I start, then pause. What do I want to know? Time? Day? “...time is it?”
She glances at her watch. “Next day. 7 a.m. You’ve been out for about... fourteen hours.”
“Oh,” I exhale. “Does my fam—”
The door opens before I can finish. A middle-aged nurse walks in with a clipboard and the kind of cheerful tone I want to strangle.
“Oh great! You’re awake.”
I offer a tight smile. “Yeah...”
She turns to Aadya, who’s now stepped away from the bed and stands alert beside it.
“So...” The nurse scans her pad, then looks at me, “Mr. Advik, are you comfortable discussing your medical status in front of—”
“Aadya Gupta,” she says flatly.
I nod.
The nurse nods, cheerful still. “Perfect. Now that we know your identity, we were able to gather your medical history...”
My heart drops. My stomach knots. Please don’t.
“So we now know what caused the complications during the surgery.”
Fuck.
I frown, but she barrels on. “The GSW wasn’t fatal—clean entry and exit, no arteries hit. But what wasn’t clean was your heart’s response to the trauma. But now we know why.”
No. Stop this.
“With the sedation levels interacting with your cardiac response—and given the drug toxicity that occurred about three months ago—”
No no no.
I’m shaking my head. But I can’t be sure.
My chest tightens. My ears start to ring. The panic that was lingering at the edge of my breath now locks around my windpipe.
I glance at Greesha. She’s frozen.
“We realized your heart suffered damage. So we checked cardiac enzymes—troponin levels were elevated. You’ve likely been living with silent myocardial scarring.”
“Stop,” I whisper with numbness. It barely leaves my lips.
The nurse continues as if she didn’t hear me. Maybe she didn’t. “When you overdosed and went into cardiac stress—the minor infarction—we think that left scar tissue.”
I close my eyes. My throat closes with them.
“...not enough to show symptoms. But yesterday, your heart was triggered into ventricular fibrillation. That’s what caused you to code during surgery.”
She’s smiling. Smiling. Like she just solved a puzzle on a game show. And I’m dying despite the fucking... scar tissue.
“But now that we know, we’ll monitor your recovery very closely.”
She touches the top of my blanket near my feet, totally blind to the horror she’s just cracked wide open.
“We haven’t contacted your family yet. Since the police were involved...” she glances briefly at Aadya, “...we wanted to wait until you were fully lucid. Do you want us to reach out to your emergency contact?”
She finally leans closer, expecting an answer. But I can barely breathe.
“Please leave,” I manage with a shake of my head.
The nurse startles. “Oh. Okay. Just let us know when you’re ready.”
I force my neck to move. She leaves. And the door closes behind her with an airless finality.
Greesha hasn’t moved. Her spine stiff, her arms locked, her eyes somewhere I can’t see. Processing. Calculating.
Dreading.
She knows now. Everything.
The overdose. The damage. The war I’ve fought that seems embarrassingly stupid now.
Her shoulders lower slightly on an exhale, but I don’t get sadness. Or pity. Or even anger.
Instead, I get the cold press of a gun barrel to my forehead within a blink of my eye. She’s hovering over me.
Her hand trembling. Her body trembling. Her eyes locked to mine with the kind of pain I’ve only ever seen in the movies.
“Gree—”
But I don’t finish.
Because behind the rage, behind the reflex, behind the very real weapon she’s pressed to my skull...
She’s unraveling.
And I think that means she still cares.
So I wait.
Wait for her to shift, to lock the emotions back behind her eyes, to go blank like she always does when things get messy.
But she doesn’t.
She just keeps staring. Unmoving. Unblinking. The disbelief carved deep across her face.
I don’t dare smile, and shake my head—a gesture I’ve known to calm her down. Something tells me if I do that, she might actually pull the trigger.
Silence stretches between us, heavy and loud. Until her voice cracks through it, hoarse and wrecked.
“Why?”
God, the pain in her voice. It twists through my chest like wire. Her face is a pulsing beat of crumpling and hardness—every inch, every corner.
Her scar slicing her brow and cheek is now a twisted barb etched onto her face.
She cares.
A foolish, wet laugh punches out of me before I can stop it. Broken with disbelief and hope. It rattles my ribs and sets my shoulder on fire. I wince, groaning.
She notices. Concern flickers across her features, and the barrel of her gun disappears from my forehead.
She backs away—briefly—then paces, tense and jerky, before collapsing into the chair again like her limbs don’t know what to do with her rage.
“I didn’t want you to find out, Gree,” I say quietly. “Not like this.”
Her eyes snap to mine. Cold again. Detached. But her voice betrays her.
“Why?” she repeats. This time, calmer. But still pained.
I exhale. My voice low. “It was... a lot of things. Khushi. You. My blunder with Aarohi. Khushi Joshi. I was failing with everyone. I kept letting people down. Baby, I—”
Her head jerks like I held a gun to her.
Shit. Shouldn’t have called her that.
I swallow hard, backtracking mentally, but it’s too late. I used that word. Her name. That term of endearment.
Her jaw ticks. The vein at her temple pulses. I don’t know what she’s going to do.
“You...” Her voice is thick, lips pressing together like she’s holding back tears. “You thought taking a bullet would fix it?”
“No!” My panic surges. “God, no. Yesterday had nothing to do with that. I’m not in that place anymore. I’m not.”
I push myself up with a grunt, the pain searing, but I force the words out anyway.
“Don’t pity me. Don’t... don’t look at me like that.”
She doesn’t blink. Doesn’t move.
“You tried to—”
“Kill myself?” I cut in bitterly. “Yes. I did. But it wasn’t just about you. You weren’t the only reason. You weren’t even the trigger. The problem was...” I trail off, unable to finish.
She’s staring at me like she’s solving an equation she doesn’t want the answer to. I can see it hit her—something I said, maybe something she remembered.
Her lips part.
“The problem was much larger than that,” she murmurs.
And I know exactly what she’s thinking.
She remembers. The conversation she overheard—with me and Ishika.
I nod solemnly. “Tad bit, yeah.”
She pushes out of the chair like it’s suddenly on fire. Like stillness is costing her something vital—her control, maybe.
She turns to face me, and for a split second, I catch her eyes. They’re unreadable. Hardened like always. But under it—God—there’s something too close to love. If I weren’t semi-drugged and stitched up, I think I’d have dropped to my knees.
“Greesha,” I say, my voice rasping. “I’m... sorry.”
She winces.
Eyes shut. Jaw clenched. Like this apology is the only one she’s ever allowed herself to accept. And it hurts to hear it.
“I never wanted to burden you with this,” I add. “It’s over. Please... believe me. Please.”
But she’s already walked too far from the bed, past the reach of my hand. Past the reach of comfort.
Her eyes open slowly. Those impossibly dark eyes that go golden in sunlight. Right now, they’re pleading. And I hate it.
“Don’t,” she croaks. Then clears her throat, steadying herself. “Don’t ever do it again.”
And I don’t know if she means the bullet or the overdose. But it doesn’t matter. The way her voice almost breaks—I understand either way.
The real hit comes when she whispers again.
“Please.”
A single word. Small. But it cracks like a faultline. Draining everything from me.
It costs her to say it—I can tell. It’s not a demand. Not a threat. It’s a goddamn prayer. And I’m not sure I deserve it.
The most I can do is nod. But even that isn’t something I’m able to summon. I’m not speechless. I’m just... unable to provide the solace that I once could, to her. Even without words.
So I bow my head. Like it might count for something. Like she might see it as an oath.
She turns to leave.
But just before the door swings open, she pauses in the threshold—shoulders rigid, back still to me. Hand on the knob.
And then, so quietly I almost think I imagined it, she says:
“I don’t do grief. I can’t. So you don’t get to die.”
And then she’s gone.