Shashank

I still remember the way her eyes used to search for me in a crowded classroom, as if I was the only person that mattered. Megha was quiet, like me an introvert in a world too loud but when she smiled, the world turned bearable. I loved her. God knows I did. But love wasn’t enough. At least, that’s what I told myself when I broke her heart in our final year of school. I said I didn’t love her anymore. I said my parents would never approve. Lies. Half-truths. Excuses that tasted like poison every time I repeated them. The truth was, I was a coward. I chose fear over her.

Years passed. I convinced myself I’d moved on. Until fate dragged me to a wedding I never wanted to attend only to find her again. Megha. Older, stronger, even more beautiful than the girl I left behind. But when I saw her, reality cut deeper than any memory. She wasn’t mine anymore but someone else's.

And worse… she didn’t recognize me. She looked at me like I was just another guest, a stranger in a crowded room. Maybe that’s all I deserve to be in her life now.

Megha

Weddings. I’ve always hated them. Too much laughter, too many promises dressed in silk and gold, promises I no longer believe in. But when you’re the daughter of the family’s closest friend, you don’t get to stay away. So I came. I smiled. I pretended.

And then I saw him.

A face across the room. Familiar, yet blurred by time. Something about the way his eyes lingered on me, the chaos in my heart has me stumbled before my mind could catch up. Who was he? Why did he look at me like he’d known me all his life?

I shook it off. I’m not that girl anymore, the one who believed in forever, the one who begged for answers and cried for love that was never returned. I’ve built myself stronger since then. I’m months away from my marriage, from starting a new life that makes more sense.

Saathvik

When I first met Megha, she didn’t speak much about her past. But she didn’t need to I could see it in her eyes. There was a calmness there, the kind that only comes after surviving a storm.

I remember the day my family went to see her for marriage. My mother spoke endlessly, my father nodded with pride, and Megha sat composed, polite. But when I asked her if there was ever someone before me, she didn’t hesitate. She told me about him.

Shashank

No bitterness. No pain. Just a name. She spoke as if she was describing an old photograph that had faded with time someone she once knew, someone she no longer know. And when she said, “He’s nothing now,” I believed her.

Somewhere between that conversation and the days that followed, I found myself falling for her. Not because she was perfect, but because she was real. Strong, yet soft in ways she didn’t even notice. Every moment spent with her pulled me closer her quiet smile, her patience, her strength. By the time we got engaged, I wasn’t just fond of her… I was hers in ways I hadn’t been ready to admit.

But fate has its own cruel sense of irony.

The day I heard his name again at the wedding we were both attending  something inside me shifted. Shashank The same man who once broke her heart. The same man she spoke of. I caught sight of him across the hall, and I knew instantly who he was.

He looked at her the way a man looks at something he lost but still aches for. I saw it the guilt, the longing, the regret. And I knew, in that moment, that he wasn’t over her. Maybe he never would be.

I told myself I wouldn’t interfere. That Megha had moved on. That the past can’t harm what’s already healed. I’m not here to compete with her past I’m here to protect her from it. From the pain that once defined her. But as I watched him take a hesitant step toward her, a fire lit inside me protective, possessive, something I didn’t even know I was capable of feeling.

I won’t let him hurt her again.Not this time. Not when she’s mine.