Page 136 of Scars and Crowns

For seven years, she has carried this alone. For seven years, she has woken up every morning and lived around a wound no one else could see.

Tonight, she finally put some of its weight into my hands.

And I don't know whether I can ever forgive myself for how long she had to wait before someone helped her carry it. But I know one thing. I will not give it back.

TALKING

ANAMIKA

The car is parked beneath the old gulmohar trees behind the palace, the engine long switched off. Yuvaan sent the driver home for the night the moment we left the gala, telling him he wouldn't be needed again. Now the windows are dark mirrors around us, the city moving somewhere beyond them in distant headlights and occasional horns, but inside the car everything feels strangely still.

I'm curled against Yuvaan's side, my cheek resting against his shoulder, and for the first time in seven years, the secret doesn't feel like something lodged beneath my ribs.

It doesn't feel gone. I don't think something like this ever simply goes away. It just feels . . . shared.

My body is exhausted in a way I can't explain. Every muscle feels heavy, my eyes burn, and there is a strange emptiness where the constant vigilance used to sit. I've spent so long guarding every detail of my past that I don't know what to do with myself now that someone else knows it too.

"I filed a complaint." The words come quietly. Yuvaan's arm tightens around me, but he doesn't interrupt. "Two days after it happened."

I stare through the window at nothing in particular. "I remember sitting outside the police station for almost twenty minutes because I couldn't make myself walk through the door. I kept thinking that if I stood up and went inside, I'd have to say everything out loud. I'd have to make it real."

My fingers twist together in my lap. "But eventually I went in." I swallow. "I gave them my statement." I can still see the room. The dusty fan turning overhead. The chipped edge of the desk. The officer barely looking at me while I spoke, as though I was describing something that had happened to somebody else.

"He didn't even look up properly." My voice catches. "I remember thinking . . . is this really all this is worth? I'm sitting here trying to explain the worst thing that's ever happened to me, and he's checking something on his desk like I'm wasting his time."

Yuvaan's jaw tightens beside me. "A week later, they called." I laugh once, but there is nothing amused in it. "They told me the case was closed." His hand stills in my hair. "No investigation. No questions. Nobody came to see me again. Nothing."

I take a slow breath. "I found out later that his father was a state minister. Someone made a phone call, and that was apparently enough." I look down at my hands. "That's it. One phone call, and the thing that had completely destroyed my life became a closed file." My throat burns. "Seven years of my life changed in one night. And according to them, it was over in a week." Yuvaan doesn't say anything.

He doesn't need to.

I can feel the anger in the way his fingers have curled against my arm, the effort it takes for him to keep it contained. But he doesn't turn this into his fury. He doesn't make me comfort him for what I'm telling him.

He just stays. So I keep going. "I didn't tell anyone at college." My voice gets quieter. "I couldn't." I remember those days more clearly than I want to.

The corridors.

The classrooms.

His friends laughing outside the cafeteria. Every familiar face suddenly feeling like a possible threat. "Some of my friends knew him. Not closely, maybe, but enough. And I was terrified that if I told the wrong person, he'd find out."

I rub my thumb over the edge of my wedding ring. "So I went to class." I let out a shaky breath. "I submitted assignments. I sat through lectures. I came home to that tiny room and shut the door behind me."

My eyes sting. "And then I did it again the next day." I don't know why I remember that part so vividly.

Maybe because surviving something enormous is rarely dramatic. Sometimes it's just getting out of bed. Sometimes it's washing your face. Sometimes it's forcing yourself to eat half a piece of toast because you haven't eaten since yesterday.

"I don't think I was really living then," I whisper. "I was just moving." Yuvaan's hand finds mine. His fingers slip between mine and hold on. "And then I found out I was pregnant."

The words hang between us. "I didn't know for almost two months." I close my eyes. "Part of me was in denial. Part of me just didn't want to look too closely at what my body was telling me." My voice becomes smaller. "When I finally found out, I went to a clinic."

I can still see the waiting room. The pale walls. The plastic chairs. The woman beside me filling out a form while I sat there staring at my own hands.

"I sat there for four hours."

"Four?"

I nod. "I couldn't make the appointment." I give a tiny, helpless shrug. "I don't know why. Even now, I don't have any beautiful explanation for it. I went there intending to end the pregnancy, and then I just . . . couldn't." My eyes fill. "I left."