Page 96 of Scars and Crowns

"Proof that you were real."

My vision blurs. I carefully set the box beside me before my shaking hands drop it altogether. My chest hurts. Not painfully. Just . . . Too full.

"Yuvaan . . . " His name breaks apart somewhere between my heart and my throat. I shake my head slowly. "What is all this?"

I gesture helplessly toward the box. "The photographs in your wallet . . . " I pause. "The things you've kept . . . " My breath stutters. "The way you called me your soulmate like it was the most ordinary thing in the world . . . "

My voice trembles.

"No more showing me." I hold his gaze. "Please." My throat tightens around the next words. "I need you to tell me." Silence settles between us. I watch him do something achingly familiar. The same thing I've watched him do since we were children. He grows still. Not because he doesn't know what to say. Because he cares too much about saying it right.

He always has. When Yuvaan speaks carelessly, it's about weather or meetings or dinner. When he falls silent first . . . Whatever comes next matters. His jaw shifts once. He draws a slow breath. Then he looks directly into my eyes. "I love you."

Everything inside me stops.

No speeches. No dramatic declarations. No rehearsed confession.

Just three simple words. Steady. Certain. True.

He lets them exist between us without rushing to fill the silence afterward. "I have loved you . . . " His voice softens. " . . . for as long as I can remember." A tiny smile appears. "I just didn't have the vocabulary for it when we were children."

He glances briefly toward the open box. "It wasn't something that started when you came back."

"It never stopped while you were gone." His eyes return to mine. "I loved you when I put that chain in your palm at twenty-three and convinced myself I was only giving you something to remember home by." A quiet laugh escapes him. "I wasn't fooling anyone."

"Least of all myself." He shakes his head. "I loved you every year after that."

"In every proposal I turned down."

"In every birthday I quietly wondered where you were."

"In every festival that felt just a little too quiet."

His gaze flickers toward the box again. "This . . . " His fingertips brush the lid. " . . . was never about refusing to let go of the past." his lips trembles. "It was because you never became my past." My breath stills. "You were simply . . . " He searches for the right words. " . . . missing." My tears spill before I realise they're falling. I don't wipe them away. I can't.

Everything I'd spent seven years carefully burying rises all at once. Every lonely train ride. Every birthday. Every night I'd convinced myself he'd forgotten me. Every single one suddenly feels different. Different because he hadn't forgotten. Not once.

"Why?" The question comes out broken. Small. Almost frightened. He looks at me immediately.

"Why me?" I whisper. "I left." An ache blooms in my heart. "I walked away."

"I came back carrying a life you knew nothing about." My voice shakes harder now. "I came back tired."

"So tired." I repeat.

"I'm not the girl you grew up with anymore." I look down at my own hands. "They're different."

"So am I." I laugh once through the tears. Humourless. "I don't even recognise myself some mornings." My chest feels unbearably heavy. "I came back with scars you still haven't seen."

"A past I still can't tell you."

"A daughter."

"So much fear."

"So much damage."

I lift my eyes to his again. They're overflowing now. "What is there left to love, Yuvaan?" The words crack apart as they leave me. "What could possibly still make me worth loving . . . like this?"