VIKRAM'S POV

Three years, five months, twenty-two days. The numbers weren't just a count; they were the grooves worn into the stone of my heart, each one a testament to a sunrise I hadn't witnessed, a laugh I hadn't heard, a life I had foolishly let slip through my fingers. Arohi. Her name was a prayer on my lips and a curse in my soul. My best friend. My soul. The woman I had annihilated for a lie.

We were a sacred trinity once—Vinay, Arohi, and I. Our friendship was forged in the muddy puddles of the nursery school playground, tempered in the hallways of our school. We were an unbreakable circuit; the current of our shared joy flowed seamlessly between us. But then, Vinay and Arohi were called to mend broken bodies, their paths leading to medical college, while I was destined to balance ledgers in the hallowed halls of commerce.

The loneliness was a physical ache. The vast lecture halls echoed with their absence. And into that void stepped Nisha. She was our school-era nemesis, the sharp-edged contrast to Arohi's soft light. The bitterness between them was a family heirloom, passed down from a generation before: Arohi's father had abandoned a pregnant Radhika Aunty for Nisha's mother.

Nisha was a rebellion. A distraction. Our shared classes began with polite nods, evolved into shared notes, and then, into something I, in my profound foolishness, labeled as love. When she confessed, a part of me recoiled, but the louder, lonelier part saw a refuge. I said yes. And then, I committed the first of my great betrayals: I buried the truth. I became a secret-keeper, hiding my relationship from Arohi and Vinay, terrified that the truth would be the wrecking ball that shattered our perfect trio.

Five months into my charade, Arohi found me on the terrace of my house, the city lights sprawling beneath us like a bed of scattered jewels. The breeze played with her hair, and in her eyes, I saw a universe of hope.

"Vikram," she began, her voice a soft melody that tightened around my chest. "Do you ever feel like some people are written in the stars? Meant to be?"

My heart hammered against my ribs, a frantic bird in a cage of guilt. "Arohi..."

"I'm not just your friend," she interrupted, her gaze unwavering, brave and terrifyingly vulnerable. "I love you, Vikram. I think I have since I knew what the word meant. It's always been you."

The world tilted. Her words were the key to a paradise I was too blind to see, offered just as I had locked the gate from the inside. I fumbled, I stammered, I built a wall of hollow platitudes. "Our friendship... it's too precious, Arohi. I can't risk it. You deserve more than me."

It was the cruelest thing I could have done. By not telling her about Nisha, I left a crack of hope in the door I had just slammed. And Arohi, my beautiful, persistent Arohi, spent the next years trying to pry it back open. My days began with her "good morning" texts and ended with her "good night" calls. She would appear with containers of my favorite food, her smile a little too bright, her eyes holding a question I refused to answer. "I just wanted to make sure you ate," she'd say, her love a language she spoke in acts of service, a language I had become deaf to.

Years blurred into graduation. Vinay and Arohi became doctors—a dermatologist and a neurologist, their brilliance a given. I took the helm of the family business. Nisha chased the flashing lights of the modeling world. We still met, but our gatherings were a pale imitation of the past, haunted by the ghost of the truth I carried.

The reckoning came at a family dinner. The air was warm with laughter and the scent of spices. My father, his face crinkled with affection, raised his glass. "There is one announcement that fills my heart with the greatest joy," he boomed, his eyes twinkling as they landed on Arohi and me. "I cannot think of a more perfect union. It is time for Vikram and our dear Arohi to be married!"

The room erupted. Cheers, claps, tears of joy from everyone. Arohi's face was a mixture of shock and a dawning, radiant hope. And I felt the walls close in. My food turned to ash in my mouth.

"No," I choked out. The room fell silent. "I... I can't."

The questions came like gunfire. "Why?" "What's wrong?" "Is this a joke, beta?"

Cornered, panicked, I chose the path of greatest destruction. "Because I'm with someone else! I'm with Nisha. I have been for years."

The silence that followed was heavier than any noise. And then, as if my words had summoned the devil herself, Nisha and her family walked in, uninvited. The scene unraveled into a tapestry of venom. Insults were slung at Arohi, at Radhika Aunty. I stood paralyzed, a puppet watching its own play burn.

But when Nisha's mother hissed a particularly vile remark about Radhika Aunty's character, Arohi broke.

"You will not speak of my mother!" Arohi's voice, usually so gentle, was a whip-crack of raw, generational pain. "You, who had a child out of wedlock with a married man? You are the illegitimate one, and your mother is a home-wrecker who destroyed a family!"

In that suspended moment, I saw the fury in Nisha's eyes, the triumph in her mother's. And something in me, some stupid, misplaced sense of obligation to the lie I was living, snapped. My arm moved of its own volition.

The sound was like the breaking of the world. My palm connected with Arohi's cheek.

Time stopped. Her head snapped to the side. A stark, red handprint bloomed on her skin, a brand of my ultimate betrayal. She didn't make a sound. Slowly, she turned her gaze back to me. The stars in her eyes, the ones that had looked at me with so much love just moments before, were extinguished. They were just... empty. Hollow. She looked at me as if I were a stranger, a monster. Then, without a word, she turned and walked away. Vinay, his face a mask of disgust, followed without a backward glance.

The silence they left behind was deafening. My father looked at me as if he didn't know me.