I pulled back slightly, my breath catching in my throat as I looked up at Anup with wide, tear-filled eyes. His words—I love you—still echoed through my chest like a trembling prayer, but something had changed in the air between us. The warmth in his gaze hadn't faded, yet there was a crack in it now... a tremor beneath the surface.
A shadow crept in behind his eyes.
A heaviness that didn't belong in this moment.
It wasn't anger. It wasn't hesitation or regret. No, this was older—something deeply buried and worn from being carried too long. A quiet ache that had finally reached the surface.
My brows drew together, and a sharp thread of worry tugged at my heart. The warmth of the garden suddenly felt colder. Distant.
"Anup...?" I whispered, my voice already beginning to tremble. "What is it?"
He didn't speak. Not immediately. His gaze dropped to where his thumbs moved in slow, absent circles against my arms, as though he needed the motion to keep his hands from shaking. The silence that stretched between us grew louder with every heartbeat, until it pressed down on me like a storm cloud ready to break.
"I need to tell you something," he said finally, his voice barely audible—rough, like it had to be dragged out of the pit of his soul. "Something I should've told you a long time ago."
My heart skipped. Then raced.
I searched his eyes, trying to read what he couldn't yet say. "What do you mean?" My voice had shrunk to a whisper, barely more than breath. "Anup, what's going on? Is something... is something wrong?"
He looked away for a second, jaw tightening, like the truth physically hurt to hold inside him. When his eyes returned to mine, they were glistening. Full of conflict. And love. So much love it hurt to look at it.
"But fate..." he whispered, his voice cracking at the edges. "Fate is cruel, Harshita."
I felt his hands tighten around mine as though he needed to ground himself—to tether to something real before the storm hit.
"Because... two months ago, I was diagnosed with blood cancer."
The words dropped like thunder in the silence. For a moment, the world stopped turning. The floor vanished beneath my feet. The soft hum of life around us faded, drowned by a deafening silence in my ears. It felt like everything—the warmth of his touch, the very breath in my lungs—was pulled away in a single cruel heartbeat.
"No," I whispered, shaking my head in disbelief. "No. No, Anup... no."
I stumbled back half a step, my body refusing to process what my heart already feared. Tears spilled down my cheeks without permission, hot and relentless.
This couldn't be happening. Not now. Not after everything. When I had finally allowed myself to believe that someone might stay... that someone might actually love me and not leave me in pieces.But fate—fate had other plans. It hadn't done enough damage already. No, it had to rip this from me too.
"I'm so sorry," Anup said, his voice hollow and pained. "I didn't want to tell you like this... but you deserve to know. You deserve the truth."
I took a step forward, reaching for him again, clinging to him like a lifeline in a collapsing world. My tears soaked into his shirt as I buried my face against his chest, feeling his arms wrap around me and even as the pain threatened to devour me whole, I held onto him tighter—because no matter how fleeting, how fragile, he was mine and I wasn't going to let go.
His eyes glistened with unshed tears, reflecting a sorrow too vast for words, but still—he managed a smile. A small, broken thing that didn't reach his eyes. "The doctors..." his voice faltered, cracking like thin glass under pressure, "...they said my chances of survival are low."
The words sliced through me like a knife. A guttural sob tore from my throat, raw and primal, erupting from the pit of my soul.I clutched at his shirt with trembling fingers, as if holding him tighter could somehow anchor him to this world, could stop time from slipping through their fingers.
"You're lying." my voice trembled, breaking with every syllable. "Please, Anup... tell me you're lying."
His gaze never left mine. Still full of love. Still full of pain. He shook his head slowly, his voice barely more than a whisper. "I wish I was. God, I wish I could lie to you right now. I wish this was all a bad dream I could wake up from."
I began shaking my head violently, as if denying it could undo it. Could erase the horror, the helplessness. "You should've told me," I choked out. "You should have told me—damn it, Anup! Why didn't you tell me?!"
A bitter laugh escaped him, hollow and heavy. "And then what, Harshita?" he said, his voice laced with quiet devastation. "So I could see pity in your eyes every time you looked at me? So I could be reminded every day that I was slipping away? I didn't want that. I couldn't bear it."
His hands cupped my face, trembling as his thumbs brushed away the tears streaming down my cheeks. His touch was gentle, reverent, like I was something sacred. "I didn't want you to like me because I was dying, Harshita," he whispered. "I wanted you to like me because you chose to. Because your heart wanted mine... not out of sympathy. Not out of time running out."
My heart cracked open, splitting apart like glass under unbearable weight. The pain was too much. Too real.
"Last three months..." his voice was ragged now, thick with emotion, "I wanted to tell you. I wanted to hold you, to confess everything, to fall into your arms and just be. But I was selfish. I wanted to live in the illusion, even just for a while... that I had time. That maybe, just maybe, I could have you without the shadow of death always looming over us."
A cry wrenched from my lips—raw, aching. I grabbed his face, cradling him as if he were made of something fragile, something the world might take from me if I let go for even a second.
"You're not leaving me," I breathed fiercely, my tears falling freely now, soaking into his skin. "Do you hear me? You are not leaving me, Anup. I don't care what the doctors say. You don't get to walk into my life, love me, save me... and then vanish like this."
He smiled through his own tears—so full of sorrow, yet somehow full of peace too. "Fate is cruel, Harshita," he whispered again, his voice a ghost of itself. "But even if I don't have forever... I have this. This moment. With you. And right now, that's everything to me."
I kissed him—desperate, trembling, as if I could pour all my strength into him through the touch of my lips. And maybe, just maybe, love would be enough to defy the darkness closing in. But even as we held each other, wrapped in the fragile warmth of their love, the truth lingered like a storm on the horizon.
Time was slipping away and neither of them could stop it.
I broke.
The second the weight of his words settled into my chest, I collapsed into him—threw herself into his arms with a desperation that clawed its way out of my soul. my face buried against his chest, my fingers clenched tightly into the fabric of his shirt as if anchoring herself to the last piece of hope I had. And then the sobs came—deep, guttural, soul-wrenching cries that shattered the silence of the night.
I cried like a woman who had just lost the ground beneath my feet, like someone drowning in a sea of grief with no land in sight and Anup held me.
He held me as though I were the only thing tethering him to this life. His arms locked around her, one hand in my hair, the other against the curve of my back. He pressed his lips to the crown of my head and closed his eyes, breathing me in—committing me to memory. Every trembling breath. Every broken sound.
I wasn't sure how I would survive this pain. It was unbearable, a fire that consumed me from the inside out. How could the universe be this cruel? How could it let me find somone i like—this raw, this real—only to take it away before it could even bloom?
But one thing crystalized in my heart through the haze of agony. i would not let him walk through this alone.
The garden around them was cloaked in silence, save for my muffled sobs and the rustling of the trees overhead. Moonlight spilled over them like a gentle witness to their heartbreak, and the night air carried the scent of jasmine and earth—a cruelly serene backdrop to the storm raging in my soul.
I wasn't ready to say goodbye. I wasn't ready to watch him fade.
I wasn't ready.
And then, just when the stillness began to press too hard against my ears, his voice broke through—soft, almost unsure, but laced with something fierce underneath. Something desperate. Something final.
"Marry me, Harshita."
My entire body went rigid.
I froze.
I Pulled back just enough to look at him—my face streaked with tears, my lips trembling, my breath caught between sob and silence. "W-what...?"
Anup smiled. It was the kind of smile that hurt to see—tender, but hollowed out by pain. There was so much love in his eyes. But there was also that shadow again. That knowing. That ache.
He lifted his hand and gently cradled my face, his thumb brushing away the flood of tears that never seemed to stop. "Marry me," he repeated, his voice low, steady, even as it cracked around the edges. "Please."
My mind reeled, my heart thundering against my ribs. "Anup... why?" I breathed. "Why are you saying this now?"
His gaze didn't waver. "Because I don't have much time left," he whispered, and the words splintered between them like a fault line cracking wide open. "And in the time I do have... I want to be yours. Entirely. Officially. Not just in memory. I want to be the father to your child, Harshita. I want to go knowing I didn't run from you, from us, from love."
Tears blurred my vision again.
"I want to die knowing that even if fate was merciless... it still gave me you in the end."
My heart shattered all over again, the shards of it slicing through my chest like glass. My legs nearly gave out beneath me.
"I don't want to leave this world as just a name on a hospital chart," he said, emotion choking his every word. "I want my last breath to be in your arms. I want to look into your eyes and know... even for a fleeting moment, I had everything I ever dreamed of. A home. A future. A family. You."
I couldn't speak. I Couldn't breathe.
"Anup..." My voice barely came out. "Marriage... when you—" I couldn't say it. Couldn't finish the sentence. The word dying lodged in my throat like poison.
His forehead pressed against mine. "I don't want to be remembered as the man who left," he whispered. "I want to be remembered as the man who loved you... till the very end."
And in that moment—underneath the stars, wrapped in heartbreak, love, and unbearable truth—I felt the pieces of my soul align.I couldn't stop what was coming. But I could choose how we would face it.
Together.
Anup nodded slowly, his throat working around the lump threatening to choke him. "I know," he whispered. "I know it's selfish. I know it's unfair to ask this of you—to ask for forever when I can only give you borrowed time. But Harshita..." his voice trembled, thick with emotion, "I don't want to leave this world without knowing what it feels like to be your husband. To fall asleep next to you, not as a friend, not as someone who loved you from the shadows—but as the man you chose. The man you allowed into your heart."
His fingers brushed over mine, gentle, reverent. "I want to know that feeling. Just once. I want to be yours in every way possible, before my time runs out."
He paused, exhaling shakily. His eyes shimmered under the dim garden lights, holding back tears he didn't want to show me—but couldn't hide anymore.
"And when I'm gone," he said, his voice barely audible now, "you'll still have a part of me. Our child. He will be my child forever. A heartbeat that's half yours and half mine. A piece of us, still breathing in this world, even when I no longer am."
My body wracked with a fresh wave of sobs, My entire soul aching in ways I didn't know were possible. My knees threatened to give out beneath me, and I clutched his hands like they were the only thing anchoring me to reality.
"How... how can I do this, Anup?" I whispered, broken. "How can I live with the knowledge that you won't be there? That our child will grow up without you?" My voice cracked around the words, and my heart felt like it was being carved out of my chest.
Anup leaned in, pressing his forehead against mine. His touch was gentle, but his grip on my hands was firm—grounding, steady. "Because you're strong, Harshita," he murmured. "You always have been. Even when the world turned its back on you, even when you were drowning in heartbreak, you stood back up. You survived. You endured."
He drew in a breath, the sound shaky and full of quiet resolve. "And you'll keep going. Because life doesn't end with me. You'll live, you'll grow, and you'll give that child the love I won't be here to give. You'll teach them how to laugh, how to dream, how to be kind. And you'll do it beautifully. Because you are beautiful. Inside and out."
My chest caved under the weight of his words.I had spent years chasing illusions. Loving the wrong man who never truly saw me. Giving myself to people who only ever gave her pain in return.
And all this time, Anup had been there. Quiet. Steady. Loving me with a heart so selfless, so achingly pure, that I'd been too broken to see it. Now, fate had finally revealed the depth of his love—only to threaten to steal it away.
But no. Not yet.
If this was all the time they had... then I would take it. Every second. Every breath. I would fill what remained of his days with the kind of love he had never asked for, but always deserved.
Tears spilling down my cheeks, I nodded. A shaky, agonizing, soul-deep nod. "Yes."
Anup blinked, stunned. His breath caught in his throat. He had expected hesitation. He had expected rejection. He had braced for heartbreak.
But not this.
"Harshita..." he breathed, voice trembling.
"Yes, Anup," I repeated, gripping his hands like a lifeline. "I'll marry you. I'll be your wife. I'll stand by you until your last breath—and beyond."
Emotion flooded his face—shock, awe, relief, love—and something deeper. Something sacred. Like he was looking at salvation. He exhaled shakily, and for the first time in a long time, a true smile bloomed on his lips. Not the forced, tired ones he wore to protect her. But a real one. One that reached his eyes and softened every line of sorrow.
I reached up, my fingers trembling as they caressed the curve of his cheek. "But promise me one thing," I whispered, voice raw with both love and demand.
"Anything," he replied instantly, without hesitation.
I swallowed around the grief clawing at her throat. "Promise me you'll fight. No matter what the doctors say. No matter how dark it gets. Promise me you'll fight—for every second, every breath, for our child... and for me."
His eyes fluttered shut, and a single tear traced down his cheek. "I promise."
He pulled me into his arms again—this time tighter, fiercer, as if trying to memorize the exact way my body fit against his. As if holding me was the only thing keeping his soul from drifting into the void.
And I let myself fall into him.
In that embrace, I realized something that shattered and healed me all at once: I didn't love Anup—not in the way I'd once dreamed of loving Vedant. Not the fairy-tale kind, not the explosive, reckless, butterfly kind.
But this... this was different. This was real.
I don't know what it feels like to be loved like this, I thought, my heart aching. But I want to. I want to learn. I want to give it a chance.
Because in a world that had only ever shown my pain, Anup's love was a balm—a rare, sacred kind of devotion. Unasked for. Unconditional.
I would never be able to ignore that kind of love.
And maybe... just maybe... in the time they had left, I'd come to love him too.
Fate may have been cruel.
But for this one fragile, perfect moment—
We won.