Array
(
[text] =>
Target
Votes:330
Comments:100
Don’t forget to follow me on instagram also: @shew_rites21
*******
POV AUTHOR
The silence in the room was deafening.
It was the kind of silence that wrapped itself around the skin-thick, suffocating, unnatural.
Tara’s eyes fluttered open, her lashes damp from dried tears. The dull ache behind her temples was a cruel reminder that she had cried herself to sleep-curled up in a hospital bed, wrapped in the emptiness Manav had left behind after holding her as she crumbled.
But now… something felt different.
The room was still. Too still.
No familiar voice murmuring comfort. No beep from the heart monitor. No comforting warmth of a friend sitting beside her.
Just cold. Still. Hollow.
Her hand moved, trembling, toward the call button. She pressed it. A weak attempt to reach out to something. Anything.
And then-
A soft knock.
She blinked toward the door. The sound alone sent her heart stumbling into chaos.
The handle turned slowly. The door creaked open.
And he walked in.
Tarun.
Time stopped.
Her breath caught like it had slammed into a wall. Her fingers instinctively gripped the sheets beneath her, anchoring herself in reality-because for a moment, she genuinely believed she was dreaming. Or hallucinating. Or gone completely mad.
He stood there. Silent. Still. Like a ghost from a love story that ended in tragedy.
Older. Sharper. Broader. Dressed in a tailored white coat, but carrying more weight in his eyes than he ever had before. His face was a mask of control-but she could see it. The storm beneath the surface. His hands were clenched behind his back, his eyes refusing to meet hers.
And all at once, a thousand memories rushed her.
His laughter. His promises. His kiss.
His death.
She tried to speak, but her throat betrayed her. Her voice was little more than a broken gasp.
“W-What… what are you doing here?”
He didn’t move. “You pressed the call bell.”
Her heart twisted violently. “And you’re the nurse now?” Her words came out sharp, laced with venom and disbelief.
“I’m your doctor,” he said softly. Too softly. “At least for today.”
Her scoff was bitter, ragged. A sound born of betrayal. “Of course. Doctor. Life really knows how to write tragedies, doesn’t it?”
He stepped closer, carefully, like approaching a wounded animal. “Tara…”
“Don’t. Don’t say my name.” Her voice cracked, but the fury burned through it. “You have no right.”
He looked down, jaw clenched.
“You died.” Her voice trembled with rage now. “Do you know what that did to me?”
She could feel it-everything she’d buried inside for thirteen years-rising, choking her, threatening to spill.
“I died with you that day,” she whispered. “My soul… stopped. And I lived like a ghost. A body that breathed, but felt nothing. You-” her voice broke “-you took everything with you. My heart. My hope. My future.”
His eyes closed for a second, as if the words physically hit him.
“Do you even have the faintest idea what it’s like to mourn someone who is still alive?” she asked, her voice cracking wide open. “To scream into a void, to beg the universe for it to be a lie? To wait… and wait… and wait-and never hear anything again?”
He took it all. Every word. Every tear in her voice. Every ounce of pain she poured into the silence.
“Why didn’t you come back?” she asked, the question so full of heartbreak it was barely a whisper. “You were alive. You were alive. And you left me to die every day without you. Why?”
He stepped forward, slowly, and for the first time-he let her see the grief behind his eyes.
“I didn’t leave you, Tara,” he said, voice raw, trembling. “I was coming to you.”
She blinked, stunned.
“That day… I found out everything. What my bade papa and badi mummy did to you. The way they blackmailed you. Broke you. Ripped you from me. I was coming to get you out of that hell. I was coming to take you away.”
He exhaled, voice barely holding together. “And then… the accident happened. A crash so violent, they said I didn’t make it. My heart stopped. For forty-seven seconds, I was gone.”
Tara’s breath hitched.
“The man who called you wasn’t wrong. I was dead. And when I came back… I was in a hospital, broken. Unrecognizable. They kept me in isolation. I couldn’t even move. And by the time I could…” He paused, his voice crumbling. “You were also on the hospital bed.”
Tears were falling down her cheeks now.
“I came to see you,” he whispered, voice heavy with all the years he had swallowed his pain.
“The moment I found out you were in the hospital… I couldn’t stay away. I came, hiding from everyone-keeping to the shadows like a coward. I saw you, Tara. From a distance. Lying there… so fragile, so pale, like all the life had been drained from you.” His voice cracked.
“And I wanted to run to you, to hold you, to take your pain away… but I couldn’t. If I had come closer, if they had even sensed I was near, they would’ve hurt you all over again. And I couldn’t risk that. I’d rather bleed in silence than let them touch you again.”
“So you let me think you were dead?” she whispered.
His voice cracked. “If it meant keeping you safe-yes.”
Tara couldn’t hold back anymore.
“You think that was safe? You think watching my world burn down around me was peaceful?” she sobbed. “You think losing you didn’t kill me?”
Tarun walked to her side. Slowly. Reverently.
He didn’t touch her. Just knelt beside the bed, his voice barely audible.
“I made myself disappear. Rebuilt myself. Every second of every day, I lived for one thing-to destroy the ones who hurt you. To become untouchable. Powerful. So they could never breathe near you again.”
Tears glistened in his eyes now, falling silently.
“I lived in hell, Tara. Every. Single. Day. Knowing what they did to you. Knowing I couldn’t hold you. Couldn’t comfort you. Couldn’t tell you the truth.”
She looked down at him, the man who once held her heart like a prayer-and now knelt like a sinner.
“I never stopped loving you,” he whispered. “Not for a moment. Not even when I was bleeding in that wreckage. I held onto life… only because of you.”
Tara broke.
Her hand reached out, trembling, and cupped his cheek.
He froze-eyes fluttering shut at her touch, his breath catching like it hurt just to feel her again.
She leaned forward, her thumb brushing against the corner of his eye, wiping away a tear.
Her voice was a breath, a prayer. “I thought I’d forgotten how you felt.”
He leaned into her hand like a drowning man to air.
“I’m here now,” he whispered. “And I’ll never leave again. Not until my last breath.”
Tara’s fingers clutched the blanket, her chest rising and falling with the storm of emotions she could no longer hold back. Her gaze never left his, not even as the tears blurred her vision.
And then, with a voice that trembled like a prayer whispered in the dark, she said,
“Hold me.”
Tarun didn’t hesitate.
He stood slowly, reverently, like he was approaching a miracle he’d only ever dreamed of. His hands were gentle-almost afraid-as he leaned down and gathered her into his arms. She melted into him, fitting there like she always had, like her heart had been carved to beat against his.
And he held her.
Tightly. Desperately. Like she was the only real thing in his world. Like he had been holding his breath for thirteen years, and only now was he allowed to breathe again.
He pressed a trembling kiss to her hair. Then another. And another. Each one soft, broken, full of all the words he hadn’t spoken.
“I’m here,” he whispered into her scalp. “I’m here now, Tara. I’m never letting go again.”
Her fingers curled into his shirt, and she wept-years of pain, abandonment, love, and longing pouring out in choked sobs.
“I missed you,” she breathed into his chest. “Every single day… every breath.”
His arms only tightened.
“I missed you more,” he said, voice raw, cracking open at the seams. “More than words. More than life itself. I was alive, but never living. You were always with me, even when I had nothing else.”
They stayed like that for minutes that felt like lifetimes.
No past. No betrayals. No pain.
Just two souls-bruised, aching-finding their way back home.
His thumb brushed over her cheek, wiping her tears, and she looked up at him with a gaze that held every shattered piece of the girl she had been… and every flicker of hope that maybe, just maybe, she could find herself again.
Her hand rose slowly to his face-trembling-and she touched him like she was trying to memorize him all over again. Her fingers slid up from his jawline to his cheek, pausing there-just to feel the heat of his skin. Just to know this wasn’t a dream. That she wasn’t going to wake up in an empty room with nothing but memories and scars.
Tarun didn’t move.
He watched her through glassy eyes, letting her explore him, like she needed to learn him all over again. Like her soul was tracing the lines of his face to make up for the years her hands had craved him in the dark.
She brushed her thumb beneath his eyes-those same eyes that once used to look at her like she was the sunrise. And they still did.
Only now, there was a storm behind them too.
“You’ve changed,” she whispered, voice hoarse, as her thumb traced the faint scar near his temple.
“So have you,” he replied, voice like velvet cracking at the edges.
Her eyes shimmered, but she didn’t look away. Her palm cupped his face again, more firmly this time, and her other hand-shaking and slow-reached out and pressed against his chest, right over his heart.
“I needed to feel this,” she breathed, “to know it’s still beating. That you’re here. Not just in my head.”
Tarun’s breath hitched. He took her wrist gently, not to stop her, but to hold her-like her touch grounded him too.
He pressed his hand over hers, trapping it over his chest.
“It beats for you,” he whispered. “It never stopped.”
Silence stretched between them-thick with everything words couldn’t carry.
And then he leaned in.
Not to kiss her. Not yet.
But to rest his forehead against hers.
That small space between their lips buzzed with electricity, pain, love-every unsaid word. They breathed the same breath. Her fingers slid into his hair, curling into the strands like she’d been waiting years just to remember how he felt between her fingertips.
He closed his eyes, overwhelmed by her closeness.
Her scent. Her warmth. The soft sound of her breath.
Every second was a memory returning to life.
“Do you know,” she murmured, her voice barely a breath, “how many nights I cried just for this? To feel you again? To hold you-even if just for a second.”
“And I died every night,” he said, his voice breaking, “knowing I couldn’t.”
She tilted her face just slightly, her lips brushing the corner of his-feather-light, uncertain.
And in that moment… it wasn’t passion that passed between them.
It was ache.
It was years of waiting, of hurting, of hoping.
It was two broken halves slowly stitching into one again.
He leaned into the touch, their foreheads still pressed, their lips so close, so quiet.
“I love you,” he said. “God, Noor… I love you like I never stopped.”
She exhaled a sob that turned into a smile.
And then-finally-she whispered:
“Then don’t stop. Not again. Not ever.”
And he kissed her.
Not with urgency. Not with fire.
But with everything soft and sacred and unspoken.
Like he was rediscovering her one breath at a time.
And she let him.
Because this-
This was home.
*******
Finally they are together again🥹❤️
Hey, lovelies! Hope you enjoyed this chapter! Don’t forget to hit that vote button and leave your thoughts in the comments. Till then byy see you soon ❤️
Thank you for your love and support!
Love from,
Miss Sharma ❤️
[text_hash] => b870268d
)