Page 108 of Wasted Grace

“You remember?” Advik asks softly, following my gaze.

I swallow the lump forming in my throat. I nod, just once.

And somehow, I don’t feel like running away anymore.

TWENTY-EIGHT

Greesha

“I’m sorry if I’ve... tainted the memory,” he says quietly.

My eyes stay on the chip in the coffee table, my frown deepening. I don’t want to remember the sound of my laughter. The warmth of that day. But I do.

“It’s not tainted,” I whisper, voice gravelly. “It just... hurts.”

He stiffens. And so do I—because Ihatethat he still reads me.

There was a time when that dent in the table made me giggle. When I clung to moments like that, especially during my marriage. When I was being...owned.

Karim didn’tletme live in the past. His voice, his fists, his presence—they forced me into the now. Into submission. Into survival. The marriage was a prison. A performance. I was the delicate wife who served her husband her body—polished and packaged like she wasn’t dying inside.

But in the moments where I dissociated—where I needed to escape—I thought ofhim. My Advik. The only real thing I’d ever thought I had.

“It hurts because it’s real,” he says gently, as if coaxing me back from that dark corridor in my head.

I stare at the table.

“I used to...” I stop myself, breathe. “I used to remember us. When I was with Karim.”

His name still tastes like rot in my mouth.

“It was easier to live in the past than the present—back then, at least.”

“Karim?” he asks softly, like he may already know but needs me to say it.

“My husband. Who was also my target,” I say it numbly. Without color. Like I’m reporting on someone else’s life.

He nods slowly, carefully. “Did our past help?”

I let out a faint, sad laugh. Still staring at the damn dent. “It was better than the present, Vik.”

He flinches at the old nickname. His hand lands, feather-light, on my lap.

I freeze. And then I snap.

I shoot up from the couch, almost knocking his hand away. “You...”

My bitter laugh burns through the quiet. “You’re bringing everything back. Making me think and remember and fuckingfeel—and I can’t. Ican’t...”

He stands too, posture rigid with restraint, as if one wrong move will shatter me.

“You can feel,” he says hoarsely. “Feel, Greesha. And I’ll be here.”

“Why?” I hiss. My eyes blaze. “Why the fuck should I let you see me like this? You—whofailedthat night?”

I shove him—wound or not. Ishovehim.

“Why the fuck should you be the one who sees everything when you’re the same man who betrayed me?”