The Boy I Swore To Hate

I was in detention because of Advik.

It happened because he saw me with Sahil. And Advik — being the overprotective maniac he is — decided Sahil only wanted one thing. He never lets any boy get near me. Never. He pushes my patience to its absolute limit every single day.

Have you ever looked at someone and felt the urge to strangle them?

That’s Advik for you.

Ridiculously handsome. Stupidly charming. And utterly devoid of manners. The classic bad boy every girl buzzes around while he stands there flexing like he owns the world.

I glared at him with pure rage burning in my eyes. Of course he was here too. In detention. With me.

He caught my gaze and smirked — that infuriating, arrogant smirk that made my blood boil. He had been testing my patience since we were kids, but the real tragedy? He was my father’s best friend’s son.

My father had practically handed me over to him when I moved to London for college. Look after her, he said. Now we shared a flat, and I was trapped under the same roof as this insufferable control freak.

I was still plotting my escape when something hard struck my shoulder.

A paper roll. I whipped around, grabbed it, and hurled it back with everything I had. My eyes burned with a silent warning.

He never listened. He never did.

Then his hand closed around my wrist.

“Stand up. We’re leaving.”

I stared at him. “Are you insane? The teacher is right there. What the hell are you doing?”

He didn’t even look at me. “Sir, we’re going.”

Just like that. No explanation. No permission. And somehow — somehow — the teacher simply nodded.

It made no sense. Advik barely submitted his assignments, skipped half his classes, and yet teachers bent over backwards for him. The Advik effect.

“Let go.” I jerked my arm, but his fingers only tightened. “You can’t just drag me out of here.”

He released my wrist. But his hand didn’t leave me. It slid down, slow and deliberate, until his palm wrapped around mine. His grip was firm. Strange. And — I hated this part — unexpectedly gentle.

I should have pulled away. I knew I should have.

But his touch was warm. And for a moment, just a moment, my resistance wavered.

“Listen to me.” His voice dropped, low enough that only I could hear it. “Don’t let that bastard get close to you again.”

“Why?” I tilted my chin up. “Do you have a thing for him? Is that it? You want me gone so you can propose?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” His thumb brushed the inside of my palm. Once. “You’re my responsibility. And he just wants to get in your pants.”

“I’m not a child anymore. I’m mature now — I can take care of myself. You should worry about yourself.”

He looked at me for a long second. Something flickered in his eyes — something I couldn’t name. Then it was gone.

“Fine.” He let go. “Do whatever you want. But if something happens, don’t come crying to me.”

Then he left.

No backward glance. No hesitation. His footsteps echoed down the empty hallway until there was nothing.

Sahil found me ten minutes later.

His face was swollen from Advik’s hit, a bruise blooming dark along his jawline. We went to the hospital to get him treated. As we sat in the waiting area, he touched my shoulder — light, casual, the kind of gesture that shouldn’t have meant anything.

It didn’t make me feel safe.

Not the way Advik’s rough grip had.

I stared at the linoleum floor and tried to understand why my skin was still warm where he’d held my hand. He was the one who caused all this. He was the one who hit Sahil, who dragged me out of class, who treated me like property.

So why — why — did his violence feel like the only honest thing in the room?

By the time we finished, night had fallen hard over London. We grabbed dinner at a small diner nearby — the kind with cracked vinyl booths and neon buzzing in the window. Sahil made me laugh. A lot. His jokes were effortless, warm, the kind that didn’t need an edge to land. For a while, I almost forgot about the detention. The fight. The way Advik’s hand had felt wrapped around mine.

Then I saw him.

Advik. Across the room. In a corner booth I hadn’t bothered to check.

Then I saw him.

Advik. Across the room. In a corner booth I hadn’t bothered to check.

He wasn’t alone.

She was clinging to his arm like she owned it, her body pressed against his side, her head tipped back in laughter at something he’d said. And he was letting her. He wasn’t pulling away. He wasn’t scowling. He wasn’t looking at her like she was something he’d scraped off his shoe.

If I so much as brushed his hand, he used to jerk away like I’d burned him. He only ever touched me when he was furious — grabbing my wrist, dragging me out of rooms, his grip tight enough to leave marks. Never gentle. Never willing. Never like that .

A strange, reckless heat surged through my chest. It tasted like copper. Like anger. Like something far more humiliating that I refused to name.

I reached across the table and took Sahil’s hand.

Laced our fingers together. Held on too tight.

I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t know why. But my skin felt too small for my body, and suddenly Sahil’s palm against mine was the only thing keeping me from doing something worse.

Advik’s eyes found me.

It wasn’t gradual. It wasn’t a glance that happened to wander. His head turned like he’d felt the weight of my stare across the room, and when his gaze locked on mine — on our joined hands — everything in his face went still.

The look he gave me was dark. Sharp. Something dangerous flickering beneath the surface like a blade catching light.

It made me shiver down to my bones.

I forced myself to look away. Focused on Sahil. His jokes. His words. The easy warmth of his smile. I laughed at something he said, and it sounded too bright, too loud, like glass breaking in an empty room.

After we finished eating, I excused myself to the restroom. My hands were shaking. I pressed them flat against the sink and stared at my reflection — flushed cheeks, too-bright eyes, a stranger looking back at me.

The door swung open.

The girl — the one draped over Advik — walked in. She leaned against the sink beside me, studying my face in the mirror with a curious, almost pitying smile.

“You’re Advik’s sister, right?”

Sister.

No. I wasn’t.

Did he tell everyone that? Did he look at me — after everything, after the way he’d held my hand in detention, after the way he’d looked at me across this diner — and see nothing but his father’s friend’s daughter?

The word settled heavy and cold in my chest. Like a stone dropped into still water.

“Not by birth,” I heard myself say. My voice sounded thin. Hollow. Far away. “But yes... I think so.”

I heard the sadness in it. I hated that I heard it.

If that was all I was to him — if that was all I would ever be — then I should accept it. Move on. Let him have his girlfriend and his corner booth and his easy laughter.

She straightened, her smile widening, triumphant. “Oh! I’m his girlfriend.”

She said it like a trophy she’d just won. Like she’d been waiting to polish it in front of me. She lifted her hand for a handshake, and something caught the fluorescent light — a ring, small and silver, glinting sharp against her skin.

I forced myself to take her hand. My fingers felt limp. Unresponsive. Dead.

“Good to know,” I said. The words tasted like ash. “Come to our place sometime. We can talk there.”

It came out before I could stop it. A lie dressed as politeness. A wound dressed as an invitation.

She was already turning away, her mission accomplished, her reflection disappearing through the door. “Yes,” she called back. “I’d love to.”

I stayed at the sink long after she left, staring at my own hands — the hands Advik had held just hours ago — and tried to remember why I’d ever thought his violence was the honest thing.

Because this? This felt like the real violence. The kind that didn’t leave bruises.

I went back to Sahil. He was at the counter, paying the bill.

He had always been a gentleman — paying, caring, making sure I was comfortable. But right now, standing in the harsh glow of the diner’s neon, his kindness felt like a sweater two sizes too small. Warm, yes. But suffocating. We were in the talking stage. Nothing defined. Nothing certain. I didn’t even know if I was his friend or something he was trying on for size. It felt like too much, too soon, and I was the only one suffocating under the weight of it.

I reached out, wrapping my arm around his shoulder, leaning in to tell him I was ready to leave.

My hand was snatched away.

Advik.

I hadn’t heard him approach. I hadn’t felt the shift in the air. But there he was, his fingers wrapped around my wrist, his body angled between mine and Sahil’s like a wall that had grown up from the floorboards.

“Your father is asking about you,” he said. His voice was quiet. Too quiet. “He told me to take you home.”

Sahil stepped forward. “I could do that.”

Advik didn’t look at him. Not once. His eyes stayed locked on mine, dark and flat and utterly immovable. “She’s my responsibility. And I don’t ignore my responsibilities.”

Then he dragged me.

His grip was iron-tight around my wrist, pulling me through the crowded restaurant like I was luggage he had already claimed. Bodies blurred past. Someone’s elbow caught my shoulder. I stumbled, but he didn’t slow down. He never slowed down.

“Advik, leave me!” I tried to dig my heels into the tile, but he was stronger, always stronger, and my resistance only made his fingers bite deeper.