Shadow Between Us by ✦ 𝑽𝒂𝒏𝒕𝒂𝑸𝒖𝒊𝒍𝒍 ✦ ╰┈➤ 𝐕𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐐𝐮𝐢𝐥𝐥 at Inkitt

Summary

They say love heals… Ours destroyed. Ayaan and I were never meant to be more than friends. That’s what I told myself for 12 years. We grew up in the same lane of Mira Road, shared school benches, bruises, secrets, and silence. He was the boy who’d wipe blood off my knees without asking questions. I was the girl who knew when his smile was fake. But we were kids then. Now, we were something else—something sharper. Ayaan Khan wasn’t the gentle boy anymore. He had turned into the city’s quiet nightmare. Cold eyes, colder hands, a reputation dipped in violence. Rumors followed him like smoke: He fights for money. He doesn’t fear death. He has no heart. They were wrong. He had a heart. I just wish it wasn’t beating for me. I was the only one who called him at 2 AM. The only one who knew he liked his chai extra kadak, that thunderstorms made him restless, that guilt sat heavy in his left shoulder like an invisible wound. And he was the only one who knew my darkness had started long before his. My name is Myra Shaikh. And the truth is—he wasn’t the villain of this story. I was.

Chapter 1:The Boy Who Watched

It was a Tuesday night when it started.

I found him outside my building gate again. Cigarette between his fingers, hoodie pulled low, gaze fixed upward. On my window. On me.

No knock. No message. Just presence.

“You keep doing that,” I said as I walked to him, “and people will think you’re obsessed.”

His jaw tightened. “Let them.”

The words were simple.

The meaning was lethal.

I grabbed the cigarette from his hand and crushed it under my shoe. He didn’t stop me. He never stopped me.

“Why are you here?” I asked.

He looked at me like I was the answer to a question he never wanted to ask.

“Because you’re not safe.”

I laughed. Soft but hollow. “And you are?”

He didn’t laugh back.

He leaned in slowly—so close I could smell smoke, mint, and something bitter. Something like restraint snapping.

“I’m the most dangerous thing near you, Myra,” he whispered, “and even I protect you.”

My breath stalled.

Not because I was scared.

But because a part of me wished he wouldn’t.

"Would you trust someone who watches over you in silence? Why or why not?”