Blurb
Some love stories end with a goodbye. Theirs ended with a lie.
A lie meant to save him. A heartbreak meant to keep him alive.
Once, Arhaan Khanna and Kiara Sinha were each other’s home. They loved each other in a way that was never supposed to happen, through rivalries, old wounds, and everything that stood between them. Until one night, Kiara was forced to make a choice.
Leave Arhaan, or watch him die.
They threatened his life. They threatened her family. And Kiara knew that if she told Arhaan the truth, everyone she loved would be in danger.
So she did the only thing she could think of.
She became the villain in the story of the man she loved. She broke his heart. She made him believe she had chosen someone else. She let him hate her.
And then she walked away, carrying the truth alone.
Eighteen months later, Arhaan has learned how to live without her. Or at least, he has convinced himself that he has.
He survived bullets, blood, enemies, and everything the dangerous world around him could throw at him. He built walls out of anger and betrayal, and he buried every memory of the girl who once meant everything to him.
But he never stopped loving her.
He just learned how to turn that love into hatred.
So when Kiara returns to town, Arhaan is determined to make her pay for the betrayal that destroyed them.
He doesn’t want her explanations. He doesn’t want her apologies. And most of all, he doesn’t want to remember how it felt to love her.
Because Arhaan doesn’t hate Kiara because he stopped loving her. He hates her because he never did.
Every memory still burns. Every unanswered question still hurts. And every time she is near him, the walls he spent years building begin to crack.
He promised himself he would never let her close again. His heart never agreed.
Kiara knows she has no right to ask him for forgiveness. She knows that, from his point of view, she broke his heart and walked away without looking back. She knows that nothing she says can erase what he saw, what he believed, or the years they lost.
But she also knows something Arhaan doesn’t.
She never betrayed him.
She chose him.
She chose his life over her own happiness.
And now, she is back with the same secret she has carried for years and the danger she thought she had escaped has returned.
Kiara wants only one chance to make him understand.
To show him that what looked like betrayal was the greatest sacrifice she had ever made.
But Arhaan isn’t ready to listen.
Because every time Kiara reaches for him, he pushes her away. Every time she tries to explain, he reminds her of the day she broke him. Every time she looks at him, he sees the woman who betrayed him. And every time he looks at her, she sees the man she never stopped loving.
He wants answers. She can’t give them.
Not without putting the people she loves in danger.
So Kiara stays silent, while Arhaan mistakes her silence for guilt.
But the closer they get to the truth, the harder it becomes to keep pretending that their love is dead. Because some feelings don’t disappear just because people do.
Some wounds don’t heal just because years pass. And some love stories don’t end when two people walk away from each other.
He thinks she chose someone else. She knows she chose him.
And somewhere between the lie and the truth, their love is still waiting.
They survived heartbreak. They survived hatred. But when the truth behind their separation finally comes to light, Arhaan and Kiara will have to face the question they’ve both been avoiding:
Can a love that was broken by a lie survive the truth?
And how do you heal a heart when the person who broke it is the only one who knows how to mend it?
