Love in the air by Vatsal Bhargava - HTML preview

CHAPTER 25 – TRUST IS A LOADED GUN

The night air was thick with smoke and screams.

The mansion behind them burned like a beacon of destruction, lighting up the world they had tried so desperately to hide.

Aarav gripped Meera's hand tightly, dragging her into the woods, where shadows offered the only refuge. But shadows could not hide the truth anymore.

Not from each other.

Not from themselves.

They collapsed behind a fallen tree, gasping for breath.

The sound of gunfire echoed in the distance, like thunder chasing lightning. Aarav pressed his forehead to hers, rough and desperate.

"Meera... you need to know something," he panted.

Her heart clenched painfully. Not another secret.

Not another betrayal.

"Say it," she whispered. He cupped her face with shaking hands, like she was the only anchor in a world drowning in chaos.

"There’s a mole," he said hoarsely. "Someone close. Someone we trusted." Her blood ran cold.

Every look.

Every word.

Every shared smile from the people they once called friends—now painted in shades of suspicion and deceit.

Trust was no longer a bond. It was a weapon.

A loaded gun pointed right at their hearts.

And Meera didn’t know if they were pulling the trigger… or someone else was.

As they stumbled through the woods, trying to find a safe house Aarav had buried deep in his past, silence stretched between them.

Heavy.

Hostile.

Meera’s mind raced.

Could she even trust Aarav? Could he trust her?

Every time he looked at her with those broken, burning eyes, she wanted to believe.

But love in their world was as deadly as a bullet between the ribs.

Finally, they reached a tiny cabin, hidden by thorns and time. Inside, it was cramped and cold. Aarav locked every door, set traps, checked weapons.

He moved like a man at war with invisible ghosts.

Meera sat silently by the window, watching the stars tremble in the black sky.

When he finally joined her, he was different.

Harder.

Colder.

The man she loved was still there. But so was the soldier she feared.

"If you had to choose," Aarav said quietly, sitting across from her, "between trusting me... or surviving...

what would you pick?" His voice cracked at the edges. He wasn’t just asking. He was pleading. Meera’s throat burned. In another life, she would have thrown herself into his arms without hesitation. But here?

In this bloody, broken world? Love could be a death sentence.

She crawled closer to him on the floor, their knees brushing.

She took his hands—calloused, scarred hands that had held guns and touched her like she was the most fragile thing in existence—and placed them on her chest.

Over her heart.

"If you ever doubt me," she said, voice trembling,

"shoot me first."

Aarav flinched like she had slapped him.

Tears shone in his furious eyes. "Don't you dare," he rasped. "Don’t you ever say that." But she didn’t pull away. Because trust between them wasn’t a promise anymore.

It was a loaded gun.

One wrong move… and everything would shatter.

That night, they slept tangled together on the cold cabin floor. Meera listened to Aarav's heartbeat under her palm, slow and burdened. Each beat whispered:

Danger.

Love.

Danger.

Love.

It was a lullaby and a war drum at once. And she knew —

Before the sun rose, one of them might have to pull the trigger. Not out of hatred.

Not out of betrayal.

But out of the cruellest kind of love.

The kind that destroyed itself to protect the other.

Outside, the storm raged louder. Inside, the real storm brewed between two souls who no longer knew where love ended and survival began.