Shadows of Obsession

18 | The Fragile Threads of Desire

"There is no victory in stolen love, only the illusion of it."

It had been five days. Five days of silence. Five days of waiting, of twisting the knife deeper into my own heart with every second that passed. My nerves were a tangled mess, my thoughts a battlefield of hope and despair. I had counted down the hours, the minutes, the breaths—waiting for him to agree to see me.

Aiden was back from Singapore. I knew because I had seen the updates, heard the whispers, felt the shift in the air as if the universe itself conspired to remind me of his return. I told myself it didn't matter. That I didn't care. But jealousy burned through me like poison, searing, suffocating. Jealousy over every second he spent with her—his wife.

Was he gentle with her the way he was with me? Did his fingers trace her skin like she was something sacred? Did she melt beneath his touch the way I did? Did his eyes—those sinful, devastating eyes—look at her the way they once looked at me? The way they burned through me, leaving me breathless, wrecked, undone?

I missed him. Every impossible, infuriating, intoxicating piece of him. The sharp angle of his jaw, the perfect arch of his brows when he was deep in thought, the way his lips parted just slightly before he kissed me. And his eyes—God, those eyes. They were my undoing, my reckoning, my gravity. No matter how much I fought, no matter how much I tried to pull away, I was powerless against their pull. Against him.

I was in love with him. Completely. Recklessly. Desperately. With a man I could never truly have.

And yet, here I was. Five days after calling him, sitting alone in a dimly lit room, my hands cold despite the heat of my skin. I tried not to cry. I wanted to look beautiful when he saw me. Unshaken. Irresistible. I wanted to conquer him, to make him love me again, to remind him of what we were. Of what we could be.

If he wasn't meant to be mine, then why did fate allow me to meet him? Why did he find me, pull me into his orbit, and make me believe in a world that was never ours to claim? No matter what the world said, no matter the shame, the scorn, the consequences—I was ready.

I cringed as I recalled my mother's voice, raw with anger, thick with disappointment. "Destroying someone's marriage is a sin," she had said. "There is no victory in having him, only pain. Only karma."

She begged me to let him go. She threatened, she pleaded. My sister had told her. I had been furious, betrayed—but I understood. And yet, when my mother cried, I couldn't promise her anything.

Because I had already made my choice.

Because I knew no happiness, no peace, no existence where Aiden did not belong to me.

I could only be happy knowing he saw no one else. No one but me.