The ride home for Roo was a blur of silence and adrenaline. She peeled off the emerald anarkali like a cage, letting the beautiful, expensive fabric fall disregarded to the floor. She collapsed onto her bed, but sleep was impossible. The night was a restless kaleidoscope of terrifying, liberating moments.
Roo's Turmoil: Shame and Sanctuary
Her first emotion was a profound, scorching shame. She had physically attacked her boyfriend in public, completely shattering the controlled image her parents demanded. Worse, she had clung, sobbing, to a practical stranger, a man named Lav, with her ex-boyfriend's dog wedged between them. This shame battled fiercely with a stunning sense of relief. She realized, with a clarity that cut through the darkness, that in one explosive burst, she had finally severed the cord to Shyan's emotional manipulation. The fight was the end.
Her flashbacks were sharp and contradictory. She saw Shyan's sneering face as he kicked Ghost—the pure, ugly cruelty. Then, she saw Lav's eyes, pale and haunted, looking at her with an absolute gratitude that felt like sanctuary. The feeling of his strong arms around her, her face pressed against the comforting warmth of the pet, was the first honest comfort she had felt in years. She replayed the accidental hug countless times, the terror of its intimacy warring with the desperate yearning for that feeling again. She fought the budding emotion—the dangerous, magnetic pull toward Lav—with every fiber of her being, knowing that to feel that deeply again was to invite catastrophic pain. She spent the hours before dawn staring at the ceiling, denying the undeniable.
Lav's Vigil: Hope and Terror
Lav returned to the hotel, immediately dismissing his caretaker, his entire focus on Ghost. After confirming the pet was truly fine, he paced his luxurious room. He was consumed by an electrifying, terrifying hope. Roo's confrontation, her fearless defense, had proven that the honesty he craved still existed in the world. She was the color he had only dreamed of finding.
His mind, however, immediately swung back to his trauma, the fear of falling again. His flashbacks were dominated by Abby, his ex-fiancée. He remembered their last public argument, not a shouting match, but a terrifyingly cold, surgical dismantling of his love. He remembered the precise curve of Abby's lip as she told him he was simply "not ambitious enough," condemning him for prioritizing a fulfilling life over pure wealth. This memory brought a rush of terror—the sheer physical pain of that abandonment and the subsequent descent into despair. He realized that if he pursued Roo, he was risking his one fragile chance at recovery. The conflict was between the absolute purity of Roo's soul and the abyss of his own past pain.
The Nightmare
Just as the sky outside began to pale, exhaustion finally claimed Lav. He sank into a shallow, fitful sleep.
He dreamed he was back at the altar, preparing for his wedding. Abby was walking toward him, impossibly beautiful, her designer wedding gown shimmering. But as she drew closer, the white fabric dissolved into cold, shimmering grey. Her smile was the same, but her eyes were empty, two pits of black water. She stopped, and whispered something so venomous, so specifically cruel, that it shattered the dream.
Lav woke with a choked cry, his heart hammering against his ribs, his body drenched in cold sweat. He didn't remember the words, only the feeling of absolute, final condemnation. He clutched Ghost, the pet's warm weight his only tether to the present. The nightmare confirmed the danger. Roo was a lifeline, but reaching for it meant facing the cold, empty abyss of his past again.