"Some love stories don't end with lovers.

They end with the one who stayed -

after everything,

after everyone."

It's strange - how healing doesn't look the way you expect it to.

You don't wake up one day with no pain.

You wake up and realize? the pain's still there,

but you can breathe around it now.

And that's enough.

It had been over a year.

Since she left.

Since we talked.

Since I stood at the edge of losing myself.

The campus was quieter now. I was finishing my final year. The world outside was calling.

But before I stepped out into it, I needed to look back one last time.

I sat at the old stairwell behind the library - the one where I had broken down, the one where I'd first heard Meera's truth, the one where Reyan had sat beside me in silence.

Now I sat there alone.

But not lonely.

In my hands was a journal.

The one I had filled every day - sometimes with tears, sometimes with hope, mostly with pain.

I flipped to the last page.

There was a photo I had taped there.

It wasn't of Sia.

It was of me.

Aarin.

Smiling.

At peace.

Not because I got the girl.

But because I survived not getting her.

_"This is for the boy who loved so deeply he forgot to love himself.

For the boy who smiled through rejection,

who cried behind poems,

who waited by phone screens that never lit up.

This is for the boy who stayed."_

Meera had apologized months ago. The misunderstanding between us had untangled with time and truth. She wasn't the villain I once imagined - just another soul trying to protect a friend she loved.

We still spoke. Sometimes. Briefly. Kindly.

Reyan?

He stayed. Always.

He's my brother, in blood or not.

And Sia?

She became a chapter I don't reread often, but I never rip out.

Because some parts of you are written in someone else's handwriting.

And erasing them would be like losing pieces of your own story.

I remember the last thing she said to me.

"You deserve more than memory."

I didn't understand it then.

Now I do.

I deserve mornings that don't ache.

Laughs that aren't forced.

Eyes that look at me like I'm the answer, not a question.

And I know? that day will come.

But until then, I stay.

For me.

I closed the journal.

Held it to my chest.

And let the tears fall freely.

Not from sadness.

But from survival.

Every heartbreak had carved something into me.

And what was left wasn't empty - it was honest.

As the sky shifted into evening, I whispered:

"Thank you, Sia.

For teaching me how to lose everything?

and still find myself."

I stood up.

Took a deep breath.

And walked forward -

into the world,

into the unknown,

into healing.

"This is the end of a love story.

But the beginning of a life -

written by the one who stayed."