Page 118 of BounBound By Scars

I looked down at my hands again.

Still bloody.

Still hers.

And for the first time since the shot rang out—I felt myself break.

Quietly.

Utterly.

Because I couldn’t imagine a world where Amelia didn’t wake up.

Didn’t look at me with those stormy eyes.

Didn’t call me Mr. Gill with that crooked smile.

I had no idea how to exist in a world where she wasn’t fully… her.

But more than anything—I had no idea how to exist in one where she didn’t exist at all.

TWENTY-SEVEN

Kabir

“You need to eat, Kabira.”

Logan’s voice didn’t carry its usual edge today. It hadn’t all week. Not with me.

Amelia’s transfer to Blackthorn Clinic had gone off without a hitch, at least technically. Ninety-eight minutes of silent dread. I hadn’t breathed the whole flight.

She didn’t even look like herself anymore.

I’d seen her the first couple of days after she was stabilized—wired up and still, a ghost of the woman I loved. Since then, I hadn’t dared step into that room. Not because I didn’t want to. But because I couldn’t.

She’d lost weight too fast. Her cheeks hollowed out, her skin almost translucent under the clinic lights.

I stared at the egg salad in front of me like it might explain how everything went to hell.

The Command Center had become my hiding place. My buffer from the world. From questions. From pity. From the guilt chewing through my spine.

Delara had taken over the White House debrief. Dylan hadn’t said a word since we brought her back, so she was left explaining what little there was to explain.

I hadn’t touched the Sentrix. Hadn’t looked at the data we risked everything to get. I couldn’t. Every time I opened mylaptop, the interface loaded, and all I could see was her. Amelia—standing strong in that damned Situation Room. Alive. Whole.

And now?

Now she wasn’t either of those things.

Dr. Stacey kept using phrases like ‘be prepared’. But prepared for what?

There was no preparing for this. There was no plan for her not being here.

If she goes, I go.

It was as simple as that.

It always had been.