Page 35 of BounBound By Scars

Kabir

I shouldn’t be thinking about how Amelia was probably curled up next to Sebastian right now.

Didn’t matter that he very clearly—very deliberately—touched her. Brushed his lips against her skin.

Skin I used to touch. Skin I still ached to touch.

That was the part I missed most, I thought. The casual, friendly brushes. The easy affection that used to pass between us like breath. Now? It felt like those touches weren’t welcome anymore.

Not that I’d tried. What was the point?

Those small moments—her hand grazing mine, her leaning in too close while pretending not to notice—those were a glass of iced water to my parched fucking soul. And I? I drank it up. Imagining—stupidly—that one day those touches might turn loving.

But they were always loving, weren’t they?

Just… not from her.

Fuck.

How the fuck do I make her see me as an option?

No.

Not an option.

I’d rather not. Not again.

I shook the thought loose. There was work to be done. Shit to handle. Zane was already whining about wanting an early night for whatever the hell reason.

As I looked into Romlinson Signature, barely finding anything miraculous, my mind wandered to Pedro and Lan.

How sudden it was.

They’d been discharged for months.

Why was Romlinson suddenly after them?

Or were we too preoccupied to follow up?

I walked to my room and grabbed the slim matte-black laptop from the false bottom of my dresser drawer.

DaLia.

Yeah, I named it after her. Bite me.

It was the only device not connected to Sentrix, not to Blackthorn, not to anything traceable. Just me, a custom OS, and a tunnel deep enough into the dark web that even the shadows got lost.

I fired it up, fingers already working through the access layers like muscle memory.

Login. Cloaking protocols. Dual-authenticators.

And then—the old boards came alive.

I searched their names.

Pedro Becerra

Lancaster Brewer