Prologue

August Present Day

Amara

Hospitals always feel cold, even in the dead of summer. 

Outside, the air is thick and blistering. Inside, it's sterile silence, buzzing lights, humming vents. My shirt clings to me, damp with sweat and something else I'd rather not name. My hands won’t stop shaking. They’re stained red.

     I sit alone in a plastic chair. The TV is muted. The magazines are untouched. Every sound feels muffled. Beeps, footsteps, the distant hiss of some medical machine.

There’s blood under my fingernails. 

Not mine. 

But it might as well be. 

The hospital staff told me to wait. So I am.

I'm trying not to replay the sirens, the scuffling, the way my name sounded being screamed, cutting through the chaos like an obsidian blade. Just flashes now, blue lights, panicked voices, and guilt. The guilt is really settling in, making itself at home, a heaviness in my chest and a sick feeling in my stomach. My anxiety is so high I could puke.

Someone I love is behind a door I can’t open. And the last thing I said to them still echoes in my head. 

The door creaks open.

A doctor steps in, clipboard in hand, eyes already scanning the waiting room.

“Amara Olson?” He calls out.

     I rise, just barely.

He walks toward me slowly. Carefully. "Hi, Ms. Olson, I'm Doctor Gilbert Jumalon." Pausing briefly, the doctor took a quick breath before continuing. Then, in a voice softened by repetition, he says two words: “I’m sorry. . .”

The world doesn’t shatter. 

It just folds. 

And suddenly I can't breathe. 

All I can think is: This wasn’t supposed to happen.

Nine months ago, it all started with a glance. 

Now I’m here, surrounded by August heat and someone else’s blood, wondering how it all fell apart. 

How love twisted into something sharp. 

And how the truth led me to this.