Prologue

August 2017 — Present Day

Amara

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

Outside, the heat presses against the windows. Inside, it’s too still. The lights buzz overhead while the smell of antiseptic hangs in the air. My shirt sticks to me, damp with sweat and something I don’t want to think about. My hands tremble, stained red.

I sit in a plastic chair, surrounded by silence trying to calm my nerves. The TV is on mute. Magazines lie untouched. Everything sounds distant: someone typing, footsteps, the steady beeps of a 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 try not to replay the sirens, the scuffling, the way my name was screamed, cutting through the air like an obsidian blade. The memories flicker in pieces — blue lights, panicked voices, and guilt. The guilt seeps in slow and heavy, filling every part of me still trying to stay calm. 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.” He takes 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 folds.

And suddenly I can’t breathe.

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

Nine months ago, it 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.