Chapter 24
Hospitals always smell like bleach and endings.
But not today.
Today, I was waiting for a beginning.
Amelia stirred in the hospital bed, her fingers twitching weakly against the blanket. Second–degree burns up both arms, her throat raw from smoke inhalation, skin pale against the wires and IV tubes. She looked like a phoenix that hadn’t finished burning yet. And I hadn’t moved.
Not once.
They’d tried to get me to go home. To rest. To shower. Hell, I had blood under my nails and smoke in my lungs–but I wasn’t leaving.
Not again.
I sat beside her, elbows on my knees, staring at the slow rise and fall of her chest. The rhythm kept me sane. Alive. Anchored.
The monitors beeped low and steady, a strange comfort in this sterile room. Then her lips parted, cracked and dry, voice a broken whisper.
“…Luther?”
I was on my feet so fast the chair screeched back.
“I’m here.” My voice shook harder than I liked. “You’re safe now, Amelia. You’re safe.”
She blinked up at me, lids heavy. “…You look like shit.”
A sharp breath of a laugh cut out of me. God, she still had fight. Even now.
“You should see the other guy,” I said, leaning over to gently brush hair from her face. “You scared the hell out of me, you know that?”
Her lashes lowered. “You always were dramatic…”
And just like that–she pulled me backward into memory.
Back to when we were nobodies in borrowed hoodies and library coffee breath…
[FLASHBACKS]
I was a ghost back then. Nerdy. Awkward. Voice too quiet for a room and posture that screamed “I don’t belong here.”
The Winslock girl?
She owned the place, even with her oversized sweater sleeves and cracked glasses.
I’d dropped my tablet on the third floor of the campus library. Battery dead, notes gone. She knelt down beside me with a green highlighter tucked behind her ear and offered hers without a word.
“You always outline your citations in red?” she asked.
I blinked. “What?”
Goodbye. I’m Not Yours Anymore
1/3
28 1%
12:44 Tue, 24 Jun N.
07%
She pointed. “Your marginalia. It’s always red. Makes it easier for me to find your references when I cheat off your notes.”
I laughed, nervous. “You… read my notes?”
She shrugged. “Yours are better than the textbooks.”
She didn’t know it, but that was the first time anyone had ever noticed I existed.
Another flashbacks…
She sat across from Favio that day, cheeks flushed, laughing too hard at one of his terrible jokes. He never saw her–not really. Not the way I did. But Amelia looked at him like he built the sun. And he barely even looked up from his phone.
I sat at the next table over, watching her stir her coffee twelve times before drinking it. Her sleeves were pulled over her fingers. She doodled the word Rodrigo over and over in the margins of her econ notebook.
I didn’t blame her.
Back then, I thought she was a dream too good for the real world.
Then the rainy bench outside chem hall…
We got stuck under the same shitty overhang during a thunderstorm. She had a book in her lap, soaked at the edges, and I offered her my hoodie like a dumbass.
“You’re going to catch pneumonia,” I said.
She looked at me with that slight smile, the one that made my chest feel like it was
burning.
“I already did,” she said. “Midterms.”
I chuckled and sat beside her. And we stayed like that, not saying much, for nearly an hour. Her head leaned against my shoulder for maybe five minutes.
It meant the world to me. She never remembered.
I never forgot.
Back in the hospital room, I took her hand gently. Her knuckles were bruised, scraped raw, and still she looked like power incarnate. I wanted to scream at the world for what they’d
done to her.
Instead, I just said softly, “You’re here. And you’re never going through anything alone. again.”
She didn’t answer, but her fingers tightened just barely around mine.
A nurse stepped in with her tablet.
“You should see this,” she said, flipping it toward me.
The headline scrolled across the screen:
Chapter 24
213
12:
Tue, 24
97%
“Crown Heir Burn Plot Foiled – Rodrigo Empire Targeted Again”
And beneath it, a live feed: Caroline, wrapped in an emergency blanket, screaming at the press, wild–eyed and ash–streaked, mascara running down her face.
“I DIDN’T DO THIS–SHE DID–AMELIA DID THIS TO US! SHE DESTROYED EVERYTHING!”
Reporters yelled questions. She clawed at her restraints like a madwoman.
Police dragged her into the paddy wagon.
Another shot: Favio being wheeled out on a gurney, face crushed in from our fight, barely conscious, tubes down his throat.
I muted the video. Looked back at Amelia.
“She won’t touch you again,” I said, voice like steel. “Neither of them will.”
She didn’t say anything. But for the first time since I carried her out of that fire, she let her head rest softly on my shoulder.
And just like all those years ago–I stayed.
Only this time? I wasn’t just the nerd with a crush.
I was the man who burned the world for her.
AMELIA’S POV
I smelled like hospital soap and peppermint cream, and still, I walked out those doors like I owned the damn city.
Bandages ran up both arms, skin still raw beneath the gauze. My throat burned every time I spoke, and I had to remind myself not to cough in front of the cameras–it made me look weak. And I wasn’t weak. Not anymore.
I stood at the podium outside the private care wing of Saint Marlowe’s, sunlight flashing off camera lenses like a thousand little interrogations. The city buzzed like a swarm around me–journalists elbowing for space, drones hovering overhead, microphones shoved into my face.
Luther stood just behind my right shoulder, in that crisp black–on–black suit that made him look like a security system in human form. He didn’t speak. He didn’t have to. His hand hovered just an inch from my back–ready to shield, block, pull me out if it got ugly.
I glanced at the press.
Took a breath. Spoke slow and steady, even though it felt like swallowing glass.
“Some of you know me as Amelia Winslock. Others, as Amelia Rodrigo. The last few weeks have taught me that names… don’t always mean loyalty.”
The cameras clicked like rapid–fire gunshots.
