Page 170 of Hidden

“I came for you,” I whispered. “I never stopped coming for you.”

And for the first time since I’d found her, my voice broke completely.

“I was just too late.”

I stayed there longer than I should have. Long enough that the world outside that room started to creep back in, faint sounds filtering through the walls, distant movement, the reminder that this place wasn’t empty, that there were still men here, still enemies, still a war waiting to happen whether I wanted it or not.

My eyes opened slowly, and reality settled back into place.

She wasn’t waking up.

She wasn’t coming with me.

And whoever had done this was still breathing.

My hand slipped from hers, not because I wanted it to, but because it had to.

Because whatever part of me had been holding on to hope died the second I let go.

I pushed myself to my feet, my movements slower now, heavier. My gaze swept the room once more, taking in the details I hadn’t registered when I first came in.

I picked up a picture off the table, noticing Natalie with a man I didn’t recognise.

Natalie’s room…

So where was this so-called best friend of Gabby’s? Why had she left her to die alone?

Something wasn’t right.

But it didn’t matter. Not anymore. Because whatever the truth was, the outcome would be the same.

I looked at her one last time, forcing myself to take her in properly through the blur in my eyes, like if I committed every detail to memory hard enough then maybe some part of me would survive what came next.

And then, our last goodbye washed over me. That final moment where we had been ripped apart before.

The memory of that night pressing in hard and fast, dragging me backwards before I could fight it. Her. The scan. The future we had thought was ours. Everything that came after.

Everything we lost.

I lowered my head for one brief second, just one, and let myself feel everything. And then I snapped back into reality. Into what was real. What was happening now. Because if I let myself stay in that grief any longer, I’d never leave this room.

And when I finally turned toward the door, there was nothing left in me worth saving.

Because at least last time when I had lost her, she had still been breathing.

Chapter 45

Gabriella

Before

The room was too quiet.

It had been quiet ever since I got back, but now that the house had settled into the dead of night and the last of the footsteps had disappeared down the corridor, the silence had become something else entirely. It wasn’t peace. It wasn’t calm. It was the kind of silence that pressed against the skull and made every thought sound louder than it should. The kind that forced a person to sit with themselves, with what they had done, with what could never be undone.

I sat on the edge of my bed and stared at nothing.

My eyes burned. My throat ached. There was a heaviness in my chest that no amount of crying could relieve, as though grief had settled somewhere beneath my ribs and decided it would make a home there.