Chapter Thirty

Kyla. 

The sound of the machines was deafening, even as the nurses’ voices blurred into one another. My chest rose and fell in frantic spurts, the pain twisting deeper until I thought it might swallow me whole. Then everything went dim.

Darkness.

It felt safer than the room, safer than Amina’s voice echoing inside me. Safer than the truth hanging like a noose over my head.

And then, nothing.

When I opened my eyes again, the first thing I registered was a weight pressing gently on my hand. Warm. Familiar. Grounding.

The second thing was his voice.

“Kyla.”

Ofcourse it was him, Jake.

The sound cracked something open inside me, pulling me closer to consciousness even though part of me wanted to drift back into the quiet, the numbness.

“Kyla, please, wake up.” His voice was low, strained, like it was carrying the world’s weight.

I blinked slowly, the harsh hospital light making me flinch. My throat burned when I tried to speak. My body ached, heavy, but I forced myself to turn my head.

Jake was there, hunched forward in the chair beside me, his hair disheveled like he’d run his hands through it a hundred times. His jaw was tight, his eyes fixed on me with a desperation I’d almost forgotten he was capable of.

“You are awake,” he breathed, like it was a prayer.

I wanted to ask why he was here. I wanted to demand how long he had been sitting at my side. But the words got stuck. My lips parted, but only a faint rasp came out.

He reached for the water jug on the table, pouring into a cup with clumsy urgency. “Here,” he said, slipping a hand behind my shoulders to help me sip. The cold water slid down my throat, soothing the burn.

“Thank you,” I croaked, the word barely audible.

Jake set the cup down, but he didn’t let go of me. His hand lingered on my shoulder, his thumb brushing lightly against the thin fabric of the gown. His eyes searched mine, fierce and unrelenting.

“What the hell happened?” His voice cracked, low but sharp with fear. “I heard the alarms, and when I rushed back, you were” His words broke off, his jaw flexing as though he couldn’t bring himself to finish.

“I’m fine now,” I whispered, though the tremor in my voice betrayed me.

“Fine?” He leaned closer, his voice harsh with disbelief. “You were unconscious when I walked in. Machines going crazy, nurses yelling don’t you dare tell me you’re fine, Kyla.”

I flinched, his anger colliding with the rawness inside me. But beneath the anger was something else, something that shook me more than the yelling. Fear. Genuine fear.

“I just” My breath caught. The memory of Amina’s words slammed into me again. My stomach twisted, my chest tight. “It got too much.”

Jake’s brows drew together. “What do you mean? Too much, what?”

I turned my face away, shame prickling hot across my skin. I couldn’t tell him the truth not yet. Not about Amina, not about the children, not about the storm clawing at the walls I’d built to keep him out.

“Stress,” I said finally, my voice barely above a whisper. “I was stressed. That’s all.”

He didn’t buy it, I saw it in the way his jaw clenched, in the way his hand tightened ever so slightly around mine. But he didn’t push. Not yet.

Instead, he exhaled, long and shaky, like he was trying to steady himself. “When I walked into this room and saw you lying there…” His voice trailed off, his eyes clouding. “Kyla, I thought I had lost you.”

My chest squeezed painfully at his words. He didn’t know how close I was to being lost long before the car, long before this hospital bed. He didn’t know how heavy the secrets were, pressing me down every second of every day.

I wanted to tell him. I wanted to confess everything. But the fear of what would follow clamped my mouth shut.

So instead, I asked the question clawing at me. “Where’s Amina?”

Jake’s entire expression hardened, like stone slamming into place. “Gone,” he said flatly.

“Gone?”

“When I came in, the nurses were swarming you, alarms blaring. Amina wasn’t here.” His eyes narrowed, a storm gathering behind them. “She left you like that. Just walked out.”

I swallowed hard, guilt and anger twisting together in my gut. Of course she had. That’s who Amina had always been there for the strike, never for the aftermath.

But Jake didn’t know what she had said before it all went black. He didn’t know the poison she had dripped into me until my body betrayed me.

His grip on my hand tightened. “She shouldn’t have been here in the first place.” His voice was sharp, filled with an edge I recognized from his boardroom battles, but laced with something far more personal. “She had no right.”

I wanted to agree, but my throat closed up. Because no matter how furious I was, no matter how broken she’d left me, she still carried a truth Jake didn’t know and if he dug deep enough, she’ would weaponize it.

And the thought terrified me more than the machines ever could.

Jake sat back slightly, dragging a hand down his face, the tension in his body visible even in the way he breathed. “Damn it, Kyla,” he muttered. “Why does it always have to be like this with you? Why do you always end up breaking yourself into pieces before you let me in?”

The words pierced me, because once upon a time, they were true. I’d built walls so high he couldn’t scale them, convinced that silence was safer than vulnerability. But now? Now it wasn’t just my heart I was protecting.

I closed my eyes, fighting back tears. “I didn’t ask you to come,” I whispered, though the words sounded weak even to me.

“No,” he said quietly, his tone shifting, breaking. “You didn’t. But I couldn’t stay away.”

The weight of his confession pressed against me. I opened my eyes, meeting his gaze, and for a fleeting moment I saw the man I used to know the one who loved me fiercely, who held my hand through storms, who whispered promises into my skin.

And then, just as quickly, I remembered. Amina. The life he’d built with her. The pieces of me she’d stolen.

I turned my face toward the wall, unable to bear the ache in his eyes.

Jake was silent for a long moment. Then I heard the scrape of his chair as he stood, his voice low but firm. “I’ll be back later. Rest.”

And then the sound of the door clicking shut behind him.

Leaving me alone again.

But this time, the silence wasn’t empty. It was heavy, charged, filled with all the things I couldn’t say, all the secrets clawing at the edges of my soul.

And as I lay there, my body still weak, my heart pounding unevenly, one truth sank deep into my bones:

The storm was only just beginning.