Chapter 28 Nadia
NADIA
Ithink I must be going crazy.
How else do I explain it - the constant awareness of being watched, the scent of him where he shouldn’t be?
Lucian.
It’s everywhere. In the antiseptic corridors of the hospital.
In the corners of my apartment where dust gathers and silence hums. Sometimes it’s just the trace of his cologne, faint and fading.
Sometimes it’s the weight of eyes I can’t see.
And sometimes… sometimes it feels like he’s standing just behind me, close enough that if I turned, I could breathe him in.
But he’s gone.
It’s been a year since the fire. A year since I had to learn how to live without him all over again. Losing him once was agony. Losing him again - that was fate’s cruel way of driving another dagger through my heart.
The DNA report confirmed his death, leaving no room for speculation.
Lucian Cross. Deceased.
They told me there was nothing left to bury. Just fragments. Enough to test, enough to destroy me. I begged for something - anything - to hold on to. But the warden said no.
“Men like him don’t get marked graves,” he told me, voice flat. “Too many people looking to dig up those demons and desecrate their final resting place.”
So they put him in the ground with the others, nameless, faceless, erased.
And I was expected to move on. To keep breathing. To keep stitching strangers back together while my own heart disintegrated into pieces.
The trauma bay doors hiss open, cold air spilling out like smoke. Another night. Another body. I shove my sleeves up, let the noise of the ER swallow me whole.
“Lacerations to the jaw, possible orbital fracture,” a nurse says, pushing a gurney toward me.
The man’s face is a mass of blood and bone. His pulse races under the skin, desperate to survive.
I don’t miss the flicker in her eyes when she looks at him - that small, involuntary wince she tries to swallow. His face is a ruin. Swollen, split, mottled with bruises that bloom in every shade of pain. Bone pushes against skin where it shouldn’t, one eye already sealing shut.
“What happened?”
“Car accident.”
The patient is losing so much blood, I wonder if he’s going to bleed out before I get a chance to lay my scalpel against his skin.
“We need to patch him up quickly,” I say quietly, eyes still on the wreckage of him. “But he’s going to need more than just stitches. Reconstructive work. Months of it.”
The words hang heavy in the room, too clinical to mask what we both see - one half of his face will need to be rebuilt from scratch.
My hands are not steady as we start the surgery.
“Clamp,” I say.
The metallic click of instruments fills the air.
I work on autopilot - suture, swab, stitch, repeat.
My gloves are slick, my shoes tacky with blood.
The rhythm should be comforting. It used to be.
Now it just feels like drowning in someone else’s agony because it’s easier than listening to my own ghosts.
“Pressure’s dropping,” a nurse warns.
“I’ve got him,” I answer, too quickly, because losing anyone tonight might break what little I have left.
The man stabilizes. Machines beep in perfect rhythm. Controlled chaos. Predictable. Manageable.
But the silence between those beeps - it feels all wrong. Weighted.
I feel it before I see it. The air changes suddenly. It’s electric, alive, charged with a familiarity I can’t pinpoint. The fine hairs on my arms rise.
My gaze drifts to the observation window. A shadow stands just beyond the light. Still. Watching. The shape of him sharpens in the glass. Broad shoulders. Straight spine. The outline of a man built from tension and silence. My pulse stumbles.
It can’t be.
I blink hard, searching for logic, for reason. Maybe it’s a cop waiting for an update. Maybe it’s a trick of reflection. But my body knows better. It remembers.
Because no one stands like that. No one moves like that. Except Lucian.
A chill scrapes up my back, crawling against the length of my spine. The room narrows, the noise of the ER dimming until it’s just me and that shadow behind the glass.
He doesn’t move. Doesn’t breathe. He just waits. And then he’s gone. Like he was never there to begin with.
“Doctor?” a nurse snaps, jarring me back.
I blink, force my eyes away from the window. “Yeah,” I manage, voice thin.
My hands steady again, finishing the last suture with clinical precision. The patient’s breathing evens. Life returns to the room. But my own chest won’t unclench.
When I finally glance back toward the glass, there’s nothing there. Just my reflection staring back. Pale, tired, hollow-eyed.
Still, my lips part. The word slips out before I can stop it, barely a whisper, a confession in the dark.
“…Lucian?”
The monitor beeps once. A sound so sharp it feels like an answer.
But there’s only the hum of machines, the hiss of the vents, and the hollow space where his name still echoes.