Not Here

Justin – POV

Glass walls. Bright lights. Cold steel tables. That sterile, fucking metallic stench of bleach and medicine and death.

The minute I stepped into the upper-level corridor, I felt it.

Wrong. Cold. Clinical. And it had her name written all over it.

Then I saw her.

Or—I thought I did.

Behind a sealed glass partition, a girl was strapped to a metal examination table. Wrists bound, ankles pinned in place with steel braces. Her blouse torn open, chest rising and falling in shallow, labored gasps. A mop of dark hair. Pale skin. Blood at the corners of her mouth.

For one long, shattering moment—my heart stopped.

"June."