Prologue
“We should’ve run away.”
The words escaped me in a whisper, fragile enough to shatter beneath the fluorescent lights humming above us.
“If we’d left when I asked... you wouldn’t be here, Luther.”
A thick pane of reinforced glass separated us, stealing the warmth I’d spent years finding in his touch. My fingers rested against its icy surface anyway, aching for the impossible.
He mirrored the gesture on the other side.
There was no warmth to meet me.
Only glass.
Only distance.
Only the cruel reminder that the man who had once held my heart now sat behind prison walls.
“My Amala,” he said softly, the corners of his mouth lifting into the same smile that had undone me the first time we met. “Everything’s going to be okay.”
He said it like he believed it.
Like faith alone could erase iron bars, guilty verdicts, and the life that had been ripped away from us.
I wanted to believe him.
God, I wanted to.
Instead, I memorised him.
The faint scar along his jaw. The exhaustion hidden behind those beautiful dark eyes. The way he tried to carry my pain while drowning beneath his own.
A sharp buzz echoed through the visitation room.
Five minutes.
The officer hadn’t spoken, but he didn’t have to. The sound alone was enough to remind me that borrowed moments always came with an expiration date.
Every goodbye felt like losing him all over again.
When the final call came, I knew I’d have to walk away.
He would remain here.
And I would leave carrying the part of me he’d taken with him the day those cell doors closed.
“I love you, Luther.”
The confession trembled on my lips, heavy with promises neither of us knew how to keep.
His eyes never left mine.
“I love you too, Amala.”
For a heartbeat, the world stood still.
Then the officer called time.
And everything fell apart.
