Page 96 of Bound By Secrets

“No!” I shout, squeezing them tighter and shaking my head, my breathing picking up pace as panic settles into my bones,

I didn’t kill him.

The knife must’ve missed.

“Please,” I beg. “I can’t handle more. Please, let me go.”

Something heavy lands on both of my arms, pinning them down, and a sob releases from me.

“Little C, open your eyes.”

My body freezes.

“You’re safe, Callie. It’s okay now. You can open your eyes.”

My hand is lifted before it’s placed back down on top of someone else's. My fingers move, tracing every inch until I feel the shortened stub of the last finger, and I breathe a sigh of relief.

“Callum?” I whisper.

The hand beneath mine turns over and squeezes three times.

“Yeah, it’s me. I’m here.”

I slowly open my eyes, and when I find Callum’s face looking down at me, tears flood my eyes as relief flows through my body, numbing the pain and the fear.

“You know I’m here too. It’s not all about Callum,” Connor playfully scoffs from somewhere in the room. His voice has the tears spilling down my cheeks as I draw in a ragged breath.

“W-where’s everyone else? Is K-kat - oh, god. Please tell me she’s okay!”

Connor trudges over to the bed and gently grabs onto my hand.

“Hey, hey, calm down. Kat is perfectly fine, she was released from the hospital yesterday, so she’s at home resting. Brad, Ryker and Nate also went back to Sophie’s and Colin’s so that they could have a shower and eat some proper food. No doubt, they’ll be back at some point today.”

I frown, looking at him in confusion.

“She got released yesterday? H-how, what?” My gaze flickers between the twins, waiting for an answer.

“Callie, you’ve been in the hospital for four days.”

“Four days?”

He nods, grimacing at my expression.

“We found you at the house, thanks to Johnny. You’d lost a lot of blood, and you weren’t breathing. Callum did CPR, and I tried to stop the bleeding until the ambulance arrived.”

“Wait,” I interrupt. “What about Cameron?”

“He was already dead when we got there.” My hand shakes in his grip. “Hey, there’s no need to panic. It was self-defence, and there is video evidence of everything that happened. There’ll be no repercussions.”

I gasp at the reminder of the video feed.

“Y-you all saw everything?” I ask, my voice shaky and tinged with horror.

Callum and Connor both stare at me with teary eyes as they shake their heads.

“We didn’t watch, we couldn’t, so Ryker and Brad did.”

A pained cry comes out of my mouth at the thought of them witnessing everything that was said and done.

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