28. Justin
JUSTIN
Rowan has a scar.
It isn’t neat or polite. It’s jagged, unforgiving, cut deep enough to leave a story behind. Most people would glance once and look away, embarrassed by the evidence of something they don’t want to imagine. I don’t. I keep my eyes on it like it might disappear if I don’t.
It’s a record of survival. Of pain that didn’t win.
She wears it the same way she wears everything else the world tried to ruin—quietly, without apology. She’s learned how to live around it, how to make space for it, how to keep moving even when it aches. That alone should be enough.
But I can’t stop looking at it. Not because it’s ugly. Because it isn’t.
It tells me exactly who she is. What she endured. What she outlived. And there is nothing more honest—or more devastatingly beautiful—than proof that she is still here.
“How long will I have to stay here?” she asks.
We’re lying in bed later that afternoon, the light slanting in through the windows, soft and warm. Her back is to my chest. She fits there like she’s always known the shape of me. Like my body made space for hers long before I understood why.
My arm is draped over her waist, loose but unbreakable.
My fingers move without thinking, tracing slow paths over her skin—down her spine, along the curve of her ribs, back again.
I don’t rush it. I don’t skip anything. I map her the way you do something you’re afraid of losing, committing every inch to memory even though I already know it’s too late for forgetting.
She breathes differently when I touch certain places. I learn those without asking.
Her question lands lightly, but it does damage anyway. Because I hear what she’s really asking. How long before she has to face the world again. How long before I let go.
My hand stills at the small of her back. I press my mouth to her hair, not kissing—just there.
“As long as it takes to make sure you’re safe,” I say.
My grip tightens just enough for her to feel it.
Not possessive. Protective. Like a silent line drawn around her that nothing crosses without going through me first. I rest my forehead against the back of her neck and breathe her in, steadying myself like she’s the constant and not the thing I’m guarding.
She relaxes into me, just a fraction, like her body believes me even if her mind doesn’t yet.
I keep tracing her skin. Over and over. Because loving her feels exactly like this—quiet, relentless, and already irreversible.
“Why do you care, Justin?”
The question lands softly, but it carries weight. Nothing she asks is casual.
I don’t answer right away. I keep my hand where it is, steady at her waist, thumb moving in a slow, absent circle like her skin is my canvas. Like letting go would cost me something I’m not ready to name.
“I thought that would be obvious by now.”
She exhales, not convinced. Not challenging me, either. Just tired of answers that don’t quite fit.
“It’s your job. You’re a protector.”
I nod once, even though I know she can’t see me, because that part is true. Because it’s the version of me the world understands. The clean explanation. The one that doesn’t require risk.
“That,” I say slowly, turning the words over, “and other things.”
Her breathing evens out for a moment. Then it stutters. Just once. And I feel it—right there in my chest—because that’s the moment she realises I’m not talking about duty when it comes to us.
“My sister’s name was Missy.”
My body goes still in the way it does when something vital is exposed.
I don’t interrupt. I don’t fill the space.
I don’t want to say anything that may have her second guess her decision to tell me about her sister.
I let the silence stretch because this isn’t a moment that can survive being rushed.
“My older sister. My only sister.” Her breath hitches, reshapes itself into something that might pass for a laugh if you weren’t listening closely. “If you think I’m chaos, Missy would’ve driven you insane.”
My hand moves to her hair without permission from my brain, light and careful, fingers threading through slowly like I’m reminding her she’s here. That she’s not alone in this room. She doesn’t pull away. She leans into it just enough to tell me my touch is welcome.
She talks about the sky first. The colour of it. The way it wasn’t fully dark, like the day hadn’t finished making promises it couldn’t keep. She talks about how safe everything felt. How calm and quiet. And that they were already almost home.
Then the car. The sound of it behind them. Rumbling.
She talks in a faraway voice, as though she’s left the room and gone back in her memory.
Her voice doesn’t shake when she says Missy told her to run. She just states it as fact - as though that instruction has been replaying on a loop for years and it’s carved into her.
My chest tightens until my breathing goes shallow. I don’t hear this like a story. I see it—feel it—understand it as something unfinished. A moment that never closed. A wound that learned how to hide but never healed.
A child who survived by obeying. A woman who has paid for that obedience every day since.
“I left her,” Rowan whispers.
She sounds devastated. She is devastated. Guilt is a lonely burden to bear.
The words sit between us, heavy and unmoving. I slide my arm around her and pull her in, firm this time, giving her my strength. I know what she means. She doesn’t mean she chose herself. She feels like she lived when she wasn’t supposed to.
She breaks then—not loudly or theatrically.
They’re just quiet tears, slipping free like this is the only place her body has ever felt safe enough to come apart.
I hold her closer, careful, like she’s something that shouldn’t be rushed or mishandled.
I don’t offer justice. I don’t promise it will be okay.
I just stay.
And in the dark, listening to the worst truth she’s ever carried alone, something sharp and unmistakable settles in my chest.
This is why Rowan is fierce. This is why she looks straight at evil and refuses to look away when everyone else does. She doesn’t write to be heard. She writes to warn. To tell the world to do better, to be better—or answer for it.
Vigilantism.
She was never talking about Goliath.
She was talking about herself.