The sight of them—together, certain, whole—would have carved something jagged and jealous out of me. I would’ve felt it like loss. Like something stolen. Like proof that I was always standing just a step behind the life I wanted.
But not now. Now, I watch them and feel something close to peace.
I smile slowly. Lily has found her home. Not a place. Aperson.
And Titan—dangerous, fractured, relentless Titan—has found something just as rare. Peace.
It’s not the absence of violence or redemption neatly packaged. It’s the quiet knowledge that someone sees all of him, flaws and all, and stays anyway.
And me? I have finally found myself. That realization lands softly, but it’s seismic all the same.
For so long, I defined myself by responsibility. By vigilance. By proximity to other people’s chaos. I told myself that being needed was the same as being whole. That if I just held the line long enough—if I stayed useful, stayed sharp, stayed necessary—then eventually it would add up to something like happiness.
But that wasn’t living. That was surviving with purpose.
Somewhere along the way—through blood and secrets and nights that nearly broke us—I learned the difference.
I learned that love isn’t something you earn through sacrifice alone. It’s something you choose. Something you allow.
I think about everything that led us here. Every wrong turn that felt catastrophic at the time. Every loss that hollowed us out.Every moment that made us question whether the cost was too high.
And I understand it now.
Everything that happened had to happen exactly the way it did, because it brought ushere.
To this moment where Lily stands unafraid in Titan’s arms. Where the past no longer owns them and the future isn’t something to outrun.
Where Rowan is safe. Where Rowan is mine.
The thought of her tightens something in my chest—it’s not fear, but reverence. Certainty. She didn’t come into my life to be rescued. She came into it to bechosen. And I choose her, every day, without question or condition.
I watch Titan press a kiss into Lily’s hair.
I feel Rowan’s presence like a steady warmth at my side, even when she isn’t physically there yet.
And for the first time in my life, I don’t feel like I’m standing guard at the edge of something I’ll never fully touch.
I’m in it.
This is our ending.
And our beginning.
Forever isn’t a promise whispered in the dark. It’s this. Standing here. Breathing. Knowing we made it out the other side. Together.
51
ROWAN
Iran until my lungs burned.
I made a choice that split my life in two.
Forgiveness felt like betrayal. Like letting go of the only thing that tethered me to my sister. If I stopped blaming myself, then what did that say about how much I loved her? If I loosened my grip on the guilt, did that mean she mattered less?
So I carried it.
Every day. Every breath.
