It sounds less like a warning and more like something he’s had to remind himself of before.
I don’t say anything, but the words settle anyway—wrong in a way I can’t quite name. As if darkness is the culprit. As if time or place is what tips the scales. I want to correct him, to tell him that bad things happen to good peopleall the time. In daylight. In familiar places. In moments that were supposed to be safe.
The dark doesn’t choose.
People do.
Some things feel pre-ordained when you look back on them, stitched into the past so neatly it’s tempting to call it fate. But fate is just a softer word for blame when no one wants to look directly at the truth. It’s easier to sayit was meant to happenthan to accept that someone made a decision so cruel it shattered everything that followed.
My parents spent years turning their grief on each other. They didn’t blame the dark. They didn’t blame circumstance or chance. They blamedeach other. Like if they could assign fault close to home, the world might make sense again. All the while, the real monsters walked free—unburdened, unnamed, untouched.
Those are the ones who should have carried the weight. The ones who chose violence. The ones who decided our lives were collateral.
I feel the anger rise again, sharp and familiar, pressing against my ribs until it aches to stay contained.
Then Justin’s gone.
And the silence he leaves behind feels heavier than anything he said.
25
JUSTIN
Ishouldn’t still be here.
That thought keeps circling as I sit across the street from her building, engine idling low, headlights off. I told myself I’d leave once I saw her get home. Told myself this was caution, not obsession. A professional courtesy I hadn’t quite been able to let go of.
Her apartment is mostly dark.
One low lamp burns in the front room, its weak glow bleeding through thin curtains. Everything else is shadow. My jaw tightens. The sight doesn’t reassure me—it does the opposite.
Something is wrong.
I feel it before I see it. The shift in the air. The prickle along the back of my neck that never lies. Instinct doesn’t shout or demand attention. It whispers. And it’s whispering now.
There’s movement. A silhouette crosses the room. A man. He moves too smoothly, too confidently—like he knows the layout, like he’s been here before. The streetlight catches his profile for half a second, just long enough for a sick weight to settle low inmy gut. The angle is wrong. His face looks… off. Distorted. Unnatural.
Masked?
My skin tightens, goosebumps breaking out along my arms.
“No,” I mutter.
He disappears deeper into the apartment. Toward the back, where her room is.
My phone is already in my hand. I’m dialing as I open the car door.
“Miguel,” I say the second he answers. “I need you now. Rowan’s building. Possible intruder. Get here fast.”
“I’m two minutes out,” he replies.
“I’m going in,” I say, even as he protests and tells me to wait.
I’m out of the car and across the street in seconds, heart hammering hard enough to bruise my ribs. My shoulder slams through the front door of the building. In this moment, I’m both cursing it and thanking God it never worked properly.
I take the stairs two at a time, boots thudding, breath sharp and measured. Every step tightens the coil in my chest.
Too slow. Not fast enough.
