Her expression softens. “That’s ironic,” she murmurs. “Considering I didn’t think anyone noticed me at all.”
I step closer before I can stop myself, the space between us shrinking naturally, like gravity has a say in this. “I notice you.”
The air shifts. Again.
She doesn’t step back.
“So,” she jokes to cover the weight of her words, “trust fund baby and vigilante king.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“King?”
“Careful, Rowan,” I murmur. “You’re getting very comfortable with that mouth of yours.”
30
ROWAN
I’m not sure what I expected when Justin brought me here after the attack.
A safe house, maybe. A faceless hotel with neutral walls. Somewhere temporary. Somewhere that wouldn’t leave fingerprints on my memory.
Not a church.
And I definitely didn’t expect to wake up wrapped in his arms, my body still warm from his, like it was the most natural thing in the world. Like this was where I belonged all along.
Yet here I am.
I sit on the edge of the bed with a blanket pulled tight around my shoulders, my hair still damp from the shower. My muscles ache in that deep, satisfying way that comes from being thoroughly undone—used, touched, claimed and touched again. There’s a heaviness in my limbs, a looseness I’m not used to. As if my body finally let go of something it’s been bracing against for far too long.
I should be spiraling. I should be overthinking what it means that we crossed that line—and then crossed it again. And again. Like we were making up for lost time neither of us could spare.
But I’m not unraveling. Because Justin is here.
He doesn’t crowd me. Doesn’t ask questions or fill the silence with reassurance I don’t ask for. He stands nearby, quiet and watchful, a presence more than a person right now. A sentinel. Someone who would move in an instant if I so much as flinched.
It strikes me how careful he’s being. How restrained.
He sits in a chair in the corner of the room, arms folded, posture relaxed but alert. I know—I know—that every instinct in him wants to cross the distance between us. To pull me into his lap. To touch, to feel, to make sure I’m still here.
But he doesn’t. He gives me space. Room to breathe. Time to come back into myself. And somehow, that does more to steady me than anything else could.
The room is quiet in that way old places get when they’re holding secrets. I can hear the faint hum of machinery somewhere deeper in the building—servers, maybe. Technology threaded through ancient stone. It feels like a heartbeat. Like the place is alive now, rewired into something new.
I find myself staring at a thin crack in the wall above the door, tracing it with my eyes like it might tell me something if I look long enough.
Then the smell hits. Food. Real food. Warm. Savory. Unapologetic. It slips under the door and curls through the room, tugging at something deep and forgotten. It smells like nourishment. Like comfort. Like a life where someone thought to care.
Heat coiled low and sharp in my belly—not with hunger alone, but with the ache of being reminded how long it’s been since I felt this… normal.
A second later, a voice follows. Low. Feminine and unfamiliar.
“Open up, sinner.”
The words are amused, wry. Patient in a way that suggests the visitor is used to Justin ignoring her.
Justin doesn’t even look surprised. He doesn’t answer, either. The door swings open anyway, nudged by a hip like it’s been done a thousand times before. And suddenly I understand that this has happened so many times before that it’s become routine.
