Page 144 of Creeping Lily

For her.

73

LILY

Titan sent me away.

The words loop in my head like the echo of a slammed door. He didn’t ask, didn’t plead. He ordered. And I went, because in his voice was the kind of promise you don’t fight; the promise of violence.

But now I’m in Justin’s car, the dark pressing in on us, the silence loud enough to smother me. I clutch the sleeves of my jacket, fingertips digging into fabric, and all I can think about is the house I left behind. Titan’s house. The house holding Bentley and Tom.

My throat tightens.What’s he doing in there?

I know the answer. I knew it the moment his hand tightened on my arm and his eyes burned into mine—steel and wildfire both. He didn’t send me away to keep me safe from them. He sent me away to keep me safe from him.From what he was about to do.

Justin clears his throat beside me. He’s driving like the steering wheel is the only thing holding him together. His knuckles are white, his jaw set hard, and I feel the question hovering in the air between us like static.

Finally, he says it. “You trust him.”

It’s a cross between a question and a statement without necessarily being either.

I swallow hard, eyes fixed on the blur of headlights outside. “I do.”

Justin shakes his head, laughing under his breath, bitter and broken. “After everything? After what he’s done? Lily, you saw what he is.”

“I’ve always seen what he is,” I whisper, the words tasting like confession. “Long before the mask. Long before who he became. I knew him when he was Lincoln Walker. He was mine before the world made him a monster.”

Justin’s silence is heavier than any argument.

I breathe in deep, shaky. My chest aches with the weight of memories I’ve carried alone. “He saved me once. And then he disappeared. I know. I know now why he left. Why he had to. But I still felt him, like a ghost trailing me through every empty room. I can’t believe I didn’t guess it was him all those times I ran into him.”

His hands tighten on the wheel. “He was the one stalking you.”

The words are soft, stripped bare. They cut deeper than any accusation, because they’re true.

I turn to him, eyes stinging, voice low but steady. “He was watching over me, Justin. You were good to me. You were… safe. But he’s not something I chose. He’s something Iam.He’s the scar that never healed, the wound I learned to live around. Nothing can erase that.”

Justin exhales, long and ragged, like the fight leaves him all at once. His profile is shadowed in the dashboard glow, tired and resigned. “Then at least tell me this—do you really think you can build a future with a man that is that damaged?”

I don’t answer right away. Because I don’t know. Titan’s furyis an all-consuming fire, and fires don’t always leave survivors. My heart clenches at the thought, my nails digging crescent moons into my palms.

But then I hear his voice in my memory—low, rough, whispering against my skin:I’m your salvation, Lily.

I close my eyes, forcing the words out on a trembling breath. “He’ll come back. Because he promised me he would.” He has to come back.

Justin doesn’t argue. He just nods once, jaw tight, eyes fixed on the road. And in the quiet that follows, I know he understands. This is his closure. His release. Because he finally sees the truth—Titan was never a rival he could beat.

Titan was the ghost of my past. The only ghost I ever wanted to keep.

The silencein the car presses down heavier than any scream. I keep waiting for Justin to speak again, to argue, to remind me what Titan has done. But he doesn’t. The quiet between us is worse than anger—it’s surrender.

The headlights carve the night into fleeting flashes, trees and fences whipping past, but my thoughts are locked in that house. In him.

Titan sent me away.

The words replay, jagged, slicing at me. I should feel relief—safety—but all I feel is fear. Fear of what he’s doing behind those walls. Fear that when I see him again, it won’t be him anymore. Just a husk of rage with Lincoln’s face, Titan’s scars.

Justin finally pulls off the road, into the empty lot of a shuttered gas station. The glow of the dash fades when he kills the engine. We sit in the dark, the air thick with everything unspoken.