Page 34 of Freestyle (Boys of Frampton U #2)

Rowyn

I t’s my last class of the day, and it’s right before dusk. Having a night class wasn’t my plan, but that’s the thing about plans. They change. My head is ducked down, reading an email from a professor about an assignment that’s due when I feel it.

Someone grabs me.

Arms wrap tight around my waist, another set locking my wrists, and I scream loud, raw, instinctive.

“No, get off me!” I thrash hard, heart punching against my ribs. My vision tunnels. Alberto. He found me. He found me.

I can’t breathe. Can’t think. Everything goes red.

“Rowyn, Rowyn, it’s us!” a voice snaps, close to my ear.

Gray.

The other grip eases, but mine doesn’t. My body is still burning, still fighting, still panicked. My feet hit dirt, and my hands slam into his chest. I pull away like I’ve been scorched.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” I bark, stepping back, dragging air into my lungs like it’s poison.

“We didn’t mean—” Gray starts, arms raised like I might strike again.

Phoenix doesn’t speak. His eyes are on me, but I won’t meet them. Can’t.

I wrap my arms around myself instead. Too tight. Too raw. Everything presses in like it knows my secrets now.

“I thought you were him,” I whisper, realizing all too late I let that information slip.

It lands hard. Their bodies go still, shoulders tense, but I try to shake it off before they can ask questions they don’t have a right to ask.

Gray’s voice cuts through the silence like a blade.

“You thought we were who , exactly?”

I stop walking.

The question hangs heavy, laced with something I don’t want to name. Concern. Confusion. That low throb of guilt they think I don’t see.

I clench my jaw and stare ahead, not turning around. My body’s still trembling, and that pisses me off. I hate that they can see it.

“Let it go,” I snap.

But they don’t. I hear the crunch of leaves as one of them, probably Gray, takes a step forward.

“You screamed like you saw a ghost,” Phoenix says, quietly. Too quiet. “We need to know what that was.”

No. They need to feel better about what just happened. I need to keep breathing.

My fists curl at my sides.

“It’s no one,” I lie. Too fast. Too sharp. “Just nerves.”

“Bullshit.”

That’s Phoenix again. He thinks he knows me, but it’s doubtful. I turn then, slowly, just enough so they can see my eyes in the dark.

“Fine,” I bite out. “You want the truth?”

I let the words drop like stones.

“I thought you were someone from my past. A monster.”

Their reactions are thunderous in their stillness, no gasps, no questions—just the kind of silence that feels armed.

“I thought for a second he got in,” I continue, voice lower now. “That he slipped inside again without any detection.”

They don’t speak. Not right away.

And maybe that’s the worst part. Why aren’t they asking questions?

Because for once, the great Phoenix and Gray, the boys who rule this place like gods in disguise, don’t know what to say.

Grayson

A Monster.

The way it rolls from her tongue, stiff with disgust, frayed with fear. I feel it like a punch straight to the chest.

Something’s happened.

And the worst part? She didn’t flinch because we surprised her.

She flinched because she thought we were him . Alberto, I’m sure of it.

The sick bastard’s name echoes in my head, louder than my heart beat. I exchange a look with Phoenix, and it hits us both at the same time. This night, our night, isn’t just about Rowyn stepping into her place with us.

It’s about her surviving something we didn’t see .

Or didn’t want to see.

My fists curl. I feel that old rage rise up, the one I used to use to laugh at people like her. Back when fear was just a weakness to exploit. Now? It feels different. Wrong.

Because if Alberto’s been near her, still near her , it means we let something slip through the cracks.

I saw the name in her file, pages we shouldn’t have accessed, but we did. We needed to know. Phoenix and I read every word, every line in that caseworker’s too-calm notes. We saw what was taken from her, what was allowed to happen.

And now she’s shaking in front of us, because she thought it was him.

I shouldn’t’ve let her go off on her own.

That fancy letter we sent, it wasn’t just a summons. It was a promise. That we’d protect her, that no one would ever lay hands on her again without consequence.

And if she’s this scared? If she screamed like that?

It means he’s closer than we thought.

I swear, if he’s here tonight, lurking behind some tree, we’ll find him.

I don’t care if we burn this whole campus to the ground.

Rowyn belongs to us now, and nothing gets to take her again .

“Why aren’t you asking questions? Why does it seem like you know exactly who I’m talking about?” she asks, her voice louder now.

Nix goes still.

Rowyn’s voice slices through the thick quiet, sharp and suspicious. She’s no longer just afraid, she’s aware, and she’s right.

I swallow hard, keeping my hands at my sides, head aimed toward the sky, because I’m not sure I can look her in the eyes right now.

“We read your file,” Nix says. Low. Controlled.

Her breath catches, not enough to be a gasp, but enough to give him a crack in her armor.

“The social worker’s notes,” he continues. “The ones they thought no one would ever bother to dig up. I hacked into the archives. We—”

“How could you? I didn’t give you permission for that! That’s private information!” she snaps.

“I know.”

“But you did it anyway.” She crosses her arms over her chest defensively.

He nods once. “Yeah. Because we needed to understand. The way you looked at us over the summer? Like you were already bleeding and dared us to make it worse. We had to know where that fire came from, and then we saw his name. ”

“Alberto.” She spits it now. No fear, just venom.

I feel my grip on patience fray. “He touched you, Rowyn. Hurt you, and he’s probably still out there thinking he can own you.”

Rowyn’s eyes flicker. Her voice is quieter now, but no less cutting. “So what, this whole time was some twisted savior complex? You playing heroes to fix me?”

“No,” I say. “We’re not here to fix you. We’re here to make sure no one ever breaks you again.”

“Break me the way you both did, you mean?”

It hits like a blade; not wild or angry, but precise. Surgical.

I don’t move. I don’t even try to defend myself.

Because she’s right.

I see Phoenix shift beside me, his jaw tightening like he’s grinding glass between his teeth but I keep my eyes on her, even though I can barely stand what I see reflected back: the version of me only she sees. The boy who threatened, mocked too easily, whose words left marks no one saw.

I want to speak. I want to fix it, but there’s no fixing this. Not with apologies. Not with promises.

So I don’t speak to defend, I speak to bleed.

“You’re right,” I say quietly. “We broke you before anyone else could.”

Rowyn blinks, just once. The air changes. Her armor doesn’t drop, but something in her stutters .

“And maybe we thought if we controlled the damage,” I go on, “if we were the storm, no one else could get close enough to ruin you.”

I shake my head.

“But that doesn’t make it less cruel. We didn’t protect you. We claimed you without ever earning you.”

Phoenix finally steps forward, slow, quiet. His voice is low. “You don’t owe us forgiveness. We’re not here for that.”

I swallow down every instinct that tells me to ask for it anyway.

I meet her gaze.

“We’re just here, and we’re not going anywhere.”

The silence that follows feels less like a pause and more like the eye of a storm.

Then slowly, she lifts her chin.

She just looks at me.

And it’s so much worse.

Because her eyes are shining, not angry, not sharp, just… tired. Like she’s been carrying this for too long, and the straps finally tore.

“You broke me,” she says, her voice quivering. “Then you left me,” she says quieter.

Not a scream. A statement, and I hate how right she is.

I step forward, just once. I don’t reach for her—God, I don’t even breathe near her.

“I know,” I whisper. “And I’m sorry doesn’t scratch the surface. I don’t want forgiveness, Rowyn. I just want you safe.”

Her lips tremble, not enough to be a cry, but I see it. The first crack in all that steel she wears.

“You’re too late,” she says. “He already got inside. You said you’d bleed to protect me, but you bled me first.”

Phoenix lowers his head like he’s praying to ghosts we don’t believe in. His voice is rough. “We didn’t mean to make you feel—”

“Unloveable?” she cuts in. “Disposable? Like the way you laughed when you took that picture of me while I was naked, threatening to send it to the whole school? Did you think making me get on my knees for you wasn’t something that would live in my bones forever?”

I blink hard.

She’s crying now, finally, and it breaks me in a way I didn’t expect. Silent tears, falling one after another, no drama, no performance.

“I showed up that night,” she says, voice shaking, “because I thought maybe I could stop being afraid, but now I think I’m just tired of pretending I didn’t matter.”

“You matter,” I say, stepping closer before I can stop myself. “Rowyn, you’ve mattered every second.”

“Then why did it take a file and a monster to see it?”

I can’t answer.

So instead, I kneel. Right there. Like a knight without armor. Like someone begging, not for redemption, but for permission to try.

“I can’t undo what we did,” I whisper. “But I can stand between you and the dark for the rest of my life, if you’ll let me.”

She doesn’t move, she doesn’t run.

And maybe, for tonight, that’s enough.