JUSTIN POV
"Okay. I will date you... but I have so conditions," she said, voice firm, but I could see the nerves swimming behind her eyes. She wasn’t bluffing. She ant it—but whatever was coming next, it wasn’t going to be simple.
I walked up to her, calm on the outside, a thousand fires burning underneath. Without a word, I gently lifted her legs and sat down, settling them onto my lap. She blinked at , caught off guard, but didn’t pull away. My hands moved to her calves, thumbs pressing softly into the tense muscles there. She’d been through hell lately—hell I was part of.
"I’m listening," I said, looking straight into her.
Her eyes searched mine, probably wondering which version of she was talking to right now. Was it the careful, patient one who would massage her feet like she deserved? Or the storm hiding under the surface? I didn’t even know sotis. But I wanted to be the man she needed.
She took a breath, let it out slowly. "First... if we’re going to do this, I want honesty. Full honesty. No hiding your moods or personalities or pushing away when it gets bad. If you’re losing yourself, I want to know. If you feel like you’re not you, I want to hear that too. I can’t help you if you won’t let in."
I swallowed, hard. That was a big one. Bigger than she knew. Because letting her in ant peeling back the darkest corners of my head—the places even I didn’t understand. But I nodded, slow and deliberate. "Okay. I can try."
She arched a brow. "No, not try. You do. Or this isn’t happening."
Fuck. She was serious. And I hated that I respected it. "Alright," I said, more firmly. "I will. No lies. No masks. Just —even when it’s ugly."
She relaxed a little at that, then continued, voice quieter. "Second... you don’t get to use sex to escape hard conversations. You don’t get to distract with kisses and touches just to shut up. That shit sses with my head."
I raised an eyebrow. "Even if it’s really good distraction?"
Her foot kicked lightly at my thigh and she shot a look. "Especially then."
I chuckled, hands still moving in slow circles along her calves. "Okay. No sex to silence you. Got it."
"Third," she said, and this ti she looked away, cheeks coloring, "I want to take this slow. Not the fake dating kind of slow. I an... emotionally. I want to feel like we’re building sothing real, not living inside a fever dream that burns out in a week."
That one punched in the gut a little. Because she wasn’t wrong. We had been spiraling in and out of each other like fire and gasoline. Explosive, chaotic, beautiful... and dangerously unsustainable.
"I can do slow," I said, a little rough around the edges. "If it ans keeping you."
She looked back at then, softer this ti, her eyes searching again. "And the last one..."
I tensed. There was always a catch.
"If you ever feel like you’re going to hurt soone," she said slowly, "if you feel that other part of you taking over—you tell . You promise you won’t go dark and disappear or pretend you’re fine. We face it together. Otherwise, I can’t... I won’t be your crutch or your excuse."
I stared at her. Heart thudding. She’d seen more than I thought. Understood more than I wanted her to.
"I promise," I said, voice low but steady. "You won’t be my crutch, June. You’ll be my anchor."
She blinked like that word caught her off guard. But it was true. When everything in my head turned to noise, she was the one constant I could find.
She didn’t say anything for a while—just looked at , then slowly pulled her feet from my lap, sat up, and leaned in.
"Then okay," she whispered, brushing her lips against mine. "We try. For real this ti."
And goddamn if those words didn’t feel like air to lungs that had been drowning for years.
I continued massaging her thigh, my hands moving slowly over the soft fabric of her sweatpants, feeling the tension ease out of her muscles. She smiled, eyes fluttering closed, and let out the tiniest moan. Fuck. That sound nearly undid . It was soft, vulnerable... content. Like she hadn’t let herself feel safe in a while.
"Don’t stop," she mumbled, not even opening her eyes.
I smiled to myself, a real one. Not the cocky kind I wore to keep people guessing, not the cold one I used to mask everything I didn’t want the world to see. This one was small, quiet, and ant just for her.
When I thought I’d done enough, I paused, letting my hand rest gently on her leg. "Does real dating involve massaging your girlfriend like this?" I asked, my voice teasing, low.
But she didn’t answer.
She was out.
Completely, blissfully asleep—her lashes resting like little shadows against her cheeks, lips parted slightly as she breathed deep and even. Her expression was peaceful, like I’d finally managed to loosen all the tension she always carried in her body like armor.
I stared at her for a mont. Not in the usual way people stare when they’re admiring soone they love. No. I stared like a man who couldn’t believe sothing this soft, this good, this complicated and chaotic... had just said yes to soone like .
"Girlfriend," I whispered.
The word felt strange on my tongue. Not because I hadn’t said it before—but because this ti, it ant sothing. This wasn’t so ga. She wasn’t so placeholder to keep distracted from my voices or the fucked-up ss in my head. She knew. She knew about the parts of I kept buried so deep even I couldn’t always reach them. The cruelty, the switch-flips, the boy who burned and tortured without blinking. The mask-wearing party boy. The frightened nine-year-old. And yet... she said yes.
She agreed to be with and my demons.
Now it was on to keep those demons at bay.
I brushed a strand of hair from her forehead, careful not to wake her. She shifted a little, curling closer to the couch cushion, one arm draping loosely over her stomach. My fingers lingered on her knee for a mont longer.
"I’m going to fuck this up, aren’t I?" I whispered to no one, maybe to myself.
But maybe I wouldn’t.
Maybe this ti, I’d fight hard enough to keep the only good thing I had.
I stood slowly, careful not to jostle her, grabbed the throw blanket from the back of the couch, and tucked it over her. Then I sat back down, right beside her feet, not touching—just close. Keeping watch. Keeping quiet.
If this was the start of sothing real... then I’d better damn well make sure I didn’t destroy it before it even had a chance.
And if my demons ca clawing again?
They’d have to go through first.
June POV:
I said yes.
To Justin.
Out loud. With words. Not in my head. Not whispered in the dark to myself like so pathetic secret wish.
I said yes to making it real.
My stomach was still doing sorsaults over it. Not the sweet, butterfly kind. The anxiety-laced, panic-coated flips that co right before a rollercoaster drops. But I said yes anyway.
Because maybe—just maybe—it wouldn’t be a disaster.
He wanted us to be real. Not the fake-label, excuse-to-keep-touching-each-other kind of relationship we’d been dancing around. No more blurred lines. No more pretending this wasn’t slowly consuming from the inside out.
So fine.
Let’s make it real.
And if it doesn’t work—if it implodes like a fucking grenade in the middle of our lives—then we go our separate ways. No clinging. No stalking. No torturing each other with lingering glances and stupid gas that leave sleepless.
But damn it, wasn’t it better to try than to keep running from it?
Wasn’t it better to at least see what it could be before condemning it as toxic and broken?
I looked over at him—this storm of a man who was both my escape and my prison. His jaw was tight, his eyes soft in a way most people never got to see. He looked like he was battling his own personal war just sitting there beside , rubbing my thigh gently, like I was sothing fragile instead of the girl he’d pinned against a wall less than an hour ago.
I smiled, almost against my will, because... this version of Justin—the one who didn’t just fuck, but stayed—this one might actually be worth the chaos.
"Let’s just try," I whispered, more to myself than to him.
Let’s try, and if it all burns...
At least we’ll know we were real, even for a little while.
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