The Lie Hidden in Roses Chapter 16

The Lie Hidden in Roses Chapter 16 White Roses Mean Home

Uncle Damon had already set the rest of the plan in motion, so there was nothing left for me to do there.

My only job was to get Rowan to the hospital.

He was admitted to St. Arden Medical Center and stayed there for three days.

The injuries on his face looked awful, but they were not what scared the doctors most. The gash in his leg was so deep it had almost cut down to the bone. He had two fractured ribs, and one of his lungs had suffered a contusion. The doctor told me that if I had brought him in even two days later, saving his leg might not have been possible.

After that, I went to see him every evening when I got off work.

He was still pale as he lay in the hospital bed, but compared with the man I had dragged out of that clearing, he looked alive again.

“Maren,” he said one night, “I’m sorry.”

The guilt in his eyes made my chest tighten.

“I should’ve told you the truth before it got this far”

“I’m not blaming you.”

I sat down beside his bed and slipped my hand into his.

“But from now on, you don’t hide things from me. Not because you think you’re protecting me, not because you think I can’t handle it. No more secrets.”

“Okay.”

A small, tired smile touched his lips, and his fingers wrapped around mine.

“What about the man who was pretending to be me?”

“Uncle Damon is still chasing the lead,” I said. “The copy they took had two missing pages, and he used those gaps to narrow down who could have been involved. They’re close. This time, no one gets to disappear.”

“Good.”

Rowan closed his eyes, and for the first time since I had found him, the hard line of pain in his face finally softened.

A month later, Damon called me.

“Maren,” he said, “we got them.”

My grip tightened around the phone.

All of them?”

“All of them,” he said. “Including the people hiding across the border. Nobody made it out.”

“And the impostor?”

“We have him too.” Damon paused for a second. “He asked to see you.”

I didn’t answer right away.

Then I went.

Silas Voss was sitting in a metal chair inside the interrogation room, his wrists locked together in cuffs on the table in front of him.

When I walked in, he looked up and smiled.

“You came.”

“What do you want?”

“You knew, didn’t you?” he asked. “From the beginning, you knew I wasn’t Rowan.”

“Yes.”

“And you kept looking anyway.”

“I was trying to save him.”

Silas fell silent.

He was a criminal. That part was simple, and nothing could change it.

But I could not pretend I had forgotten the little things he had left behind for me. The tiny mistakes that felt too intentional to be mistakes. The openings, the clues, the places where he had almost seemed to be showing me where to look.

The truth from fifteen years ago was not something one arrest could clean up. It was too deep, too tangled, and too poisoned by too many people who had spent years hiding in the dark. Someone had been moving the pieces long before I understood the game.

I looked at Silas, and for a second, I could not separate what I felt.

Anger, pity, disgust, maybe all of them at once.

“Why did you do it?” I asked.

“Because I never got to choose anything else.”

He smiled again.

The shape of it belonged to Rowan.

The soul of it did not.

And wrong was still wrong.

Pain did not erase what he had done. A tragic past did not give him the right to destroy innocent lives, and I had no right to forgive him for the people who could no longer speak for themselves.

So I turned around and walked out of the interrogation room without looking back.

Outside the Ravenshore Police Department, the sunlight hit my face so sharply that I had to squint.

Rowan was waiting near the front entrance, leaning on a cane.

In his other hand, he held a bouquet.

White roses.

In the code we had made together once, white roses had only one meaning.

It meant safe.

It meant home.

I walked toward him and took the flowers from his hand.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“I came to bring you home.”

He smiled and slid one arm around my shoulders.

“Come on, Maren.”

Together, we made our way slowly down the steps, leaving the police station behind us.

The road ahead stretched quietly toward home.

An early autumn breeze moved through the street, cool and clean, stirring the white roses in my arms.

I held them closer.

And little by little, I smiled.

Rowan, welcome home.