Fake Dating The Bad Boy-Chapter 65: Knowing

JUNE — POV

After everything, after the gasps and whispers and heat of it all, I finally feel like I can breathe.

The storm in my head, the voices, the flashes of violence and grief—they’ve all quieted down. I lie tangled in the sheets, tangled in him, in the warmth of skin and silence. My body aches in a good way. My mind, for once, is still. Sane.

I stare at the ceiling, his breath steady beside me. I can feel it on my shoulder, the steady rhythm of someone safe, someone mine. It’s almost enough to keep the thoughts from crawling back. Almost.

But I need to know.

I need answers.

Because I remember now.

Not everything. Not all of it. But enough.

Enough to make me shake. Enough to realize how close I came to never knowing.

He’s Number Nine.

My Number Nine.

The boy who always held my hand when the lights went out. The boy who I stole food for. The boy who whispered promises in the dark, telling me he’d find a way out. Telling me he’d protect me.

He did.

We had escaped together. We had planned it like whispered rebellion in the dark, during those cold nights when the other kids cried themselves to sleep and we pretended not to hear. I had gotten myself into trouble on purpose just to be assigned kitchen duty. Just to be near him. Just to slip into that metal room with the vent behind the fridge. He had drawn the map from memory. He’d stolen the wire to pry it open.

He had hidden me in a trash bag.

I remembered his fingers trembling when he zipped me in, whispering through the thick plastic, "Don’t make a sound. No matter what happens."

And then... darkness. The sound of wheels. Metal creaking. The trash truck doors slamming shut.

And then... him.

The man who took me in. The man who said he’d found me collapsed on the road, bloody and unconscious. The savior. Mark Matthews. Kind, generous, respected. The man who built foundations for girls like me. The man people said was a hero.

A lie.

A monster.

And I had no idea I’d walked from one hell straight into another.

The next thing I knew—I was waking up in a hospital bed.

My body aching. My mind blank.

They told me I had passed out in an alley. That a man—my adopted father—had found me collapsed and bleeding, and rushed me to safety. They said I’d been in a coma. That when I woke up, I couldn’t remember anything.

Not my name.

Not my home.

Not the hell I came from.

The doctors said it was trauma-induced amnesia. That whatever life I had come from, my mind had decided I shouldn’t remember it. That it buried it deep like corpses under floorboards.

And that was the beginning of June Matthews.

A new name. A new life.

Except it wasn’t a life. Not really.

But that’s not what eats at me now. What claws at the inside of my chest is everything I don’t know. What happened after Number Nine and I ran? How did he survive? How did he become Justin? What happened to the others? To the institution?

I turn to him.

He’s awake. His eyes are open, already on me, as if he could feel the shift in my thoughts the second they started. That intense gaze of his—dark, watchful, a little wild—softens when it’s just me. He doesn’t speak. He waits.

He knows.

And it’s that—his patience—that makes my throat tighten.

"I remember you," I say softly.

His lips twitch, just slightly. "Took you long enough."

That earns him a weak laugh from me, but it fades quickly. I search his face for something—maybe the boy I once knew. But he’s not a boy anymore. Neither of us are.

"I remember the escape," I murmur. "The trash bag. The vent. The whispers. But after that..."

I trail off. My fingers tighten around the sheet. My voice is barely a breath when I ask, "How did you get out?"

Justin doesn’t answer right away. He sits up slowly, the blanket falling from his chest, revealing faint scars that scatter across his skin like silent testimony. Faded. Old. I hadn’t noticed them before. Or maybe I had—and I just hadn’t remembered what they meant.

His voice, when it comes, is rough. "I wasn’t supposed to make it."

That chills me more than anything. He looks down at his hands, and suddenly I see them differently—hands that once clung to mine in the dark, now bigger, rougher, calloused with time and pain.

"I went back for you," he says. "Right after. I wasn’t supposed to, but I had to. You were gone. The truck had already left."

"You said you’d come back," I whisper, my throat burning. "That we would escape together."

"I did," he nods. "And I did come back. But they were already looking for me. I barely made it out the first time. They caught me."

I suck in a breath, dread curling in my gut.

"They brought me back. But I wasn’t a kid anymore, June. Not to them. I was a defector."

I blink rapidly, trying to process. "What... what did they do?"

Justin’s eyes lift to mine, and for a moment, I see something in them break. "They experimented on me. Isolated me. Tested how far they could push a body before it gave out. I don’t know how long it lasted. Days. Months. Maybe years. It all blurred together after a while."

"Oh my God..." My hand flies to my mouth.

"I don’t remember the exact moment I broke," he says, voice quieter now. "But I do remember the moment I stopped being afraid of them. That was the day I killed one of the guards."

My stomach turns.

"I thought that would be it. I thought they’d end it. But instead, they... promoted me. Gave me a new name. A new room. More privileges. I became one of their success stories." His smile is bitter. "They called me Justin."

"No..." I shake my head. "No, you’re not one of them."

"I was," he admits. "For a while, I believed them. That I was stronger. Better. That what they did made me... something worth keeping. I forgot who I was. Who you were."

His voice cracks on the last word, and my vision swims with tears I didn’t know were waiting.

"What changed?"

"I saw your name," he says. "On a file. A photo. You’d been found, adopted, living a normal life. And I remembered. All of it. You. The plan. Your laugh in the vents. The way you always shared your food."

His eyes don’t look away. Not this time.

The silence that follows is heavy. And when he speaks, it comes slowly—carefully, like he’s choosing which truth might break me least.

But he tells it all anyway.

"I didn’t become Justin. They gave me the name. After they took me back."

I sit up, wrapping the blanket around my chest like it could protect me from the cold sliding up my spine.

"But we were rescued. Eventually."

My breath catches. "We?"

"Children Right Foundation. It wasn’t the government. Wasn’t your rich father. Wasn’t you."

His voice is quiet, but I feel every word like a slap.

"They found what was left of us. Pulled us out. Some of us could still be saved, they said. I was one of the lucky ones." He gives a bitter smile. "Assimilated, they called it. We were given therapy, education, housing. A chance to be... human again."

My heart is pounding. "That’s how you became Justin?"

He nods once. "That’s the name they gave me when they registered me for school. When I got my new ID. New life. But I didn’t forget."

He leans back against the headboard, staring straight ahead like the past is playing in the corner of the room.

"I tried to. They wanted us to move on, but I couldn’t. None of us could. Not the ones who remembered everything. We tracked down the people who did this. The guards. The doctors. The ones who watched us scream and bleed and beg."

"And?" I whisper.

"And most of them paid their way out of trouble. Rich lawyers. Private settlements. Influence in all the right places." His jaw clenches. "No justice. Not the kind that mattered."

I feel the world tilting, my stomach turning.

"We caught some," he says. "Low-level ones. The assistants. The guards who weren’t protected by money. Some of us wanted them to face trial. Others..." He doesn’t finish that thought.

I already know.

Then his eyes shift to me, sharp. Accusing. "And then Rico found out you were alive."

My breath catches. "Me?"

"You were the rumor at first. A girl who used to scream when the lights went out. Who had vanished. They said you died. But Rico said no—he saw a photo. Fancy magazine feature. Daughter of some big-time philanthropist. Attending private school. You had a last name. A life."

I open my mouth, but I have no defense.

"I hated you." He says it like it costs him something. "I hated that you were living well while the rest of us were trying to survive therapy. Trying not to kill ourselves. You were safe. I thought... maybe you were waiting. Maybe you’d send someone for us. But you didn’t."

Tears burn the backs of my eyes.

"You weren’t the reason we got out. Other people rescued us. Not you."

I cover my mouth, the guilt breaking open inside me like a wound.

"So I found you," he says. "Tracked your schedule. Enrolled in your university. Same course. Same classes. I sat behind you. Watched you laugh with your perfect friends. Pretend the world hadn’t burned."

"Justin..."

"I waited for you to recognize me. I thought the memories would hit you. A scent. A sound. Me. Something. But you looked at me like I was no one."

"I didn’t remember," I croak.

"I know that now." He swallows hard. "But back then... I agreed to be your fake boyfriend so I could get close. So I could corner you, make you look me in the eyes and remember. And when you screamed in your sleep? I thought it was happening. I thought it was finally happening. I’d sit there, waiting for you to wake up and say my name."

Tears spill down my cheeks.

"But you never did," he says quietly.

The silence swells until it feels like it could crush me.

"I’m sorry," I whisper. "God, I didn’t know."

"I know," he says again, softer this time.

I reach out, trembling, my fingers brushing his wrist. "You should’ve told me."

His hand wraps around mine. No anger. No hate. Just that same quiet grip he once gave me when the lights flickered in our cell.

And for the first time in years, I don’t feel like someone made of cracks and missing pieces.

I feel like someone finding their way home.