Rowan's POV

On his walk home, which was only twenty seconds, his mind raced through so many thoughts about Autumn and Aiden. He had seen them. Scars all over her body, some of them even in patterns. They were across her neck, her shoulders, arms, and elbows. All along her wrists in cross patterns. All down her thighs and even to her feet. The scars covering her body looked as though she were trying to escape some horrid place and got cut by barbed wire. Had she done that to herself? Did Aiden do it to her instead? Did she have those scars because Aiden, presumably, hurt Autumn in some way? Aiden hadn't appeared until a few weeks ago. Rowan had never seen a single person enter Autumn's house until this man decided to pop into her life. Was he coming back to her? Had he left her?

    The only way Rowan was to discover what was really going on was to get on Instagram and stalk their pages. Sitting down on his couch, he opened up the app and searched for the name Aiden. He had seen some of his posts from scrolling aimlessly through Insta, so he had easy access to his account.

    Clicking on his page, he scrolled as far down as he could go, to Aiden's very first post. It was a picture of younger him and Autumn snuggling in bed. The post was captioned, "I'm going to marry her one day."

    Rowan scrolled through a few photo dumps, and each picture had Autumn in it. Some of them kissing, others of them snuggling, some of Aiden making fun of her doing something goofy. It was quite obvious that the two of them had dated at one point in time. So what happened to them?

    Scrolling up to more recent photos, he realized that Autumn slowly started to fade out of the picture. In her place was a girl named Hannah, which Rowan noticed from previous posts was Autumn's best friend. One of the pictures was Aiden and Hannah kissing together at a party, hanging out with their friend group. And in each picture, Autumn was nowhere to be found. She hadn't liked or commented on the posts either, as far as Rowan could tell.

    He placed his phone on his lap, sorting his thoughts out in his head. Aiden, Hannah, and Autumn were really close friends. Autumn and Aiden were dating while Hannah was Autumn's best friend. From the posts, it appears that a few months back, Aiden and Hannah got together. Which leaves me to assume that Aiden and Hannah cheated, causing Autumn to lose her boyfriend of a few years as well as her best friend. Knocked out two stones. And now, Aiden is back with Autumn and they even have a joint Instagram account.
    Rowan went to snoop on the joint account, checking the followers to see if Hannah was following them. She wasn't. Hannah wasn't following the joint account or Autumn's account. However, Aiden was still following Hannah. Was there still something between them? What was Aiden doing with Autumn? She was obviously in a vulnerable state. Due to the betrayal and trauma of losing two people at the same time, she took to self harming. He caused her to fall into a deep pit of depression, and now he's suddenly back into her life? That couldn't have been good for Autumn. Not at all. And where did Hannah go? What happened to their relationship?

    Rowan's heart began to pound with worry. No wonder Autumn was so hesitant to be around Rowan. She was no doubt afraid of getting hurt again. But it was too late, wasn't it? She was bound to get hurt again. She was back with Aiden, and once a cheater, always a cheater. Rowan had to do something about it. An aching feeling grew deep inside his chest. He clutched onto his shirt, taking a deep breath, "Calm down, buddy. Calm down. You can't help her if you are freaking out like this, and you know that."

    His stomach felt like it was twisted into a million different knots. He felt saddened, even hurt, for what had happened to Autumn. Everything made perfect sense now. She had gone through so much pain, it physically hurt Rowan to think about it. His stomach ached. His heart ached. He felt as if he were about to burst. Or maybe worse, have a heart attack and collapse to the floor. He needed to help her get out of this situation. He wasn't sure how yet, but he needed to figure something out. Maybe talk with her one-on-one. If Aiden would even allow that... He seemed to be attached to her hip, not allowing her to have her own opinion or speak for herself. What was he to do?

    He couldn't think of anything else to do except to go to the police. But what would the police do? Aiden wasn't the one abusing her. She was abusing herself. Would they believe him? Would they take her in and get her the help she needed? What if they didn't? And she goes right back to her life with Aiden. If that were to happen, he would probably treat her more harshly, maybe even become physically abusive, if he wasn't already.

    No, he couldn't do that. Instead, he needed a more personal approach. He should take her out on a walk, maybe even to go get some kind of sweet treat and talk to her about what he saw. What he knew. The only issue was going to be to get her away from Aiden. How was he supposed to do that?