#wwwk6

[highqueenofelfhame]

when we were kids, six.

“I don’t want to have to worry if I’m part of your future or not, Aelin. You lied to me.” Aelin had lost count how many times he’d said it. That he didn’t know about his place in her life, that  she had lied to him. But she hadn’t lied to him. There was just information about her life that she’d left out. Instead of arguing, though, she stepped between his legs and rested her hands on either side of his neck. 

“You don’t have to worry. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you but it just, I don’t know, Chaol, it never came up and I know that’s a bad excuse but I was running from a lot of things that I can’t --”

“You can’t get into or won’t get into?” His voice was flat as his hands were on his thighs, but they balled into fists when she picked them up between them. 

“Chaol,” she exhaled, brought one hand up to rub her eyes almost aggressively. 

“I caught you in the woods with your husband, Aelin, standing so godsdamn close to each other you may as well have been making out. So you either can’t get into it or you won’t get into it.”

“We were high school sweethearts. Childhood sweethearts. We got engaged right out of high school, married a few years later, and --” Her mouth opened to say the words but something held her back. It was a heavy silence, one that settled uncomfortably over her bones and weighed her down. A flicker of doubt through her veins like lightning. “I don’t… I don’t know, Chaol. It was a long time ago and it just never felt worth mentioning, I guess.”  

It was quiet for a moment, quiet and then his head fell to rest on her breastbone, his hands resting on the outsides of her thighs. Aelin ran her hands up his neck and into his hair, pressed a kiss to the crown of his head, but while she held him there in her childhood room her heart was wandering places it need not go. 

“I’m sorry I accused you of having an affair,” he said, but she merely laughed. 

“I’ll forgive you if you take me home now.” With a nod, he agreed, and they were packing her bags side by side until they she was ready to go, ready to leave Orynth and everyone in it behind again. 

It didn’t stop the memories from flooding back on the drive to the airport. Memories of cheerleading at high school football games, of Rowan searching the crowd after a big win or better yet, Aelin being the one person he wanted when they lost. She thought of doing backflips off the pier into the lake, of bonfires wrapped in flannel blankets while she sat nestled between Rowan’s legs and roasted marshmallows. Their kisses were sticky and tasted a little like fire because she was one to burn them to a complete roast, but those had been her favorite summer kisses. 

She thought about their wedding anniversary being three days earlier than their actual wedding because they were too impatient to wait and since her dad was ordained, he witnessed the whole ordeal. She thought about how hard she’d laughed when Rowan had thrown up at her feet, literally filling her satin heels and she’d shoved him into the truck and driven him home to take care of him. Rowan had apologized profusely, he hadn’t meant to get so drunk but Fenrys and Vaughan had been relentless. Aelin wasn’t mad, that was something she had never been mad about. They were twenty-somethings being twenty-somethings and having a good time. She understood and her love for him had trumped anything. But she’d always wished they’d been able to dance at their wedding before he’d been sick everywhere. 

It struck her how every memory she had, good or bad, Rowan was in it. Up until the last eight years of her life, everything she knew went back to Rowan. Every road led to him, every thought. Every family or personal hospitalization, he’d been holding her hand. The time her family had been in such a bad car accident it left her back ravaged with scars, he’d been the first person at the hospital. He had run there because he was fifteen and didn’t have a car and his parents weren’t home. Everything had always been her and Rowan, until it hadn’t. 

It also struck her how, up until Orynth was out of view while up in the airplane that all she seemed to think about was Rowan. 

~*~

“You realize you’ve tried on like, literally a hundred dresses at this point?” Elide said flatly.

“I have not,” she shot back, smoothing her hands over her stomach while she looked in the mirror at the gown she now donned. 

“And every single one you say just isn’t right.”

“Because it’s not.” It was the truth. Every time she had tried on a wedding dress she just couldn’t see herself walking down the aisle in it. She couldn’t see Chaol waiting for her, couldn’t see the bouquet in her hands even though she’d picked flowers two weeks ago. Cake tasting had been fine, but finding a wedding dress to start forever with was different. There was no compromising. It had to be right. 

With a heavy sigh, she bunched up the dress in her hands and gave a sorry smile to the consultant that had been stuck with her for the last hour and hopped off the step and made her way back to the dressing room. She let herself be helped out of the dress, a gorgeous thing with tons of embellishment for sparkle that she would usually be dying over, and got back into her regular clothes. Today just wasn’t the day. Nor had the seven other days in the last five weeks been the day. Maybe there wouldn’t even be a day, but she chastised herself for that thought and grabbed her purse before joining Elide in walking out of the shop. 

“Maybe I should just wear a party dress and call it a day,” she said glumly, but Elide nudged Aelin in her arm. Aelin looked down at her with raised brows. 

“What happened in Orynth? You just… seem different. Even before you left you were excited about marrying Chaol and now I can feel the hesitation coming off of you.” 

“It’s not… hesitation. It’s… we just got engaged. What’s the shame in waiting? We’ll have only been engaged a year by the time we get married. Why did we decide immediately on a winter wedding? I don’t even like winter.” A heavy sigh fell from her lips as she ran her fingers through her hair. “I just missed home more than I thought I did, is all. My family, my friends there. You’d fit in great.” 

“I love Orynth. My family is from Perranth.”

“No shit?” Aelin’s brows were up into her hairline at the revelation and she threw an arm around Elide’s shoulders. “Maybe that’s why I like you so much.”

~*~ 

It wasn’t uncommon that Dorian, her attorney and her fiance’s best friend, visited set, but it was uncommon for him to look so uncomfortable. Aelin had forgotten until last week to give him the papers, partially because Chaol had found them stuck up under the viser in the hood of her car. She had feigned forgetfulness, that she’d meant to drop them off last week but time got away from her, and they’d handed them over to Dorian as soon as they saw him for dinner half an hour later. 

But now Dorian was flagging her down while she was on set, looking just a tad bit uncomfortable. They were just about to wrap, so Aelin finished her scene and made her way over to Dorian, eyes looking around the room for Chaol, but she didn’t see him anywhere. 

“Why do you look like someone food poisoned you?” 

“I was hoping I wouldn’t see Chaol first.” That made her stomach drop in a very unkind way, and she folded her arms over her stomach. 

“What’s wrong?” 

“I just got the chance to look over your divorce papers and… Aelin… you forgot to sign them.” Her mouth fell open with an audible pop, a thousand different emotions clouding her mind all at once. With a shake of her head as she reached for the papers he held in his hands, she was almost in disbelief as she flipped looking for her own signature. There, next to those idiot-proof tabs were Rowan’s concise script, but her’s was nowhere to be found. 

“Right. Um. Okay, yes, I’ll take care of that and get them back to you in a few days,” she was yelling over her shoulder, doing anything to put space between them so he couldn’t pull out a pen. It was an awkward position she was putting him in, hopefully not one so awkward he would feel the need to tell Chaol about it, but still, she was rushing back to her trailer and shoving the papers into her purse as if to hide them from everyone. 

And maybe she was hiding them from everyone, the same way she had hidden all forty-three phone calls she’d tried to make to Rowan over the last few weeks from Chaol. He never answered, no matter how many times she called in a row, no matter how many texts. If it weren’t for the fact that the phone kept ringing, she would have assumed he changed his number, but she still got a voicemail. 

“Please call me,” she said into the receiver this time, hoping that he actually would. He never did. 

Aelin couldn’t help but feel all the hesitation she had felt about marrying Chaol since coming back from Terrasen. It all came to a head as she stood there, cell phone in hand, unsigned papers shoved into her black purse. It was a truth she had wanted and tried so hard to ignore but couldn’t anymore. So when she tried to call Rowan again and he didn’t answer, she made up her mind.

She wasn’t going to take no for an answer. Rowan Whitethorn was going to talk to Aelin Galathynius if it killed him. And she knew exactly how to do it. 

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