There were spots starting to encroach on the perimeters of his vision from how long he’d been staring at the photo that had somehow wormed its way onto his Instagram feed: A golden blonde girl with a floppy hat and sunglasses, staring up at a brown-haired boy that had an arm slung around her shoulders. Both of them wore swimsuits, the backdrop a gorgeous expanse of turquoise sea. Turquoise that would match her eyes perfectly had they not been covered.
The last time he had seen those eyes they had been bloodshot with tears spilling over the rims, leaving nothing but black, watercolor mascara marks down her cheeks. The time before that he had been gazing at her from the doorway of his bedroom, her eyes closed while she sighed in a content sleep. It had been quick, the way she had gone from his to not his. Of his list of things to do that day, losing Aelin Galathynius hadn’t been one of them.
On that morning - one year, two months, and five days ago - Rowan Whitethorn had woken up with her cold toes wiggling under his legs. He had groaned, which only made her laugh and send the warmth of her breath over his neck that set goosebumps erupting over his skin.
“Gods above, woman,” he had said, reaching down to wrap his hot hands around her feet to warm them. Another quiet laugh from the woman he loved had him grinning as he rolled onto his side and pressed a soft kiss to her mouth. It was still dark out, neither of them needing to be up for hours, and she had nuzzled her face back into his chest and swiftly fallen asleep to the beating of his heart.
Now, though, she was with someone else. Someone who was quite the opposite that Rowan himself was, and he hated that he was now scrolling through her Instagram feed stewing over the heart captions that Aelin had left below picture of her and this man. Chaol. A man who absolutely wasn’t worth a single second of Aelin’s time — Rowan could tell just by looking at him. His jaw clenched at a photo of the two curled up on the couch together, Aelin’s face pressed into his neck with a smile on her lips. Four months with this one, she had captioned it, complete with heart emojis. That photo had been posted two months ago. Aelin had now been cuddled up in the arms of another for six months, the last photo of the two posted two weeks ago.
Rowan was unable to stop himself from wondering if this new man did everything that he had - if he had let her quote the movies she no doubt begged him to watch with her. If he sang along with her to music he didn’t care for just because it brought her an inexplicable joy while she danced around the living room, using all that ballet training she’d ditched after eighteen years.
More importantly, did he comfort her through the nightmares, did he hold her while she cried about lost love and her parents untimely and violent deaths? Had she felt comfortable enough to even confide in him? Was he making sure she saw her therapist once a week? Did he go out of his way to make her laugh, even when they were fighting, if she looked too close to breaking? Did he do any of that? Did he make her happy?
“Rowan, man, you’ve got five minutes to curtain,” Fenrys said, poking his head through the door to the greenroom. Rowan locked his phone and ran his hand down his face, willing away the tears that pricked at the edges of his vision.
“Yeah,” with a head nod was all he was able to muster and his head of security frowned as he stepped into the room.
“Yeah just…” Rowan shrugged, scrubbing at his face with his palms.
“I knew she was probably seeing someone else by now but seeing it on her page suckerpunched me about eighteen ways I hadn’t expected. Not that I blame her. It’s my fault. All of it is my fault. I couldn’t do the one thing she asked me to do.” Sighing, Rowan got to his feet and grabbed a bottle of water out of the ice chest by the door before they started walking down the hall toward the stage. “It just gets worse every time I’m back in Orynth and I have to go back to my stupid fucking apartment alone.”
“We could go out after,” Fenrys suggested with the shrug of a shoulder. Rowan contemplated, offering his friend a nod just as he hopped up onto the completely black stage. The part of the night he always hated was when the opening visuals started firing off with a version of one of his songs he’d mixed just for Aelin. It started slow until it built to an epic peak with his stage name - Hawk - flashing on the screens behind his head. He’d never been able to get himself to change the opening song, though. Couldn’t be bothered to drop the stage name that she had helped him pick out. His friends claimed that he was pining.
The longer his set went on, the harder it was to keep his eyes from scanning the crowd. Just in case she had shown up with her friends like she had so loved to do. Aelin had been his biggest fan his entire career; she had been there from the very beginning and if she was able to make a show, she was there. She had gently forced all of his music down her friend’s throats, had blasted it in her car, had requested it on radio stations not just because she was dating him and wanted him to succeed. But because she genuinely loved the music he put out into the world, because she was so proud of him that she wanted everyone to know how talented she thought him to be.
A flash of golden hair in the crowd had his fingers slipping on one of the buttons he was moving to press but he didn’t care. Another head of blonde hair with lips pressed to her beau’s had his heart faltering all together. It wasn’t Aelin, but that didn’t keep his mind from wandering while his hands stayed autopilot, carrying him through the set.
One year, two months, seven days ago. Rowan, down on one knee with a glittering emerald custom created just for her, Aelin with sparkling tears in her eyes while she pressed a thousand kisses to his mouth while murmuring the three letter word he had been hoping for against his lips - yes. It hadn’t taken him long to have her pressed against the window of the balcony, to be buried inside her with whispers of his love and affection for her dancing across her skin. Even the next morning, despite their lovemaking having moved to the bed, the fingerprints and smudges left perfect evidence of what he’d done to her against the glass. They had laughed about it.
Now she was likely tangling in his sheets. It shouldn’t be someone else’s hands on her skin. It should be Rowan’s, like it was supposed to be. Rowan’s hands on her skin, Aelin’s hands on his heart.
Still, despite his feelings, he found himself hoping that she was happy, that he made her feel as loved and cherished as Rowan had always tried to. That this other man would tell her multiple times a day that he loved her. That he told her with words and with flowers, with silent actions and huge gestures. He found himself hoping that if this was the man she was supposed to be with, that nothing would lead her to throw it away. Because despite himself, Aelin deserved everything. She deserved the world handed to her on a diamond platter, to be happy, to be loved. And regardless of the way his heart ached when he thought about her, he so desperately wanted her to just be happy.
By the time his show was over, his mind was wandering aimlessly over memories and moments he’d shared with the woman he would never stop loving. To be honest, he wasn’t entirely sure how he’d ended up back in his greenroom with his phone in hand, staring at old photos they had taken together. The photos they had taken days before she broke up with him of her crying happy tears over the ring on her finger.
“Another tour? Are you fucking - we talked about this last week, Rowan.” She was livid, the golden core of her iris dancing like lit flame as she shouted at him. “The one thing I asked. I asked you to take a break. To spend some time at home with me, to take off the long distance strain. That’s all i asked you to do.” By then, she was already working the emerald ring off her finger, so quickly he hardly had it processed before it was knocking him in the forehead.
“What are you doing? Fireheart, I -”
“I’m going to go find someone that actually wants to spend his fucking time with me Rowan since you clearly don’t. What do you even see when you look at me? A joke? Because it clearly isn’t your future,” she hissed. By that point, mascara was tracking down her cheeks and she was sobbing - horrible ripping sobs that cracked Rowan’s heart in two. Everything had been fine this morning, everything had been -
“Rowan?” His eyes shifted from his phone to Fenrys’s face, who had a slight smile to his lips. “You’ve got a VIP, man.” Rowan nodded once and stood, shaking out his arms and running his fingers through his hair. He didn’t particularly care that his face was red and feverish, or that his hair was sweat-soaked. Not until he opened the door anyway.
Before him stood the most beautiful woman he’d ever laid his eyes on, her eyes a bright turquoise ringed with gold. Eyes he had spent five years looking into, five years memorizing. Her hair tumbled down her back in golden waves, one side pinned back by numerous pins. The outfit she wore was simple, but a favorite of his: black jeans, white tee, black leather jacket. A necklace he’d bought her dangled between her breasts. The longer he stared at her, slack-jawed and in awe that she stood before him, the more her eyes began to fill with tears of their own.
“Rowan,” she said softly, her voice breaking in two. “Hey.”
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