“Of course you didn’t know,” Evan says almost instantly as she starts to bring her hands to her hair, ruining her hairstyle, but at that point, it was coming out anyway, so she didn’t really care all that much. Her liner was smudged around her eyes, so why not have her hair loose in different places, “Rowen, I didn’t know until a few weeks ago and even then, I denied it and buried it deep down until it all just exploded yesterday when I kissed you because I didn’t know what else to fucking do.” All the words he’s saying and none of them give her any reassurance. If anything, she feels the heartache coming on already, she feels the tears she’s going to shed over it building up underneath her eyes, forming another lump in her throat as her heart begs to break out of her chest and shatter all over for the floor. Her feelings for him were brief up until that moment, but damn if they weren’t powerful. She felt like she had barely put her feet on the ground to get used to them and, instead, she was being tossed around in a tornado with no sense of up or down. “Why….?” she now asks genuinely with bitterness laced in her words as she looks down his hand. If she were to touch him now, it would only add more aching bittersweetness to the pain. She didn’t want to be strung along. Not for another minute, “So you can save me the pain of getting my heart broken in public? In a private cellar or on national TV, it’ll still hurt the same, so why don’t you just get it over with? Break my heart right here and right now. Better yet, just do something!”
“Listen, I know it’s not ideal but I will not stand here and let someone walk over and photograph us for the next edition of ‘Royal Idiot Rowen on TMZ.’ ” He states, a little more forceful than he’d expected. Rowen doesn’t want to force Evan out, but he’s not seeing much choice. “I’m not standing here, trying to hurt you Evan, come on,” He reaches out, taking her arm and pulling her towards the door that he knows has a small supply closet. He cannot get caught having this conversation in his fiance’s castle, on the night of a party that the Sonderburgs are throwing. It’s just... rude, to put it lightly. “Come on,” he says, and he closes the door behind them just as the sounds of the heels round the corner. He’d just barely missed having a captive audience for their argument. “Listen, I can’t... I don’t think there’s a way for me to say something without it hurting you.” He states, “I can’t tell you that I’ve sat around dreaming about us like that, I can’t say that because it’s a lie and I don’t lie to you. But I - You know I have to do this, that I cannot be like my mother and run away from everything that’s expected of me.” He breathes out, “She was a coward, and I’m not that. It would only prove them right, the ones who say I’m an idiot and that I don’t deserve something that’s apparently, my birthright.” He looks at the ground, where there’s stacks of cleaning supplies that he’s now standing on top of. “I just wish I hadn’t tried so hard. It’s so much - Evan, they really think that one day I’ll sit on a throne and I’ll lead them. They think I’ll do right by them, and I’ve barely even lived there. I don’t - I’m not the Rowen you knew on the backyard hockey rink anymore because I’ve got to be so much more than that.” He stops himself, “Do you remember, after my first date? When Vero basically left me at the movies and you came and picked me up with your mom and we went home and watched movies and you just - you fixed everything. I thought you were going to kiss me that night. We were what, fourteen? I was on a travel team and my mom was so nervous and in hindsight I think she thought someone would put the pieces together if we left town.” He smiles sadly, and thinks of everything in his life, and tells himself that he’s about to do something so stupid that he probably should take back his earlier statement about trying to not be an idiot, “I don’t get to do stuff like that anymore, but - but - You’re still here. You could’ve stayed home, where it’s safe. You could’ve gone at any moment. You could’ve not attended this party, even, but I think we’re past the point where either one of us is getting out of this. We’re in it for the long haul and -” When asked, later, Rowen won’t be able to tell who leaned in fully first, whether the kiss was something Evan did to shut him up or something he did to get his own mind to stop racing a million miles a minute, but it happened and Rowen’s brain short circuited once again, just like it had a few days before.
turnnoffyourmind
pixelskylines
