Rowan's Thoughts
My grandfather, Sebastian—he was the softest of them, not soft literally, but compared to them, he was softer, and even he couldn’t look me in the eye when he talked about the past.
He didn't want me to see emotions.
But the rest? Cold. Strategic. Distant. They didn't care. They were alike robots ready to give you hot.
My uncle, the man who took me in after my parents died, barely looked up from his brandy when I moved into his house. My aunt? She looked at me like I was a disruption, not a child who’d just lost everything.
I was given a room, a schedule, and expectations. That was it.
No comfort. No warmth.
Just... duty.
And I adapted. Like any good Vaughn would.
But even now, I wonder—what kind of man does that turn you into?
A man who forgets the woman he swore to love?
A man who can’t recognize his own children when they smile at him?
A man who would have a threesome with unknown women on his wedding day?
I became a monster.
I leaned back against the headboard, staring at the ceiling.
I’d told Remi I wanted to try. To fix things. But maybe this wasn’t something I could fix.
Maybe she needed someone new. Someone whole.
Not a fractured man raised on legacy and strategy. Not a Vaughn.
Even if she accepts me back, my family may not. Then another drama. Another hurt. Another fight.
It felt useless.
Yet when I think of leaving Remi, this beautiful selfless, soft woman, I hurts. So badly.
I can't imagine a life without her in it.
I rubbed my chest, right over my heart.
It ached.
And it wasn’t from the scars.
It was from the realization that I’d ruined the only thing that had ever truly belonged to me.
I didn’t sleep. I just lay there, eyes on the ceiling, the crackle of the dying fire in the other room a quiet reminder that I was still here. Alive. Somehow still breathing.
But this didn’t feel like living.
I sat up, elbows on my knees, hands hanging loose between them. The silence was thick. Suffocating. I could still hear her voice echo in my head.
“I wish I could forget you like you forgot me.”
How the hell did I get here?
I used to think I was untouchable. Raised that way. The Vaughn name—etched into gold, iron, blood. We were built on legacy, and legacy didn’t make room for softness.
My father used to say that feelings were a liability. That love made men weak.
“Discipline, Rowan. You don’t get to choose comfort over control.”
He’d drill that into me every time I cried as a boy. Every time I flinched. Every time I slipped.
One night—I must’ve been seven—I left my homework undone because I fell asleep at the desk. He found me.
Didn’t say a word at first. Just stood there, watching. Then, with his hand on my back, he leaned down and whispered, “You’re going to ruin everything if you don’t toughen up.”
That night, I slept on the floor. Not as punishment—but because I thought maybe if I made myself harder, more like him, he’d stop looking at me like a disappointment.
It didn’t work.
Nothing I did ever seemed to be enough.
School. Sports. Public appearances. I was the heir, the Vaughn, the next in line. Every mistake was a reflection on the family. Every win was expected.
And the women?
They were ornaments. Pretty things meant to smile, wave, breed, and stay out of the way.
Love didn’t fit into that equation.
So, when they told me I’d marry her—the charity girl from the scholarship program—I didn’t blink.
I didn’t protest.
It was just another arrangement. Another move on the board.
I didn’t know then that she’d be the only real thing I’d ever have.
I didn’t realize that her silence wasn’t obedience—it was grief.
And I didn’t see her breaking because I was too busy pretending I wasn’t already broken myself.
I leaned back against the headboard, dragging a hand down my face. The air in the room was too still. Too cold.
Remi.
She was just a girl back then. Bright eyes, too thin, too quiet, always looking over her shoulder like the world owed her an explanation. And somehow, I made her life harder.
Even now, I couldn’t remember the details. But the investigator’s files—the photos, the timelines—they filled in the blanks.
I treated her like she didn’t matter. Like her presence was a burden. I saw it in every grainy picture. Every recorded argument. Her face.
She looked like she was constantly holding back tears.
I pressed my fingers to my temples.
God.
If I could go back—if I could just talk to that version of myself—I’d punch him in the jaw. Shake him. Scream at him to see her.
To recognize that someone was loving him quietly, completely, and he was too proud, too blind, to notice.
A knock at the door startled me.
My head snapped up, heart leaping—hoping, for one wild second, that it was her.
It wasn’t.
Just one of the cabin staff, checking on things.
I waved them off, muttering a thanks, and sank back into my thoughts.
The ache in my chest pulsed harder.
Not physical. Not something any doctor could fix.
It was guilt.
Deep, heavy guilt I didn’t know how to carry.
She didn’t deserve what I gave her. And she damn well didn’t owe me a second chance.
But I wanted it anyway.
Even if I had to start from the ground. Even if I had to rebuild e
verything I’d torn apart.
I just needed her to believe that I wasn’t the same man.
And maybe, just maybe—I could learn to believe it too.
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