Chapter 51 51
Kaelen's POV:
I couldn't do it anymore, couldn't keep watching from the woods and pretending that was enough. Two and a half weeks of not talking to her, not hearing her voice, not being allowed in her life, and I was losing my mind.
So I drove to her house on a Thursday afternoon, no plan, no speech prepared, just desperate need to see her face and try one more time. Maybe it was stupid, maybe it would make everything worse, but I had to try. Had to know for sure that there was no chance before I gave up completely.
The drive took fifteen minutes and felt like hours. My hands were shaking on the steering wheel, my heart doing this erratic thing where it sped up and then slowed down and then sped up again. The bond was pulsing with anxiety, mine or hers I couldn't tell, just this constant background noise of distress.
I parked on her street and sat in my car for maybe ten minutes trying to work up the courage to actually walk to her door. What if she slammed it in my face? What if she yelled at me, told me to fuck off and never come back? What if she looked at me with that same betrayal in her eyes and I had to watch her hate me all over again?
But not trying was worse than any of those possibilities, so I got out of the car and walked to her front door before I could change my mind.
My hand was shaking when I knocked. Three times, not too loud, just enough to be heard. Then I stood there waiting, my heart in my throat and my whole body tense.
Footsteps inside. The door opened.
Annabeth was standing there in sweatpants and a t-shirt, her hair in a messy bun and her face bare of makeup. She looked tired, older somehow, but still so beautiful it made my chest hurt. And for just a second, just one brief moment, I saw something in her eyes that wasn't hate. Something soft, something that might've been longing or pain or the same desperate need I was feeling.
Hope exploded in my chest.
"Annabeth," I started, my voice coming out rougher than I meant it to. "Please. Just let me—"
Her expression closed off. That soft thing I'd seen disappeared behind walls I'd watched her build, and she stepped back.
Then she closed the door in my face without saying a single word.
The sound of it shutting, the finality of that soft click, hit me harder than if she'd screamed at me. I stood there staring at the closed door, my hand still raised like I'd been about to knock again, feeling like someone had just ripped my heart out through my ribs.
Through the bond I felt it, her presence on the other side of that door. She hadn't walked away, was standing right there just a few feet from me with only wood and locks between us. And she was crying. I could feel her grief bleeding through the connection, mixing with mine until I couldn't breathe from the weight of both our pain.
She was right there. Right fucking there, so close I could almost hear her breathing through the door, and I couldn't reach her. Couldn't hold her or comfort her or make any of this better.
I wanted to knock again, wanted to beg her to open the door and just listen, wanted to say all the things I'd been rehearsing in my head for weeks. That I was sorry, that I'd made a terrible choice, that I'd spend the rest of my life making it up to her if she'd just give me a chance.
But I didn't knock. Just stood there with my hand pressed against the door, feeling her cry on the other side, both of us suffering separately when we could've been suffering together.
Finally I lowered my hand and stepped back from the door. Turned and walked down her front steps, each one feeling like it took all the energy I had left.
The walk back to my car was maybe fifty feet but it felt endless, my legs heavy and my vision blurred with tears I was trying not to let fall. I'd known she might reject me, had prepared myself for that possibility, but nothing could've prepared me for the reality of it. The door closing without a word hurt worse than anything she could've said.
I got in my car and just sat there for a minute, my hands on the steering wheel and my head dropped forward. The bond was still pulsing with her grief, with mine, with this terrible shared misery that neither of us could escape.
And I knew, through some combination of dragon senses and the connection between us, that she was at her window watching me. Could feel her eyes on me even though I couldn't bring myself to look up and confirm it. She was watching me leave the same way I'd watched her train, both of us torturing ourselves by witnessing the other's pain from a distance.
I started the car and drove away slowly, not looking back even though every instinct I had screamed to turn around and try again. But I'd made my attempt and she'd shut the door, and that was her answer. Clear and final and devastating.
Maybe Marlen was right that time would change things, that eventually Annabeth would be ready to hear my side. Or maybe this was it, this was how we ended, with a closed door and both of us crying on opposite sides of it.
I drove home and went straight to my room, ignored Marlen's worried look and Lucian's question about where I'd been. Lay down on my bed fully clothed and stared at my ceiling, feeling the bond pulse with Annabeth's grief while mine mixed with it until I couldn't tell where hers stopped and mine started.
She'd watched me leave. That had to mean something, right? That she'd stood at the window and watched instead of just walking away?
Or maybe it meant nothing. Maybe she was just making sure I actually left, that I wouldn't come back and bother her again.
I closed my eyes and tried to sleep but all I could see was her face in that moment before she closed the door, the way something had flickered in her eyes before she shut me out completely.
That look would haunt me for the rest of my life, I was sure of it. The moment where she almost let me in, and then didn't.