Chapter 195

YENA

I’m not sure how exactly, but I felt Nolan’s presence as he approached from down the hall. I looked up, expecting to see him in the doorway, but he was not there yet.

The sound of his footsteps on the marble floors hit my ears next. Then finally my prince appeared, pausing at the threshold of my studio and raising his hand to knock on the open door. He met my eyes instantly, since I’d been watching for him.

“Hey.” He lowered his arm and stepped inside.

“Hi. How’s your mom?”

“She’s good. She seems to like the idea of the vow renewal ceremony.”

I stood as Nolan reached my desk. He bent to kiss me, his arms wrapping around my waist. I circled his neck with my forearms and let him lift me up off my feet for a second.

He put me down, pulled away and smiled. “You’re in a good mood.”

“Funny, I was just thinking the same thing about you.”

He shrugged. “Maybe I am. Kind of strange.”

“Being in a good mood is strange?”

Nolan stepped away and started a slow stroll around the room. “Honestly, Yena…” He paused in front of my dressmaking dummies, which were all draped over with half-made garments, and ran a gentle fingertip down one of the silky fabrics. “When you were gone, I started feeling like I’d never be happy again.”

He kept his back to me as he said this.

I walked over to him. “Why did you do it, then?”

“Do what?”

“Serve me with divorce papers? When you handed me that stack of paperwork, I thought you didn’t want me anymore. If that wasn’t true, and I made you happy… then why’d you do it?”

Nolan turned to face me. His lips twitched, torn between a sad smile and a full frown. “I wanted you to choose me. I didn’t think you would sign them. And then I would know that you really wanted me as much as I wanted you.”

“Hm.” This was new information, something I’d probably give more thought to later, but it didn’t change anything. “Well. Maybe it took a little while, but I did choose you.”

“I know.” Nolan cupped my cheek in his hand, then pinched it ever so lightly. “I’m sorry about all that, Yena.” He shook his head, like he was reprimanding himself.

“It’s forgotten.” I took his hand in mine. “Want to see something?”

“Sure.”

I led him over to my desk, where I’d been drawing for the past hour while Nolan checked in with his mother. “Check it out. Some ideas for a wedding dress.”

“Oh wow. It’s beautiful.” Nolan moved to stand directly behind my desk and studied the sketches I had all over it.

“I just placed an order for this fabric…” I pulled up a picture on my laptop and showed him. “It will be delivered tomorrow. Then tomorrow night I’ll start putting the dress together.”

“How do you do that? Make all this stuff so fast?”

I looked around my studio. It was kind of a mess… I had told the deaconess to leave it alone while Nolan and I were traveling, because I was in the middle of a few different projects and had stuff all laid out while it was in progress.

“You know, I actually wonder that myself sometimes,” I told Nolan honestly. “I just love my work. I get into a zone and the time just disappears. When you work fast like that, not even thinking about breaks for hours, you can get a lot done.”

“It’s impressive.”

I decided I was done working for the night. Nolan and I had been back in the palace for a few hours, and a sleepy travel-hangover feeling was coming over me.

“Are you hungry? I could go for some dinner.”

Nolan nodded enthusiastically. “Definitely. What do you feel like? I can have them set up the dining room.”

I tugged the chain on my lamp to turn it off, took Nolan’s hand again and started dragging him toward the door.

“You ever have a Game Night?” I asked, feeling pretty sure I knew the answer.

I didn’t know a ton about Nolan’s childhood. But I knew it had been very far from “normal.”

He shook his head no.

“Well, you are going to tonight. We’re going to need a couple pizzas, some snacks, cookies, drinks…”

“So, a junk food feast?”

“Don’t judge this, please. I don’t make the rules. And you are going to love it.”

“Okay. Where do the games come in?”

“We play while we eat, of course. Hence the foods that don’t require utensils.”

“Ah. Is this something you used to do with Evan, when you were kids?”

“And Tina. We had ‘Family Game Night.’ Peter was usually working, but he joined sometimes when he could.” We reached our room and went inside. “Another Game Night rule… we change into comfy clothes first.”

I decided that Nolan needed to give me one of his t-shirts. I didn’t really own any pajamas that weren’t at least a little sexy, and that was not the vibe I was going for right now.

The shoulder seams of his white t-shirt came down to my forearms. It smelled like Nolan. It was clean, but he’d worn it before and his sandalwood and pine scent still lingered in the fabric.

He called the kitchen and ordered our junk food feast, as he called it, while I changed into the big shirt and some little shorts and tied my hair back into a loose braid.

The wooden gameboard that Alaster had given to me was still inside the purse I’d been carrying at the nursing home. I got the board out and took it with me back to the bedroom.

Nolan, now wearing black silk pajama pants and a thin white tank top, headed for the door a couple seconds before there was a knock on it. The pizza smell was in the air the second the door opened, and my stomach growled.

“Alright. We have the required comfortable clothes and junk food…” Nolan brought our pizzas and snacks over to the table, where I’d just opened up the gameboard.

“Yes. We are ready now. Sit please.” I waved at the place across the table from me and he sat.

Wheel was a game for two players. It had little half-moon indents all over the board, arranged in circle shapes that overlapped each other. A shallow drawer on each side of the board contained maybe hundreds of colored stones. The object was to fill in a complete circle shape with your own pieces before the other player could. A little like tic-tac-toe, but on a bigger scale and with circles.

When we were ready to play we opened the drawers. The smooth little stones on my side were clear and blue.

I noticed something in the bottom of the drawer and scooted the stones aside to see it better. Alaster had carved his name into the wood in there.

“Look.” I slid the drawer out of the gameboard, detaching it. Emptied the stones into a pile on the table and passed the drawer to Nolan. “Did you ever see that before?”

He studied the carving and smiled. “No. You seated yourself on his side. He always insisted on playing the blue pieces.”

“Hm. Well, I guess we know who this game belongs to now,” I said. “Or… will belong to.”

Nolan looked a question mark at me.

But then he got my meaning a beat later. He smiled and shook his head, but didn’t say anything.

I won the game, of course.

Nolan claimed playing the blue pieces must be lucky, because he could never beat the old man, either.