𝘊𝘢𝘳𝘥𝘪𝘨𝘢𝘯 |𝘑𝘢𝘴𝘱𝘦𝘳 𝘏.|

|4| Benjerly

ASPEN DIDN'T KNOW how she would feel once she was standing in front of her childhood home once again. Knowing that the last time she was there, she was holding a hand much smaller than her own and giving him a grand tour of the old treehouse in the backyard.

The Kings didn't visit Forks often, only about once a year.

The last time they had made the fourteen hour trip was to show Milo their home away from home, and he had loved it just as much as they did, despite the fact that he had just turned a year old and could barely speak a sentence.

And just like his mother, the treehouse had been his favorite part of the King property.

Ben had build his daughter the treehouse for her fifth birthday, wanting her to have a place to hang out with her friends when they would come over for sleepovers, or even just a peaceful place to read her favorite book, which at the time had been Clifford the Big Red Dog.

The littlest King had loved it, spending most of her time cooped up in the treehouse wrapped in blankets and flipping pages while sipping on her mothers homemade sweet tea.

And every time someone new would enter the treehouse, she would make them carve their names in the wood with a small pocket knife she had stollen from the dashboard of her fathers truck.

By the time she moved away, many names were carved into the old wooden walls. Apsen, Bella, Mike, Angela, Jessica, Jacob, Paul, Jared, Stu, Jack, Katie, Tyler, Lauren, Eric.

And of course when Aspen first took her son to
her comfort place, she kept the tradition going by carving his name right under her own and adding his small handprint, which was placed on the wall in bright blue paint. The same color as his eyes.

It was then she had learned that putting paint in her sons hands wasn't the brightest idea. Because now, at the bottom of the wall where the small boy had been sitting in between his mothers legs, there was smudged blue handprints all along the bottom of the oak.

He definitely didn't hold back with his inner interior decorator, and looking back on it, Aspen wouldn't have wanted it any other way.

At the time the mess of blue paint might have frustrated her, but now she was grateful for the mess and the memory that came with it. Her favorite sound of her sons contagious laugh, his smiling face looking up at her with smudges of blue that brought out the color of his eyes. Even after they had left and went back inside, giving him a bubble bath and scrubbing at the paint as her father gave his grandson a beard of bubbles and tried to teach him how to shave, making Aspen and Kimberly laugh as they watched the two bond with loving eyes

So now, as she stood in front of her childhood home and gazed at the treehouse she could see in the distance, she couldn't help but let a small smile grow on her lips.

Noticing his daughter was once again in her own world, Ben coughed loudly to capture her attention.

Aspen spun around to face him, one of her eyebrows shooting up at the sight of her father holding boxes stacked so high that he had to crane his neck up to even see where he was going.

Ben rolled his eyes at the look on her face. "Are you going to stand there and stare into space all day? Or are you going to help your old man out?"

Aspen snickered before walking over to him and grabbing two boxes from the top of the stack so he could see clearly. "You happy now, old man?"

"Delighted." Ben gave her a sarcastic smile before walking past her, making her shake her head in amusement and follow after him.

Luckily, they had kept their home in Forks pretty updated while they were gone. So really all they had to bring from San Francisco was their clothes, personal items, and Milo's things because they didn't have the heart to get rid of all they had left of him.