Chapter Eleven
The cigarette burns down between my fingers as I stand on the narrow balcony of my apartment, the cherry glowing orange in the dark.
The ashtray balanced on the railing is already overflowing, crushed butts piled on top of each other and spilling onto the concrete, and I’m nearly through half a pack.
My throat burns and my tongue tastes like ash, and I know I should stop, but my hands won’t stop shaking, so I tap the filter against the railing and light another one off the dying ember of the last.
Hongjoong isn’t picking up his phone.
I’ve called eleven times. I’ve sent more texts than I can count, long ones and short ones and ones that are just his name, and every single one sits on delivered, the little gray text mocking me from the screen every time I check.
I don’t know where he is. I don’t know what he’s doing.
I don’t know if he’s driving too fast in one of his ridiculous cars or sitting in his apartment staring at the wall or calling a lawyer or doing something worse, and the not knowing is eating me alive, turning my insides into a knot of anxiety so tight that my chest feels like it’s being compressed from the outside.
I take a drag and the smoke scrapes down my already-raw throat, and I cough, hard, bending over the railing until my eyes water.
It’s been hours since Hongjoong slammed my door and stormed out.
The sun went down a long time ago and the city lights blur in my vision as I exhale into the cold night air, the smoke curling and dissipating against the dark sky.
I check my phone again. Delivered. Delivered.
Delivered. I lock the screen and shove it back into my pocket and take another drag with fingers that tremble so badly I nearly drop the cigarette over the railing.
I jump when I hear the front door lock beep from inside.
I turn, cigarette still pinched between my index and middle finger, and step through the sliding door into the apartment as the front door swings open and Sungyoon comes in.
He’s got his bags over his shoulder, still wearing the same casual clothes from earlier today, his hair windblown and his cheeks flushed from the cold like he walked here instead of getting a ride.
I frown, crossing to the kitchen sink and stubbing the cigarette out against the stainless steel with a hiss.
“What are you doing back?” I ask, trying to keep my voice normal, trying to sound like a parent and not like someone who’s barely keeping it together.
Sungyoon drops his bags on the floor by the entryway with a heavy thud, clearly not intending to leave again, and looks at me for a long moment.
There’s a look behind his eyes, too old and too knowing for fifteen, and my stomach begins to sink before he even opens his mouth.
He’s standing under the hallway light and his features are sharp and familiar in a way that hurts to look at right now, the angular jaw and the brown eyes and the way his mouth sets when he’s thinking hard.
“Dad,” he says, his voice is careful, sounding as though he’s been rehearsing this the entire walk home. “Who was that man that was here earlier today?”
I go still. My hands are at my sides and I slip them into my pockets so he can’t see the tremor in my fingers, pressing my fists against my thighs through the fabric.
I think about what to say. I run through a dozen deflections and half-truths, the kind of evasions I’ve gotten good at over the years, the vague non-answers I’ve perfected for every uncomfortable question about his parentage.
None of them feel adequate. None of them feel like anything other than more lies stacked on top of the pile I’ve already built.
I settle on the simplest version. “That was Hongjoong,” I say. “He’s a very old friend from my school days.”
Sungyoon repeats it back to me flatly. “A friend.”
I nod, watching him carefully. He’s wearing almost the exact same expression Hongjoong was wearing in this hallway hours ago, the tight jaw and the hard eyes and the barely-contained energy of someone who already knows the answer and is just waiting to see if you’ll have the guts to say it out loud.
The mirror of it makes my gut twist with dread so sharp it borders on nausea.
Sungyoon is a smart kid, too smart, has been since he was old enough to talk, and I know with sick certainty that he saw exactly what Hongjoong saw when they stood face to face in this apartment.
That he looked at that man and saw his own features staring back at him from an adult’s face and that’s why he came home early, why he’s standing in front of me now with his bags on the floor and that look in his eyes.
“Is that man my father?” Sungyoon asks, blunt and direct and reminding me painfully of myself at his age, the way I never danced around things either. “My other father, I mean.”
This time I don’t even consider denying it.
There’s no point. The resemblance is too obvious, the timing too convenient, and my son is too perceptive to be fooled by anything I could come up with on the spot.
I let out a breath that feels like it’s been trapped inside my lungs for a decade and say, defeated, “Yes, Sungyoon. He’s your father. ”
Sungyoon bites his lip, and once again it’s like looking at Hongjoong but younger, the range of emotions flashing across his face in quick succession.
Confusion first, then hurt, then anger settling over everything else.
His eyebrows draw together and his nostrils flare, and I can see him trying to work through it, trying to re-examine everything I’ve told him over the years with what he now knows to be true.
“You lied to me.” His voice is cuttingly quiet. “You told me you didn’t know who my father was. But he’s your friend?” He shakes his head in a short, jerky motion. “I mean, you had to know. He has my face, Dad.”
I sigh and look down at the floor, at the scuffed linoleum and the edge of the kitchen mat, unable to face the rightful anger in my son’s eyes. The guilt is a knife in my chest. I don’t have a defense for this because there isn’t one.
Sungyoon speaks louder with an edge. “You knew this whole time, didn’t you? Where he was. Who he was.”
I nod silently, still looking at the floor.
“Did he know about me?”
I shake my head.
The silence that follows is unbearable. I can hear Sungyoon breathing, can hear the way it hitches once before he gets it under control, and when I finally look up his jaw is working, the muscle jumping beneath the skin, his fists clenched at his sides.
“So you lied to both of us,” he says, and his voice cracks on the last word in a way that feels like being gutted.
“I’m sorry,” I say quietly, and I mean it with every broken piece of me. “I thought it was better for all of us.”
Sungyoon lets out a harsh laugh that sounds nothing like a fifteen-year-old, too bitter.
“Better?” he repeats. “You kept him from me. All this time you knew who he was and where he was and you kept him from me.” He takes a step closer and I can see his eyes are glassy now, bright with tears he’s fighting, his voice rises as the composure he’s been holding onto starts to fray.
“Even when I presented and you knew I needed an alpha around to help me through it, you still didn’t say anything.
You had no right to make that choice for me. ”
I flinch at his raised voice, at the crack of genuine pain underneath the anger, the sound of a kid who’s just found out that the one person he trusted most in the world has been lying to him his entire life.
I can’t say anything back because I know he’s right.
Every word out of his mouth is something I’ve told myself in the dark at three in the morning, every accusation one I’ve already leveled at my own reflection.
“I’m sorry. I never meant to hurt you. I was trying to protect you.”
Sungyoon scoffs, the sound wet and angry.
“Enough. It’s all excuses.” He swipes the back of his hand across his eyes, quick and furious, like he’s angry at himself for crying.
“You messed with my life to make yourself feel better. You were being selfish.” He shakes his head again and his voice drops, going thick.
“You know what? I can’t even look at you right now. ”
“Sungyoon, wait.” I step forward as he spins toward the door, my hand reaching out. “Where are you going? It’s late.”
He waves me off without turning around, his shoulders hunched up around his ears. “I’m going to get some air. Don’t come after me.”
He wrenches the door open and slams it shut behind him and the sound is identical to the one Hongjoong made hours ago, the same force, the same finality.
I’m on his heels, but I stop at the threshold with my hand on the doorframe, Sungyoon’s words ringing in my ears.
Don’t come after me. I stand there staring at the closed door.
I can hear his footsteps receding down the stairwell, fast and uneven.
Every instinct in my body is screaming at me to follow him but I know if I do, I’ll only make it worse.
He needs space. He needs to not look at my face for a while and I can’t blame him for that.
I slump against the wall and slide down to the floor, my back scraping against the plaster until I’m sitting on the thin carpet with my knees drawn up.
The apartment is silent around me, emptier than it’s ever been, and finally the tears that I’ve fought against since I was nineteen years old spill out, hot and relentless, streaming down my cheeks and dripping off my jaw.
I put my forehead against my knees and I sob, the sound ugly and wrenching in the quiet, fifteen years of carrying this alone breaking apart all at once in the silence of my empty apartment.
Nearly two hours pass, and Sungyoon doesn’t come back.