Chapter Fifteen
Isit on a concrete barrier at the edge of the empty practice track with my legs crossed, a coffee in one hand and my phone in the other, watching Hongjoong attempt to teach Sungyoon how to drive.
Not a race car, mercifully, just a standard sedan from Hongjoong’s personal collection, a dark blue model with leather seats and an engine that purrs rather than roars.
But from the way Hongjoong is carrying on you’d think he’d strapped himself into a vehicle careening off the side of a mountain.
Sungyoon stomps on the gas pedal and the car lurches forward with a screech of tires that echoes across the vacant asphalt, and Hongjoong’s theatrical scream carries clear across the track, high-pitched and genuinely distressed, audible even from where I’m sitting a good fifty meters away.
I cover my mouth with my coffee hand and laugh hard enough that some of it sloshes over the rim and burns my fingers, watching through the windshield as the car jerks to a violent stop and Hongjoong clutches his chest with both hands like he’s having a cardiac event while Sungyoon gestures at the steering wheel in obvious exasperation, his mouth moving rapidly in what I can only assume is a string of complaints.
Hongjoong holds up one finger in a “wait” gesture, climbs out of the passenger side with the stiff dignity of a man who has just survived a near-death experience, walks around to the trunk, and retrieves a crash helmet.
He puts it on with great ceremony, adjusting the chin strap and giving it a firm pat, then climbs back into the passenger seat and buckles himself in with exaggerated care.
Sungyoon stares at him. Even from here I can see the look on my son’s face, the flat disbelief of a teenager whose parent is embarrassing him on a cosmic level.
The next time Sungyoon starts to accelerate, easing onto the gas with noticeably more caution this time, Hongjoong grips the sides of his seat with both hands and lets out a shriek that would put a horror movie victim to shame. Sungyoon’s voice cracks across the track, sharp and indignant.
“I can’t concentrate if you keep screaming like that!”
“I can’t help it!” Hongjoong shrieks back. “My life is flashing before my eyes! I’m seeing my childhood! I’m seeing my dogs!”
“You’re insane!”
“Brake! Brake brake brake—”
“I’m not even going that fast!”
I take a sip of my coffee and settle in, the concrete warm beneath me from the afternoon sun, and watch them circle the track in fits and starts.
Alto and Rennard are sprawled on a blanket I laid out beside the barrier, their long elegant bodies stretched out in the shade of the garage overhang, completely unbothered by the distant sounds of their owner’s hysterics.
Rennard lifts his narrow head when a particularly loud screech of tires reaches us, blinks once with aristocratic disinterest, and puts his head back down on his paws.
Gradually, lap by lap, Sungyoon gets smoother.
His turns widen out from jerky overcorrections into something approaching actual curves, and his acceleration evens from lurching bursts into a steadier build.
Hongjoong’s shrieks taper off into exaggerated whimpers and then eventually, as I watch the car complete a full circuit without any tire noise at all, into genuine coaching.
His voice carries on the wind in fragments that reach me across the open track.
“Turn here—yeah, good, ease off the brake before the curve, not during—that’s it, that’s it, now accelerate out of it—”
I lower my phone and just watch them for a while, my coffee going lukewarm in my hand.
Over the last couple of days I’ve noticed something changing in Sungyoon, a softening toward me that I’m almost afraid to acknowledge in case noticing it makes it disappear.
He’s not back to normal, not by a long stretch, and the hurt in his eyes when he looks at me is still there, visible and earned.
But the stonewall has crumbled into something less hostile, it feels more like a teenager working through his feelings than a son who’s written off his father.
He answered a question I asked him at breakfast yesterday with a full sentence rather than silence, something about his math homework that turned into a brief exchange about his upcoming exam schedule.
This morning he accepted the lunch I packed for him without protest and even mumbled a “thanks” over his shoulder as he headed for the door with his school bag.
Small things. Barely perceptible to anyone who wasn’t looking for them.
But I notice every single one and hold each one carefully.
Hongjoong eventually pulls the car into the garage bay and gets out to check the engine of one of the other vehicles parked inside, popping the hood and leaning over it with his sleeves pushed up, the tattoo on his right arm flexing as he reaches for something underneath.
Sungyoon stays in the driver’s seat with the door hanging open, his face flushed and his hair damp at the temples, grinning from the adrenaline with his dimple cutting deep into his left cheek.
I push off the barrier and walk over, reaching into the cooler we brought and pulling out a cold drink and a bag of the spicy rice crackers Sungyoon likes.
“Here,” I say, holding them out.
Sungyoon takes them with a nod, cracking the seal on the drink and taking a long drink. I lean against the side of the car and tell him he’s doing well, that Hongjoong probably won’t say it outright because he’s too busy being dramatic about his impending death, but Sungyoon’s picking it up fast.
Sungyoon wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and grins.
“Yeah, and Dad says maybe I might be able to race someday too if I keep it up.” He says it casually, tearing open the bag of crackers, but the word sticks in my throat.
Dad. He’s already calling Hongjoong that, easily and naturally, no hesitation or awkwardness in it, like the word was always waiting for the right person to attach itself to.
I smile and tell him I’m happy he’s getting this experience, that he can relax a bit now and not stress so hard over school with Hongjoong around to support them both.
Sungyoon glances at me sideways, his expression shifting minutely, the grin fading and becoming more serious, more searching.
He crunches a cracker between his teeth and chews slowly before he speaks.
“This means you’re not going to work anymore either, right?”
I blink, caught slightly off guard by the directness of it. “No,” I say. “Hongjoong definitely wouldn’t allow it, even if I wanted to.”
Sungyoon looks down at the drink in his hands, turning the bottle slowly between his palms. His jaw works like he’s trying to figure out how to say something that’s been sitting heavy inside him, that tightening of the muscle that I’ve watched him do since he was a little boy.
The silence stretches and I wait, not pushing, giving him the space to find the words.
“So you don’t have to let alphas hurt you anymore?” he says quietly.
Everything inside me goes still. My breath catches sharply and I stare at the side of his face, at the way he won’t meet my eyes, his jaw still tight, his fingers gripping the bottle harder than necessary.
The question sits between us, so simple and so devastating that for a moment I can’t make my mouth work at all.
“Did you know?” I manage, barely above a whisper.
Sungyoon nods, still looking at his drink.
“I never wanted to say anything because I knew you didn’t have a choice.
” He pauses, swallows. “But I noticed. Whenever you’d come home with weird bruises on your wrists.
Or when you’d limp for days after meeting with a client.
” He lets out a breath through his nose.
“Or when you’d move really carefully when you thought I wasn’t watching, like everything hurt. ”
My throat closes up so tight I can barely breathe.
I had no idea. I thought I’d hidden it well enough, thought the long sleeves and the excuses and the careful smiles were enough to keep him from seeing what this job cost me.
But of course they weren’t. He’s too smart, too observant, too much like both of his parents to miss what was right in front of him.
“That’s why I always worked so hard in school,” Sungyoon says, he suddenly sounds much older than fifteen. “I thought that if I got good enough grades and got into a good college, I could get a good job and earn enough money to let you stop working for those alpha jerks.”
I look up at the sky. The blue expanse blurs and swims as my eyes fill, the afternoon sun turning into a bright smear behind the water building along my lashes.
I breathe in slowly through my nose and hold it, my jaw clenched so hard my teeth ache, refusing to fall apart in front of my son on the side of a racetrack on a sunny afternoon.
I hold the breath until the burning behind my eyes recedes to something manageable, then let it out in a controlled stream.
“You never have to worry about that again,” I tell him, and my voice is stable even if the rest of me isn’t. “And you should do well in school for your own future, Sungyoon. Not mine. That was never supposed to be your burden.”
He nods, still not looking at me. “Right.”