Chapter 47
Ireached for him, tentatively pressing my fingers to where his were clenched to his chest, as if he might reach in and pull out his own heart.
When he looked up, the world between us shrunk until suddenly we were standing in the same shared space we’d occupied once, so long ago.
He let out a juddering breath and closed his eyes, hanging his head.
His hair fell in front of his face, obscuring his expression.
Still holding on, I took another step until I could feel the heat of his body radiating towards me, even through his rumpled suit.
He slipped the wallet, and the ring, back into his pocket, patting it once before letting his arm drop back to his side.
I’d spent three years building armour around myself out of a story I’d taken as fact, and he’d stripped it from me as though it had been made of shadows and cobwebs. Now I was laid bare before him.
Slowly, I reached out my hand and cupped his jaw, tilting his face up until he had no choice but to meet my eyes.
“I forgive you,” I said quietly. “I forgive you, Baek Jihoon.”
He took a gasping breath, and I watched the play of emotions flicker across his features, a battle between devastation and redemption, sunrise and sunset. A single tear tracked down his cheek, hitting my thumb, and I wiped it away.
He reached up and took my hands in his, holding them gently as he brought them to his mouth, kissing them softly.
“I wasn’t going to come,” he said so quietly I had to lean in to hear him over the thudding of my pulse. “But then I saw your ring.”
He ran his thumb over the amethyst. Not as shiny as it had once been, but no less beautiful.
“Seeing you still wore it… it made me hope that maybe you didn’t hate me as much as I thought you must.”
I didn’t say anything, because I could barely admit to myself that I’d tried for years to feel anything for him that wasn’t love. Love in so many forms. Unrequited, resentful, needing, betrayed. Ever-present. Even now.
“Do you remember when I gave it to you?”
I smiled at the memory.
“Did you know my birthstone was an amethyst?”
He looked up at me, eyes widening. “No.”
“Yup. My birthday is February 21st.”
He huffed a laugh. “A Pisces. The universe has plans for us all.”
“The universe has plans for us all,” I murmured, remembering his words as if they were tattooed on my heart, because I had really believed that.
“It always felt like fate with you,” he said.
Even though I didn’t believe in fate, I couldn’t deny that there had always been something drawing us together.
An irresistible pull that had always been there.
From the moment we first locked eyes over a spilled box of cables in the lobby of Pisces Studios, to the moment I looked through the peephole tonight.
I remembered the moment we met so clearly it was like a recording in my mind.
Something had happened then that I’d never said aloud, not even to myself.
When I’d looked up and met his gaze – it had been the strangest sensation, because my first impulse had been to say, “ah, there you are.” Of course, I had done no such thing, and I had dismissed it every time I’d thought of it since, because we didn’t live in a fairy tale.
But that didn’t make what I’d felt then any less real.
And I felt it now.
I looked into Jihoon’s eyes, and there it was.
I’ve been waiting for you.
Something shifted between us. Some magnetic rearranging. I saw it on his face the moment he saw it on mine.
He released my hands before he raised his own to my cheeks, hesitating just before touching me. His palms were so close that I felt the warmth from his skin. My breathing hitched, and then he was cupping my face with hands that no longer trembled, and I nearly moaned.
As he lowered his face, his eyes locked on mine, looking for any sign that I didn’t want this. But he would not find it.
“Jagiya,” his breath ghosted across my lips a moment before he kissed me. It was… a homecoming. As familiar to me as the touch of his skin, and yet somehow brand new. My body softened as a heady rush of ease swept over me, a kind on uncoiling I hadn’t expected.
I exhaled as he inhaled, and for a moment we breathed each other in.
Wetness slid down my cheek, but I could not tell if it had come from my eyes or his, and it didn’t matter.
His mouth was warm against mine and for the first time in years, something inside me thawed.
I melted into him, and as his hands travelled from my face, down the lines of my body to my waist, I surrendered my weight.
It was as much a kind of sweet relief, as it was the desire to be closer, and when a slight sob hitched it’s way up my throat, it was because it felt like I’d finally, finally relinquished something that had dragged me down, and now my lungs could fully expand.
I had not realised how compressed I’d felt, until now.
I barely noticed when he swept my legs out from underneath me, I only knew that suddenly I was pressed against him, and we were moving.
In the next moment, I felt him kneel on the bed as he laid me down, and I reluctantly pulled my mouth from his to look at him, panting slightly.
The look on his face… it nearly undid me. The desperation yes, but also the fear. It was written so plainly in his features.
“I want this,” I said quickly, “don’t leave.”
He bit his lip, looking so unsure that for a moment, I wondered if I’d misread something.
“I don’t want to fuck this up,” he said, exhaling roughly.
I leaned up on my elbows, putting our faces so close I could see the gold flecks in his eyes.
“So don’t. Stay with me tonight.”
He ran his palm across my jaw, tipping my head back as he murmured, “Cheonsa…”
He pressed his lips to mine again, and like before, I had the strongest feeling of finally taking a breath after what seemed like years of exhaling, of giving up every part of myself to the universe and never taking anything in return.
I’d been emotionally stagnant for so long. Fossilised, but so very aware of it.
Now, whether it was wrong, or right, or whether those terms even mattered, I felt awake.
Jihoon pulled away, and for one frightening moment, I thought he was going to leave, but he pulled off his jacket, tossing it to the floor. He removed his shoes and socks while I watched patiently. This brief window of domesticity somehow granting more gravity to the moment.
Next, he moved to the buttons of his shirt. And I watched him, needy and anxious all at once. Terrified to do this, and terrified not to.
He hesitated, about to shrug his shirt from his shoulders. I watched as he seemed to have a conversation with himself, conflict plain on his face.
His body was all at once the same, and different. I knew how his fingers felt on my skin, but it still felt brand new. This all felt brand new, and maybe that’s why he seemed so unsure of himself.
But when he shrugged off his shirt, I understood why he’d hesitated.
On his right forearm, inked in shades of black and grey, was a bird. A swallow. It was in flight, wings extended to catch an unseen current of air, and in it’s tiny claws it grasped a dandelion, delicate seeds floating beneath it.
Jihoon paused, kneeling on the bed, arm turned slightly so I could see what he must have taken great pains to hide from the media.
“Oh,” I gasped, reaching out to brush my fingers over it. “Joon… it’s the tattoo.”
But it wasn’t the one the curmudgeonly tattoo artist had sketched for him. This… this was the one he’d sketched for me. Jihoon was wearing my tattoo.
“When did you get this done?” I couldn’t take my eyes off it.
“Just before I enlisted,” he replied gruffly, keeping his arm still as I traced the lines.
I looked up sharply. I guess I’d expected him to say sometime before we’d – before we’d broken up. He’d gotten this done well over a year later.
“I told you,” he said, “I needed to feel you. To remind myself to be better.”
“Oh, Joon,” I breathed, looking at the tiny seeds as they carried on an invisible breeze.
He reached for me, fingers brushing over my neck to gently cup the back of my head as he lay me down.
He kissed me slowly, sweetly, as if we had all the time in the world. The moment seemed to stretch beyond what it was, an unbroken line from that day in the Pisces lobby, to now.
When he pulled back to look down at where I lay beneath him, there was no trepidation left on his face, only something much more eventual.
A kind of certainty that felt like the moment where you turned into the current instead of fighting against it, and now that I was in the waves, I wanted to be swept under.
Watching the way his chest moved with each breath made my own hitch, even as something deeper coiled low in my belly. I fidgeted under his stare, inadvertently rubbing my thighs together and drawing his attention, before his eyes flicked back up to mine.
“I can’t take my eyes off you,” he said darkly, any trace of gentleness gone.
“I don’t want you to” I said, breathless, reaching for the tie that held my robe closed.
Almost faster than I could see, he grasped my hand, holding it in his and stilling my movement.
Confused, I looked up at him. He ran his fingers over my wrist before guiding it onto the pillow above my head, holding it there.
“Let me, jagiya. I want to unwrap my birthday present.”
Holy hell.
“Your birthday was weeks ago,” I argued.
“I am a patient man. I remember the first time I found you wearing one of these,” he murmured, toying with the tie holding the white fabric together. “It drove me mad, even then, knowing you were naked underneath.”
He took my other hand, and placed it on the pillow above my head to join my other one. When he leaned down, his hips settled against mine. I gasped when I felt his hard length through the fabric separating us. Smirking, he looked down at me, holding both my hands above my head, gently but firmly.
“I’ll take care of you, jagiya.”
I knew he would.