Chapter 48
Afterwards, we stayed wrapped around each other until our hearts had stopped racing, not wanting to let go.
Jihoon couldn’t seem to stop touching me, even in the small ways, like running his fingers up my arm, pressing his face to my shoulder, wrapping his arm around my waist, pulling me across the bed to him.
I could feel his smile as he pressed kisses to my neck, and it ignited something in my belly.
A tiny, fluttering I barely recognised. Didn’t know if I could feel again.
Eventually, I insisted we shower. It wasn’t even a question that we share one. He hadn’t let me clean myself, despite my attempts to take the washcloth from him.
“I made the mess, I should clean it up,” he grinned down at me, holding the cloth out of my reach. “Let me take care of you, jagiya.”
So, I let him. I let him love me in all the ways he hadn’t been able to since that cold morning, so long ago, in an airport a long way from here.
Neither one of us seemed to want to sleep, because sleep meant saying goodbye to the night time hours where anything felt possible, unlike the cold light of day, where it was be harder to hide.
Instead, I lay on his chest, listening to his heart thump steadily beneath me, while he ran his fingers up and down my back in soothing motions.
He was still so beautiful to me. His body felt the same, even though there were new lines, new contours shaped in our years apart, and everything he had gone through to get to where we were now.
There were new scars, too. Little nicks, and cuts here and there. His hands were especially noticeable. More callused than they’d been before, but still warm and strong as. Safe.
He was unmistakably him. Just changed. I guess we both were.
We tried to fight it, but sleep came for both of us, and though I tried to deny it, I felt more at peace at that moment than I had in so long.
Which was why, when my watch gently woke me up a couple of hours later, my heart ached to look down at his sleeping form.
Because this would be goodbye. It always had been.
I dressed quickly, and quietly, having already packed my bag the night before.
I almost got away with it.
“Where are you going?” His sleepy voice made me turn, and whatever he saw on my face had him bolting upright in bed.
“You’re leaving?”
I nodded. “I have a flight to catch.”
“Back to London?” He rubbed a hand down his face, and I tried not to remember the last time I’d seen him this way.
“Yes.”
“Can I come, soon?”
I steeled myself. This was why I’d wanted to leave before he woke up.
“I don’t think that would be a good idea,” I said evenly, trying not to see the way his brows furrowed.
“Why not?” He asked, fully awake now.
I took a moment before answering, letting the stillness of the pre-dawn settle between us.
“Nothing’s changed, Joon,” I said softly. “What happened last night was… it doesn’t change anything.”
Between one heartbeat and the next, he had thrown off the duvet and had taken two, long steps to close the distance between us. He cupped my face in his warm, broad hands and tilted it up to his, scrutinising me.
“It changes everything,” he said firmly.
I shook my head, but his hands remained.
“It changes everything,” he insisted.
I didn’t reply, just looked at him with all the words I wished I could say. I reached up to wrap my fingers around his wrists.
He searched my eyes, looking for answers.
“Do you not forgive me, jagiya? Is that why you’re sneaking out? Tell me what I have to do, and I will do it,” he vowed.
I sighed, and pulled his hands away from my face, needing the space to breath without sharing air with him.
“I do forgive you. I understand why you did what you did.”
Maybe I’d needed to say the words out loud, because I realised they were true. I did forgive him, and I really did understand.
“But that doesn’t change this. Us. We’re too separate. Our lives… they don’t work together.”
“They could,” he said, holding my gaze even when I tried to look away. “They could,” he said more firmly.
Reaching out, he put his hands on my waist, pulling me to him, as if keeping that physical connection would somehow make this better. All it did was make it more unbearable.
“Nothing’s changed,” I said weakly.
“We’ve changed.” His brows furrowed, like he didn’t understand what was happening.
“Maybe that’s the problem.”
And maybe it was. Because I didn’t see how I could go back to the way we’d been, when I wasn’t the same person anymore, and neither was he.
Jihoon shook his head, but not like he didn’t believe me, but like he couldn’t believe we were back here.
“Tell me you don’t still love me, and you can leave.”
“Love was never the problem, Joon.” I said, forcing my voice to be steady, to not betray me. “But I am still leaving.”
I pulled out of his arms, and it felt like tearing myself away from a memory. But that’s all I feared it would ever be. Memory.
“Kaiya, tell me what I have to do,” he implored.
“There’s nothing to do,” I said gently. “This isn’t a contest, you can’t win me back.”
“Jagiya, stop.” He reached for me as I turned around. “Stop, please.” He held my hand, and it wasn’t a demanding hold. I could have pulled away if I’d wanted to. But damn if I didn’t wanted to give him a chance to make me not want to.
“Please, Ky,” he begged. “Everything I am, everything I do, is tied to you. I can not untie myself. I tried. I do not want to try again.”
Looking up at him felt like trying to look at the sun. It hurt, but I couldn’t help myself. It was wreathed in agony, and the emotion I didn’t know how to reconcile with who we were now.
Love.
“I belong to you, jagiya. I have ever since the first moment I saw you. I am yours. I will always be yours, and you are mine.”
“I haven’t been yours for a very long time.”
I turned away, unable to bear it. I couldn’t keep listening to the words I had wanted to hear for so long. I couldn’t stand to see the way he looked at me. I couldn’t.
He wound his arms around my waist. Laid his head on my shoulder. I could feel his chest heaving against my back, feel the way his breaths juddered against my neck.
“I have only ever wanted you.”
My eyes slid closed. I was so tired.
“What do you want from me, Joon?”
“Can’t you tell?” His arms tightened around my waist.
I shook my head, letting it fall forward.
“It’s never that simple.”
“It could be.”
I bit back a bitter laugh, because it had never been that easy.
“And would we tell anyone?”
Or did he expect me to be his secret? Again.
He stiffened, arms banded around my waist like steel beams, but my world careened to the side as he said, “I’ll tell them right now. Is that what it’ll take?”
I didn’t answer, my tongue had frozen.
“Tell me cheonsa,” he said quietly, urgently, “is that what it will take to make you love me again?” He spun me around, and I was so stunned that I didn’t fight it, only looked into his eyes, searching for any hint that he didn’t mean it.
His voice trembled. “All I ever wanted was to tell the world you were mine, but I did not know how to and keep you safe. But you were right. I should have had faith in us. We could make it work now, Kaiya. I would be so proud to be yours in front of the world.”
He waited.
And I… I wanted to say yes.
“No.”
Because wanting something and something being good for you were two different things.
He craned his neck forward, as if he hadn’t heard me.
“What?”
“No,” I said again.
“Kaiya… why?”
I pushed away from him. I couldn’t breathe. It wasn’t fair.
I’d spent three years putting myself back together, creating a life for myself, putting myself first and showing up, every damn day.
This was my life, a life I had chosen. He had no right to bust in here and offer to make every secret fantasy I’d ever had come true, because that’s all it would be in the end. A fantasy.
“Ky,” his voice was unsteady, his eyebrows furrowed tightly together. “Why?”
I put my head in my hands, trying to keep my tumbling thoughts from spilling out. Even as I felt my heart breaking. Again.
“Because I wouldn’t survive you again!” I cried. “I barely survived you the first time. I can’t–I won’t do that again.”
“Kaiya, I–” He tried to close the distance between us, but I backed away and he paused, hands clenching and unclenching at his sides.
“It was always all or nothing with you,” I gasped, breathless like I was mid-sprint. “Straight away, one to one hundred. And I loved that. I loved the excitement you brought into my life, but I’m not that person anymore, Jihoon. I’m not.”
I had rebuilt myself once. I would not shatter myself again just to see if I was still the same on the inside.
He ducked his head as he looked away, blinking furiously before turning back to me, and fixing with me a stare that almost had me running into his arms.
“Does this new person still love me?”
I ran a hand through my hair, stalling.
“That’s not the point.”
“It’s the only point,” he pleaded. “Tell me you don’t. Say you don’t, and this will be done.”
And in one, wild moment I opened my mouth, watching as his eyes widened in shock.
But nothing came out.
Because it would have been a lie.
God fucking damn it.
“Don’t follow me,” I begged, forcing myself not to blink, because if I did, if I let my eyes close for even a second…
“Let me leave, Joon. I need to go.”
I picked up my bag, and I walked towards the door, clenching my teeth so hard they ground together. But my chin didn’t tremble. Not once.
“This isn’t over, jagiya,” he called softly, voice carrying in the stillness of the room, like a prayer in a silent church.
I looked over my shoulder as I unlocked the door and opened it, the sudden light from the corridor hitting me in the face like the cold light of day.
He was standing six feet away, and it had never felt so far.
But what scared me the most was the quiet look of triumph on his face.
Because he’d always known me so well.
My hand tightened around my bag strap, the leather creaking in my grip, and I walked out the door.
I didn’t say goodbye, because it would feel too much like forever.
And I don’t know if that’s what I wanted.