Chapter 14 #2
“Yes, because we love you. Duh. And our collective love language is gifts.” Siwan said, blowing her a fake kiss, which Lia grudgingly accepted.
“Hyung is with Minji’s team. There were a few last-minute things they wanted to discuss, but he should have five minutes to talk.
Is that enough time to lay out your entire heart to him? ”
“I am not—”
“Have a pizza!” Soobin offered her the box as he pulled her into a chair to sit next to him. “Hyung should be—“
Speak of the devil. A door Lia hadn’t seen at the back opened, and out stepped Cal.
Tonight was a big event for the band, a chance for them to reestablish themselves to their fans, and the industry as a band that was here to stay.
Lia wanted to give their styling team props—they conveyed that perfectly.
Cal was wearing a vintage band tee whose sleeves had been ripped off.
The collar was ripped too, showing off his collarbones and the bare hint of his chest, silver jewelry at his throat.
His makeup was delicate but made him seem more formidable.
Every gaze seemed to be intentional when one had winged liner.
Thankfully they seemed to have abandoned the Byronic vampire hero concept, and just stuck with the band as who they were—rockstars. Absolute rockstars.
Lia’s stomach flipped as her heart fluttered. She’d forgotten that it was possible to be both kilig and anxious at the same time.
“Lia,” Cal exclaimed, striding—because there was no other way to describe it—across the room to her, and Lia tensed, because it was absolutely everything she had delusions of, having someone feel the need to stride across the room for her.
She felt it too, that pull in her heart to him, one that made her step forward, want to close the gap faster. “You’re here.”
“I’m here,” she said. She wanted to hug him.
She wanted to cry. But she could feel the weight of everyone’s curious gazes in the room, could feel the beginnings of trouble and scandal.
Cal must have seen her get distracted because he stopped too, putting polite, Holy Spirit-approved distance between them, his hands squeezing her arms instead.
“Hi.”
“Aigoo.” Siwan groaned from the makeup chair. “He’s hopeless.”
“Hyung, there are no good conversations happening in a green room.” Soobin shook his head, surprisingly serious. “Don’t talk here where we will listen.” He glanced at Siwan. “And meddle.”
Cal turned to Siwan. The leader and the band’s bassist exchanged no words, but seemed to understand each other perfectly as Siwan shrugged and waved a hand before his stylist descended on him with hairspray.
“Come with me,” Cal said like he could read her mind, walking confidently out of the green room and deeper backstage.
They kept walking until he spotted a huge stack of storage cases randomly left out in the hallway.
He ducked behind them, pulling Lia with him, the cases and a light curtain the only things shielding them from the rest of the world.
Lia’s back pressed against the storage cases as Cal placed both hands on either side of her head.
His eyes were dark and almost hungry as he looked at her, and an unexpected thrill of attraction made Lia shiver. To be attracted to Cal Ahn was a given. To physically desire him, and have him in such touchable distance was a gift.
He nibbled at his bottom lip. Lia couldn’t tear her eyes from it.
“I can’t believe you bought a ticket.”
“I didn’t know if you wanted me here,” she explained. “I’m an ex-fan, after all.”
“Is that what you’re still calling yourself?” He asked with a little grin, even if she could see him trying to hide the pain in the question.
“Are you nervous?”
“No.”
“Did you tell the guys to be nice to me?”
“They’re always nice to you. KST says hi, by the way.”
“The boy group?” Lia asked, because who didn’t know them at this point? They were huge, and not just in Korea. They were the third-gen phenomenon that made KPop explode all over the world.
“Yup. They called to wish us luck. I learned they’re the second group Damask signed.
Minji was the first.” Cal said. “They…they really like us, at Damask. They want a rock group, so everything I told them about our vision for CoBOLT, the touring, the arena, the festivals, they’re on board.
They have subsidiary companies in America, or something, so they’re looking at collaborations, maybe a festival tour in six months. ”
“Six months!” Lia exclaimed. “They seem excited! Do…do you feel good about this?”
“I’m terrified,” he admitted, holding Lia’s hand to hold over his chest so she could feel his wildly beating heart. “BINJ gave their blessing. It helped that Damask paid them through the nose for rights to our music, the band name, and this mini album.”
“They bought the new mini album?”
“They did. And it’s all going to be official at the end of the showcase, and I already feel like I’m going to fuck this up.”
“You’re not going to fuck this up,” she assured him, more certainty in those words than anything. “You deserve all of this, Cal. You and Soobin and Siwan, you worked hard for this, and you should get to have all the things you want.”
“Not everything.”
Oh god, it felt like a stab to her heart, for him to say that.
And she knew there was nothing else to say.
That speaking would bring them right back to the spiraling conversation of the other night, and she didn’t want him to think about that.
Tonight was about the showcase, the bright, glorious future of the band that they both loved.
She didn’t have words anymore, neither in English, Korean or Filipino. So she kissed him instead, tugging at the belt loop of his jeans and tiptoeing so she could press herself flush against him for a kiss.
Every part of her that she’d hidden away, that she thought was gone, seemed to burst out of her in a haze of passion, poured into this kiss. This kiss that Cal gave back as fiercely as she took it, that made her knees feel shaky and her back ache, but who cared?
“Ow,” Lia said as Cal pressed deeper into the kiss and pushed her glasses much too high and much too close to her face.
“Aish.” Cal chuckled when he pulled away, shaking his head fondly before he pulled her glasses away from her face. The lenses were smeared with foundation. Oh jeez. “Where have you been all this time, Lia-yah?”
“In line to enter the venue, outside,” Lia said, holding a hand out for the glasses, but Cal stubbornly shook his head and raised his hand up high where Lia could definitely not reach them.
“I can’t believe that of all the places I was running away to, I ran into you.
” She shook her head and pressed her forehead against the crook of his neck.
He smelled really nice. “It’s like I knew all along. ”
“Delusions are powerful things,” Cal agreed, lowering the hand with her glasses to lift her chin up and steal another kiss. “And for the record, you are part of the things I want. I’m not going to apologize for it.”
“Don’t apologize.”
“So you’re not going to have this conversation with me?” he asked, and he sounded hurt, even as he bent lower so she would have to tiptoe anymore, his hands low on her back so she didn’t stumble.
His smile faded, and she felt it, too. They could have stayed like that forever, spending the rest of their time hiding behind a flimsy curtain against some empty boxes, kissing and letting themselves feel all the things that they didn’t admit to themselves before.
But the world continued to turn. And both of them knew it was going to be away from each other. She could see it in his eyes, that wild, frantic expression that she felt she matched, the desperation in the way she clutched him and he held her. They both knew.
“I got a job.” She announced.
As happy as Lia was, her heart felt like it had been cleaved in half, terrified of a life that would move on without Cal. That for all her wishes for this to mean something a little more to her, she would end in the same place she’d been when she came. Rejected. Alone.
“Lia, you’re—” Cal’s hand was already on her cheek, already brushing at the tear that spilled out. Lia jerked, surprised at her own reaction.
“I’m fine, I—“ She shook her head. “I’m fine.”
“You got a job? Where?”
In the distance, Lia heard someone shout in Korean, and the rest of the world filtered back in—people moving behind them, people speaking.
She was pretty sure she could hear Siwan speaking to the tone of making some kind of lazy excuse.
She could hear the fans filling the gaps of noise even backstage, as the entire hall felt more full, and energy was just starting to fill it.
She and Cal looked at each other like they both accepted the truth.
CoBOLT had a show to do.
“You have to go.” Lia took her glasses back and brushed a stray bit of lipstick off of Cal’s chin. His stylists were not going to love her. She wiped at her eyes, grateful that she had glasses on so people wouldn’t notice.
“I know,” he said, and that determined, almost stubborn insistence that things will work out the way he wanted was endearing.
He came in close again, planting another hot, searing kiss on her lips, and Lia didn’t want to let him go.
Her fists curled into his shirt, keeping him where he shouldn’t be. “I need to go.”
“I know,” she agreed, kissing him again.
“We’ll talk later,” he murmured, pressing his hip against hers. “Please, Lia. We’ll talk later, I promise.”
“Okay,” she whispered. “Congratulations, Cal.”
“CAAAAALLL hyunggg!” Soobin called from a short distance away, and Lia wondered if she was imagining the laughter in his tone. “Come get mic-ed, please!”
Cal yelled something back in Korean that Lia didn’t catch, but he turned back to her, as if waiting for her permission for him to go.
“Go, go,” she said, smiling. “Thunder, CoBOLT, fighting!”