Chapter 28 Monroe #2
“But I was,” he replies. “I realized I wasn’t so fearless. Not as fearless as I pretended to be. Really, I was afraid to undo the wall I had put up as a boy. I couldn’t get past it because I had lived so many years closed off. It was the only way I knew how to be.”
“So what changed?” I ask. “Are you saying that’s not you anymore?”
He stops mid-step, his head turning for a look at me that evokes another flutter in my stomach. “You walked out that hospital door.”
I’m taken aback by the simple, blunt answer. The earnest gleam in his dark eyes. He steps closer, still leaving a gap between us, but making it feel as if the room itself is shrinking.
We’re being drawn together so naturally, like always.
“It made me realize I’d been afraid of the wrong thing,” he explains. “I thought I was afraid of being vulnerable. Of opening up and having someone see all my broken pieces and decide I wasn’t worth loving. But that’s not what I’m truly afraid of, Monroe. That was never really it.”
“Then… then what is it?”
He’s taken a couple more steps, now so close I can reach out and touch him. Still holding my gaze, he makes a confession that’s clearly been on his mind for weeks.
“The only real fear I have in this lifetime is losing you, Tokki-ya. Nothing else compares.”
“Jin…” I whisper, my thoughts scrambled. “But… how….”
“These past four weeks,” he continues, “I’ve focused on healing my body.
I’ve gone to physical therapy to recover from my wounds.
But that was not all the healing I have done.
I’ve done work to heal my heart and mind too.
Grief therapy to help me process what happened to us.
But also what happened to me when I was a child. ”
My eyes widen. “You’ve been going to therapy?”
“I’ve been learning how to mourn… the right way,” he admits. “Without the rage and violence and shoving down the other emotions.”
The air in my lungs catches. I’m surprised by his revelation. Therapy was always a hard pass from Jin no matter how many times I asked and even begged.
To know he’s sought it out himself, and has been attending since we’ve been apart, makes me realize he’s serious. He’s really trying to better himself and conquer his demons.
“I’ve been thinking about you,” he confesses. “All the time. All day and night, Tokki-ya. Wanting to be better for you.”
“But… you had your chance,” I say, blinking and looking away from him. “I was right there, crying, reaching out, and you let me walk away without a word.”
“I know.”
“So why should I believe anything’s different? Why should I trust you won’t shut down again the next time things get hard?”
Frustration flashes across his face—not at me, but at himself—and his hand flies up to his chest, tugging at something under his shirt. A chain emerges, and hanging from it...
My engagement ring.
I stare at it in surprise to see it so suddenly.
“I’ve worn it every moment since you gave it back,” he says quietly. “It’s never left my body. Not once. Not even in the hospital. I always wanted… I always hoped to…”
…give it back to you.
He trails off but I can sense the words on his tongue.
I stare at the ring, and the ache I’ve felt in my heart from the moment we broke up deepens.
It reminds me how I’ve never even pretended to fall out of love with him.
Even as I’ve moved halfway across the world, I’ve forced myself to put him in the past all while the feelings were still very much there.
The feelings never went anywhere; they refused to die even when our relationship had.
But as bad as I want to believe him, I’ve been down this road before.
I’ve seen him shut down and retreat behind his walls, and I don’t know if I can survive it happening again.
Jin must see the conflict on my face because more desperation flashes in his dark eyes.
“Tokki-ya,” he says. “I stood outside your window those nights because I needed you. I couldn’t be without you.”
He reaches into his back pocket and pulls out his wallet, fumbling slightly as he slides out a photograph and hands it over.
It’s the ultrasound of our son.
I take it, my throat tightening at the sight of the familiar grainy image—the curve of his head and the tiny feet I used to trace with my finger—then I realize the paper is warped and wrinkled.
Not creased from being folded in a wallet but rippled like it got wet and dried again.
Almost as if it were wet from… tears?
I look up at his face and see my reflection in his glassy eyes. He’s barely holding it together, every muscle in his body taut as he stares down at me as if I’m the air he breathes. As if he needs to know he can again.
It’s a vulnerability so visceral that I blink and realize I’m teary eyed too.
“I’m nothing without you,” he says, inching closer. “Tokki-ya, the Silent Hunter needs his little rabbit to survive.”
A sob escapes me before I can stop it, and I press a hand to my mouth like I can still hold in the emotion that floods me all at once.
Any restraint or resistance I have left evaporates.
It’s gone in a flash as any wall I’ve built crashes down like his have.
My fingers twine into the fabric of his shirt, and I pull him down to kiss me. His lips on mine, the kiss salty and wet from our tears. But it’s also warm and bursting with the intensity of our feelings for each other.
His arms wrap around me and pull me in even closer, deepening the kiss like he’s trying to make up for lost time.
I kiss him back with everything I have, fingers still bunched in his shirt. We stay like this for who knows how long, lips sealed together and hearts beating furiously, so lost in the moment, time doesn’t matter.
When we finally break apart, we stay close, foreheads resting against each other.
“I love you,” Jin murmurs, brushing my lips with his. “I should have said it more. I will say it more. Every fucking day. Every moment I can.”
“You can start now,” I whisper in teasing.
He draws back enough to flash a handsome and rare smile. “You know, I went to your mother first. Before I came here. I needed her advice. Her blessing.”
I laugh, unsurprised. “Of course you did. It definitely tracks that she had something to do with this.”
As if on cue, my phone rings from my jean pocket. I cock a brow at him and he merely grins wider, both of us aware of who it is before I even check the Caller ID.
I answer by putting it on speaker.
“Hi, Mommy,” I say, my tone amused. “Guess who’s here visiting from Korea?”
“I KNEW IT!” she screams. “Didn’t I tell him?
I said, baby, you better go get my daughter before she finds some boring accountant and I’m stuck making small talk about tax returns at Thanksgiving for the rest of my natural life!
” She barely pauses to breathe. “Tell me you two worked it out. Tell me I’m getting grandbabies. Tell me SOMETHING!”
“Mom,” I say, laughing as I share a glance with Jin. “Breathe. Remember breathing?”
“Well, baby, I just get so worked up about you two sometimes, I—”
“We’re going to work it out. We’re back together.”
The next shriek that comes through the phone is loud enough that Jin lets out his own laugh and shakes his head.
It’s only the beginning of what becomes a long, celebratory evening for us.