Chapter Fourteen #2
Both dogs leap up instantly, ears pricked, tails going.
Machete launches off the couch and Kal scrambles to his feet, and they both bolt for the entryway with excited yips.
I pause the game and begin the slow, laborious process of getting up, which at seven months pregnant involves bracing both hands on the armrest, shifting my weight forward until my center of gravity cooperates, and then leveraging myself upright with a grunt of effort.
By the time I’m on my feet and shuffling toward the front door, I can hear Hyunwoo cursing under his breath in the entryway.
I round the corner and stare in bewilderment as Hyunwoo struggles through the doorway with a box taller than he is, maneuvering the unwieldy thing sideways through the frame while the dogs bounce around his feet, Kal’s tail whipping against the wall and Machete doing tight excited circles that keep getting in Hyunwoo’s way.
He’s in his business clothes, his suit jacket abandoned somewhere, his dress shirt damp with sweat across the shoulders, and he’s got the box gripped in both arms at an angle that looks like it’s about to tip and crush him.
“Need some help?” I ask, already reaching forward.
Hyunwoo holds up one hand, nearly losing his grip on the box in the process, and says sharply, “Don’t you dare lift a finger.”
I pout and cross my arms over my belly, which is about all the defiance I can muster these days. “What on earth is that?”
Hyunwoo heaves the box the rest of the way through the door, shoves it across the hardwood floor with his hip, and straightens up panting, wiping sweat from his brow with the back of his forearm.
His hair is a mess, his gold chain has gotten twisted around to the back of his neck, and there’s a smudge of cardboard dust on his cheek.
He says, slightly out of breath, “The crib.”
My brows shoot up. “Crib?” I repeat, confused.
Hyunwoo bends down to scratch Kal behind the ears, catching his breath, then straightens and starts pushing the box down the hallway toward the spare bedroom. “Yeah, well, she’s got to have somewhere to sleep, doesn’t she?”
I tip my head, watching him maneuver the box around the corner, my ribs feel tight.
“Well, but I thought she wasn’t staying here?
” I say, following him slowly down the hall, one hand on the wall for balance.
“Wasn’t the plan always to bring her to the Seo estate after she was born? That we weren’t raising her ourselves?”
Hyunwoo pauses in the doorway of the spare room, the box wedged half inside.
He straightens slightly and rubs the back of his neck, that familiar tell, the gesture he makes when he’s about to say something he hasn’t fully thought through.
“Well, yeah,” he says, not quite meeting my eyes.
Then quickly, almost tripping over the words, he adds, “But she can stay here for a little while, can’t she?
She should at least get a little time with us first.” He pushes the box the rest of the way into the room and turns back to face me, his expression caught between casual and defensive.
“Maybe a couple months. Or until we get tired of it. Whatever.” He shrugs, too deliberately. “Right?”
I look at him standing there in his rumpled dress shirt with cardboard dust on his face, his sharp eyes searching mine for agreement, and that tight feeling in my chest expands until it fills my whole ribcage. “Yeah,” I say quietly. “Right. Of course.”
Hyunwoo nods once, satisfied, and turns back to the box.
He drops to the floor beside it, pulls a pocket knife from his slacks, and slices the tape open with a clean stroke.
Packing material spills out around him as he starts pulling pieces free, laying them out on the floor in an organized grid, already scanning the instruction manual like a man on a mission.
Within minutes he’s cross-legged on the carpet among scattered bolts and wooden slats and Allen wrenches, his sleeves rolled up, assembling the frame.
I lean against the doorframe and watch him work, one hand resting on my belly where our daughter is doing slow somersaults against my palm.
The idea of handing her off to anyone, to the Seo family’s army of nannies and nursemaids, to be raised by strangers in a sprawling estate where she’d be an heir first and a person second, is becoming less and less acceptable with each passing day.
Each kick I feel, each ultrasound image I study, each tiny outfit Hyunwoo orders and holds up for my approval with an unguarded smile on his face, the idea recedes further.
Like a tide going out, pulling the plan we made months ago with it.
I don’t say any of that. I just stand there rubbing my belly, watching Hyunwoo build our daughter’s crib, and I think, a couple months. Or until we get tired of it. Whatever.
I don’t think we’re going to get tired of it.
One night after my shower, I’m standing at the bathroom sink in nothing but my boxers, rubbing cocoa butter lotion onto my belly in slow circles.
It’s become one of nightly rituals, the stretched skin tight and itchy in a way that no amount of moisturizer fully fixes but that feels unbearable if I skip even one application.
The lotion is the expensive kind Hyunwoo ordered, some high-end brand that comes in a jar with gold lettering and smells faintly of vanilla, and I smooth it over the taut curve of my stomach with both palms, working it into the skin beneath my navel where the stretching is worst.
In the mirror I can see Hyunwoo behind me through the open bathroom door, lounging on our bed with his reading glasses perched on his nose, scrolling through something on his tablet studiously focused.
No doubt another parenting article or childbirth preparation blog.
He’s been consuming them at an alarming rate lately, bookmarking pages and reading passages aloud to me at random moments throughout the day whether I want to hear them or not.
I turn to the side, examining my profile in the mirror, and wince as my fingers trace the stretch marks that have appeared along the bottom swell of my belly just above my hips.
They’re angry-looking, dark reddish-purple lines that branch across my skin in jagged patterns, some of them extending around toward my lower back where the skin has been pulled the tightest. I make a displeased sound, pressing my thumb against one of the wider marks and watching the color blanch briefly before flooding back.
Hyunwoo’s head pops up from behind the tablet instantly, his eyes finding mine in the mirror with sharp attentiveness, picking up on every shift in my mood instantly. “What’s wrong?”
I sigh, turning back to face the mirror and gesturing at my hip. “You’d better add the bill for laser removal of these stretch marks to your tab after all this is done,” I say, tracing one of the longer marks with my fingertip. “They’re getting worse.”
Hyunwoo peers at me over the top of the tablet, his glasses sliding down his nose slightly. “Just leave them,” he says, his tone dismissive. “Who cares?”
“You might not care,” I say, squeezing another dollop of lotion into my palm and rubbing it over the marks, “but how am I supposed to explain stretch marks to my dates?”
The room goes quiet. I hear the soft click of Hyunwoo setting the tablet down on the nightstand.
“What dates?” he says.
I turn to look at him through the bathroom doorway.
He’s sitting up straighter on the bed now, his glasses still on, his expression unreadable but immediately puts me on alert because Hyunwoo’s face is almost always readable.
He’s not the type to hide what he’s feeling.
The fact that he’s doing it now makes the back of my neck prickle.
“Well, I’m obviously going to meet new people after the baby’s born and my body goes back to normal,” I say, keeping my voice casual as I cap the lotion and set it on the counter. “Start dating again. Get back out there.”
Hyunwoo stands from the bed. His arms fold over his chest, the muscles in his forearms flexing, and his brows draw together, sharpening the angular lines of his face, hardening them. “Why would you need to do that?”
I blink at him. “Because I don’t want to be single for the rest of my life?” I say, like it should be obvious. “Because I’m going to need a partner for my heats, which are going to be regular now thanks to all of this?” I gesture vaguely at myself.
“You have me,” Hyunwoo says flatly.
I stare at him. At the stubborn, almost offended expression on his face, like I’ve said something incomprehensible, like I’ve suggested the sky is green or water flows uphill. His jaw is set and his arms are locked across his chest and he’s looking at me with certainty.
“We agreed that wasn’t on the table,” I say carefully, stepping out of the bathroom and into the bedroom. “We were clear about it from the beginning. Temporary arrangement, no strings, no permanent attachment.”
Hyunwoo shrugs, a single lift of one shoulder that somehow manages to convey total dismissal of everything I just said. “That was before.”
“Before what?”
“Before we started sleeping together.”
I feel my brow furrow. “Which we also agreed was temporary,” I say firmly. “A means to an end.”
Hyunwoo holds my gaze, his eyes steady behind his glasses, and says simply, “It doesn’t have to be.”
I shake my head, thrown off balance by the direction this conversation has taken in the span of thirty seconds. I wasn’t prepared for this.
“Where is this coming from?” I ask. “This … whatever this is that you’re doing right now. This assumption that everything’s already decided.”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Hyunwoo says with an edge of impatience. “I’m an alpha. You’re an omega. We’re good together. Our bodies fit, our lives fit, we’ve been inseparable since we were children.” He spreads his hands. “That’s that.”