Chapter 20 #2
Something inside my chest shifted. All those years, all those assumptions, all those moments when I'd wondered whether Kai had truly moved on, whether Huan Huan was his daughter—none of it had been what I thought.
I looked at Lucy again. “So…”
“Jenny is Huan Huan's biological mother. I'm her other mother.”
I smiled. “Kai is Uncle Daddy.”
Kai groaned. “Please don't call me that.”
Lucy grinned. “You're the one who agreed to it.”
“So…” His fingers tightened around mine. “That problem isn't a problem anymore.”
I knew exactly what he meant. I swallowed.
Lucy suddenly looked between us, her eyes widening.
Kai smiled. “She hasn't said yes.” He paused. “Yet.”
Lucy raised a hand to her mouth. “You proposed?”
He nodded. “Just now.”
“Oh my God, June!”
Heat rushed to my face. “It's complicated.”
“Everything with Kai is complicated.” Lucy lightly punched his arm.
“Hey,” Kai protested weakly.
Lucy ignored him. “Please don't let our situation be the reason you say no. We aren't actually married. Not officially.” She smiled at me. “So please… say yes.”
I stared at her, then at Kai, my heart unbearably full. Because suddenly, the impossible didn't seem quite so impossible anymore.
One by one, the secrets had started falling apart.
Lucy and Kai. Jenny and Lucy. Huan Huan.
All those pieces I'd carried around in my head, all those assumptions I'd built my decisions around… They had never been what I thought. And suddenly, I realised something else.
This was my chance. My chance to tell them the truth. That my marriage to Dannie had never been what everyone believed. The words rose to the back of my throat.
I'm not really his wife.
It was a fake marriage.
I love Kai.
I opened my mouth. “Kai, there's something I need to tell you.”
An urgent knock sounded against the door. Everyone turned, and before any of us could respond, the door flew open.
“June!” Beng stood there. His expression wiped every trace of happiness from the room. “It's Dannie.”
I was already on my feet and ran. The hospital corridor blurring around me—the white walls, bright lights, squeak of shoes and distant beeping fading into background noise.
Dannie.
He had been in a coma for two days. Just like Kai.
“Please let him be okay.”
The words escaped before I realised I’d said them. I didn’t know who I was praying to.
The ICU doors came into view, and Liam was standing outside. He wasn't looking at me. He was staring at the floor.
My heart sank.
No. No. Please.
I slowed. “Liam?”
He finally looked up, his eyes meeting mine for barely a second before dropping again. “I’m sorry.”
“Don't.” My voice came out sharp and desperate. “Don't say that.” I'd heard those words too many times.
“I want to see him.” I moved toward the ICU doors, but Liam stepped in front of me.
“June—”
“Move.”
“He doesn't want you to see him like this.”
“What?” My voice cracked. “Then why did you come and get me?”
Liam's expression tightened. “June, you know why.”
“I don't care.” I tried to push past him, but Liam and Beng caught me. “Let go of me!”
“June.”
“No!” They held me against the nearest plastic chair, my hands shaking violently. “I want to see him.”
“You can't.”
“Why?”
Neither answered. Then I heard something behind me—the soft mechanical sound of wheels against the floor.
I turned.
Kai.
He was sitting in a wheelchair, pale beneath the hospital lights. He shouldn't have been here. He'd barely woken up and had lost enough blood to put him into a coma.
But somehow, he'd followed me.
“How's Dannie?”
The question was quiet, almost too quiet, and somehow that broke me. The tears I'd been holding back all morning finally spilled over.
I turned away, my shoulders shaking.
These two brothers had a way of torturing me. First, they decided to get hurt. Then, they decided to go into comas, leaving me running between rooms, chasing nurses for updates and pretending I wasn't terrified every time someone came through a door.
I hadn't been able to see either of them properly. Not Dannie. Not Kai. Not until now.
And then Kai woke up. And asked me to marry him.
The word yes had almost fallen out of my mouth. It had been right there, waiting. Even before Lucy's confession, I had wanted to say it. Maybe it was the adrenaline, the relief, or simply the unbearable happiness of seeing him alive. Whatever the reason, I had wanted to say yes.
“Excuse me…”
I turned away before Kai could see my face, because suddenly all I could hear was Dannie's voice.
I love you.
It echoed through my mind, painfully alive. I could still see his pale, drained face and feel his fingers squeeze mine with what little strength he had left.
Please… smile for me.
Those were the last words he'd spoken before they wheeled him into the operating room.
I'd stood outside that door for what felt like an eternity. Then I'd stood outside Kai's, praying, begging, asking for miracles. I already knew I was being greedy.
Two men. Two lives. Two miracles.
But I asked anyway.
“Dannie didn't make it.”
Kai stared at me, expressionless. Then he slowly shook his head.
“No. I don't believe it.” He tried to sit up, but pain flashed across his face as the movement pulled at his stitches.
“Kai, don't.” I reached for him. “You're going to reopen your stitches.”
“No…” His voice broke, and his body gave out. He slipped from the wheelchair, and I caught him before he hit the floor.
Memory came flooding back—the gunshot, Dannie throwing himself between Kai and the bullet, the impact, his body hitting the stone floor, the blood.
So much blood.
I squeezed my eyes shut.
Dannie had wanted this.
He’d found his way out.
He'd seen the gun pointed at his brother and stepped between them without hesitation.
Because that's who Dannie was. He loved his family. He loved Kai. He loved me.
And for the past year, he'd told me again and again to leave him. To find my happily ever after. To live. To love.
Every time, I'd given him the same answer.
No. I would never leave him.
Maybe the day I die, he'd say.
Maybe.
That had been our joke. Except there was nothing funny about it now.
“I killed him.” Kai's voice was barely audible. He stared at the floor, his face hollow.
“No.” My answer came immediately. “You didn't.”
“He died because of me.”
Maybe, a small voice whispered inside me. I breathed out slowly. “Dannie made that choice.”
“He shouldn't have had to.”
“I know.” My voice cracked.
Kai finally looked at me, and something inside me broke. This wasn't the powerful, controlled man everyone else saw. This was simply a younger brother who had just lost his brother.
I knelt beside him and wrapped my arms around him. He resisted for half a second before his arms came around me, tight and desperate, burying his face against my shoulder.
We simply stayed there, two people grieving the same man.
Eventually, Kai pulled back. His eyes were red. Mine probably looked worse.
“I don't know what happens now,” he whispered.
Neither did I. The future suddenly looked enormous. Complicated. Terrifying. Dannie was gone. The war was supposedly over, yet nothing felt finished.
I reached for Kai's hand. He looked down at our intertwined fingers, then back at me.
“You asked me something earlier.”
His brow furrowed. “What?”
“Before Liam came in.”
Recognition slowly returned to his eyes.
“Oh.” His voice softened. “You don't have to answer now.”
I breathed through my tears. “Yes, Kai.”
For several seconds, he simply stared at me. “You mean…”
“Yes.” A disbelieving smile slowly spread across his face. “I'll marry you.”
His eyes closed. He exhaled as though he'd been holding his breath for years before pulling me into his arms. I held him just as tightly.
There was no celebration. No champagne. No beautiful proposal.
No perfect ending. Just two exhausted people holding each other in a hospital room after losing someone we both loved.
And somehow… it was enough.
“I love you,” he whispered against my hair.
“I love you too.” I closed my eyes and, for the first time, allowed myself to imagine a future with him.
But without Dannie.
Tears slipped down my cheeks as I rested my cheek against his chest and listened to his heartbeat.
Steady. Alive. Mine. For now.
Whatever lay in front of us, it wasn't going to be easy. It wouldn't be perfect. But it would be ours. We would grieve. We would heal. We would figure out what came next.
Together.
- THE END -
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Emily
“Emily, we’ll be back around nine. Don’t let the kids stay up too late.” Jessi, my sister-in-law, said from the doorway to the living room.
As if her twin girls would ever listen to a thing I said. The door closed, and I turned to my twin nieces. “Who wants ice cream?”
The two little girls, identical blonde, sweet tyrants, screamed with joy as they looked back at me with gray eyes so similar to mine. They could be mine, if I wasn’t so busy all the time. I pushed the thought away and stood up from the pillow fort they’d built around me to head into the kitchen.
Harry, the baby brother of the twins, slept in a playpen near the dark gray leather sofa, so I left him there. He was a growing boy, and he needed his sleep. Soon enough he’d join his older sisters in the kitchen with me.
I found the girls on bar stools around the marble island in the kitchen.
It was the kind of kitchen any baker would love.
It was Jessi’s kitchen, after all, and she needed three industrial sized ovens.
I turned to the fridge, the same stainless steel as the oven, stove, and microwave, and asked which ice cream the girls wanted.
“I want strawberry, please, Aunty.” Breanna, always the polite one, informed me sweetly.