Chapter 32 #2
She’s silent as we walk until we find a cab, and then in the ride across the city to my building.
She snuffles and wipes the part of her face not buried in my shoulder, but doesn’t say anything, doesn’t explain.
I keep my arm around her. I murmur to her that it’s okay, we’ll be at my place soon, her buzzies are waiting for her.
But there’s a hollow ring to my words. I don’t hate her; I won’t hate her.
But the hurt is tearing deeper and deeper into my chest with each passing mile.
When we get up to my apartment, she turns to me. “You chase me?”
I nod, although my heart’s not in it. “I just need to set a boundary first, baby. No more sex. I’ll chase you and play with you and be your Oppa and make sure you’re okay until you really are, but I won’t have sex with you again now that I know you’re engaged.”
She stares at me, open-mouthed.
“I’m sorry, baby. It’s my own fault for never telling you my hard limits. For putting off doing a contract with you like I said we were going to. I just thought you knew how I felt about cheating.”
“I know. I saw how angry you were with Mary Lisa after you heard she had a daddy. You think I did that? Used you to cheat on Kade? You think I’m really engaged to him?”
“Baby, aren’t you?”
“No!”
Some of the pain that’s been bubbling-bubbling-bubbling in my heart bursts like a blister. There’s a moment of relief. But then the confusion rushes back in. “But Kade and Jun both said—”
“You listen to them? You believe them?” she demands, planting her fists on her hips and leaning towards me.
“What am I supposed to believe, Cynnie? You haven’t told me anything.
I had no idea who that man was when he walked up to you.
You’ve never once mentioned him. I thought he’d got the wrong fucking girl.
And then your reaction made it clear he hadn’t, but you didn’t tell me any different.
You didn’t say you weren’t his fiancée. What am I supposed to think? ”
“You’re supposed to think you know me. You’re supposed to believe that I’d be as respectful of your hard limits as you are of mine.” Her face twists, the anger flickering away, replaced by raw anguish. “You’re supposed to know I’d never use you, Oppa!”
“Baby—”
“Don’t call me your baby when you don’t believe in me!”
“Baby, don’t. Don’t do that. I could have walked away when Kade cut in. I didn’t. I waited. I stood there and took all the shit Jun was throwing at me because I believe in you—”
“But you’re not listening to me!” she snaps.
“No one listens to me. Jun. Baachan. Papa. No one listens to me when I say I don’t like him.
I don’t trust him. He never proposed to me.
It was just a business deal like every other business deal Jun does.
One day he came home and said he’d spoken to Kade and his father and they’d agreed it was good for the family businesses for us to get married.
No one asked me. No one wanted to hear what I thought, what I had to say. No one hears me!”
This is it.
This is the moment when I have to be more than a guy whose feelings just went on the rollercoaster ride of all rollercoaster rides.
This is when I need to put everything else aside and be her daddy.
“Baby, I’m listening to you. I hear you.” I reach out and when she doesn’t flinch, draw her into my arms. “Tell me everything, my bumble. I’m listening.”
She does. It pours out of her. For over an hour, I barely say a word.
I just listen. To her rage and bitterness and fear.
My baby, my bumble, has been so afraid. Of being trapped into marriage with a man she doesn’t like or respect.
Who mocks her littleness. Who has made it clear he doesn’t have any feelings for her beyond a vague, lecherous greed.
And if she refuses the marriage no one consulted her on?
She’s afraid of being cast out, spurned by her family, and all that comes with it.
She doesn’t have any money of her own. She’s never been paid for her work.
It all goes into the family coffers. Without her family, she’s completely broke.
Literally without a penny to her name. Even her phone is run through the business.
She’s worked for her family her entire life.
She’ll be jobless, without a reference. Bound by a complex set of non-disclosure and confidentiality agreements not to talk about the projects she’s done, the clients she’s served.
She doesn’t think she’ll ever be able to get another job.
She’ll be homeless. She’s lived in their family home her whole life except for a short stint in student housing in college.
She’ll be cast out of the only home she’s ever known.
But worst of all, is the censure, the loss of her family, who have kept her within their fold, home-schooling her until she broke out and went to college in Chicago.
As soon as she finished her master’s degree, they cut off her money until she was forced to come home.
They’ve controlled her, but also, in her mind, taken care of her.
They’ve fed her, clothed her, educated her, sheltered her, nurtured her, protected her.
And all that they’ve asked in return is that she marry her brother’s business associate and give up the direction her heart’s taken her in.
“I’m ungrateful,” she sobs into my shoulder as I rock her. “That’s what Baachan calls me. Ungrateful. Unworthy of my family. I’m a bad person. I’m bad. I’m bad.”
I hold her close and rock her. There’s so much here to fix. The need, the drive, to fix her burns in my chest.
But I’ve learned something in the weeks of trying to be her daddy—not very successfully, I now realize, since she kept these huge secrets from me—I can only help her fix it.
I can’t do it for her. I can create the safe space for her to heal, and grow, and be herself.
Her best, little self. Just as Logan’s done for Emily.
That’s what he’s been saying to me all along.
That’s why the spat with Miranda, which seems like such a small thing from the outside, is such a big thing to them.
That confrontation burned down the safe space Logan built for Emmy.
They’ve had to start over and rebuild it.
Understanding all that gives me the strength to say, “I love you, my bumble.”
And that’s all. I don’t tell her she can move in with me.
I don’t promise to support her until she finds a way around the NDAs or maybe does something completely different with her skills.
I don’t point out that she’s built herself a different, better family.
I will say all those things, but for right now, all she needs to know is that I love her.
She lifts her head. “You can’t. I’m bad. I told you, when you knew my secrets, you wouldn’t like me anymore.”
“I love you,” I repeat, looking into her eyes and letting her see all the raw ugliness in my soul, all the terrible things I’ve seen and done, and all the love that’s sprouted since she brought her joy into my life.
Her breath hitches as she stares at me. “You do.”
“I do.”
“Oppa.” Fresh tears streak down her golden cheeks and she burrows fiercely into me.