“You have ason?”
“Yes.”
He stares at me. I take a drag and hold his gaze, offering nothing else. Hongjoong shakes his head slowly, the way people do when they’re rethinking something they thought they understood.
“Wow.” He leans back against the railing, cigarette forgotten between his fingers. “How old?”
“He’s in high school,” I say, which is technically an answer without being a specific one. Hongjoong’s sharp enough to notice the dodge, his eyes narrowing slightly, but he doesn’t push it. Instead he blows out a long breath and threads his free hand through his blonde hair, pushing it back off his forehead as he processes.
Then his gaze tracks over me, a slow, deliberate sweep from my face down to the borrowed boxers hanging off my hips and back up again, and his expression hardens.
“What about his other father?” he asks. “He has to be an alpha, right? How is he okay with you doing this kind of work?”
My jaw tightens. I bring the cigarette to my lips and inhale, holding the smoke in my lungs longer than I need to, using the pause to keep my voice level when I finally exhale and answer.
“His father isn’t involved.”
Hongjoong’s brows shoot up so fast they nearly disappear into his hairline. He pushes off the railing and turns to face me fully, disbelief written across every line of his face.
“What kind of bastard leaves his omega with a child and doesn’t even claim him?”
The words dig into my ribs. I look down at the railing, at my own fingers curled around the cold metal, the cigarette trailing a thin line of smoke into the dark.
“It’s complicated,” I say. “It wasn’t like that.”
“What do you mean it wasn’t like that?” Hongjoong’s voice has an edge now, a sharpness that I recognize from the rare occasions he got genuinely angry back when we were young. He stubs his cigarette out against the railing with more force than necessary, grinding the ember flat. “Some alpha knocked you up and then what, just walked away? Left you to raise a kid alone and sell your body to pay the bills?”
“Hongjoong.”
“No, seriously, Yoonjae.” He tosses the dead cigarette into the ashtray and turns back to me, his jaw set hard. “That’s fucked up. That’s beyond fucked up. You shouldn’t let that bastard get away with abandoning you and your kid like that.”
“You don’t understand,” I say, unintentionally sharp, a crack in the composure I’ve been holding together all evening. I take a breath and force it back down. “And I don’t want to talk about it.”
Hongjoong holds my gaze for a long beat, the muscle in his jaw ticking, clearly wanting to push further. Then he stubs the remnants of his cigarette out completely, pressing it flat in the ashtray with his thumb, and exhales hard through his nose.
“Fine. You have money now anyway.” He says it like a concession, like he’s putting the topic down rather than letting it go. Then he straightens and eyes me, his head tipping to one side. “Does your son know what you do for a living?”
Heat floods my cheeks so fast I’m grateful for the dark. “Of course not,” I snap. “He just thinks I’m some kind of personal manager.”
“And what happens if he finds out?”
“I’ll deal with it when it happens.” I crush my own cigarette out and cross my arms over my bare chest, suddenly very aware of the cold. “It’s better if he doesn’t know. He just presented as an alpha a couple of months ago and he’s already showing domineering traits, getting protective, questioning where I go and when I’ll be back. The second he finds out what I actually do he’ll try to force me to quit, and that’s my business to manage when it becomes necessary.”
Hongjoong watches me for a while. A thought or question turns over behind his eyes, one he considers carefully before deciding whether to voice it. The silence stretches, filled only by the distant sounds of the city below and the faint rustle of wind against the building.
Finally he relents, his shoulders dropping as he pushes off the railing.
“Fine,” he says. “It’s your business then.” He reaches for the sliding glass door and pulls it open, the warm air from inside spilling out onto the balcony. He glances back at me over his shoulder, and the hard edge in his expression eases, the lazy confidence settling back into place. “Let’s go back in and get back to our business.”
I follow him inside, sliding the door shut behind me and sealing out the cold. My pulse is still uneven, my heart beating too fast against my ribs, and as I watch Hongjoong’s back disappear into the warm light of the bedroom I can feel how close he just got. How close he came to the edge of the truth without even knowing he was standing on it.
I press my palm flat against my sternum and breathe until my heartbeat slows, then I walk back into the bedroom and close the door.
Chapter Five
I’m squeezing an avocado in the produce aisle, testing the give of it between my thumb and forefinger the way my mother taught me when I was twelve, when my phone buzzes in my back pocket.
I set the avocado down and pull it out, expecting Sungyoon or maybe Jinkyung. Instead it’s Hongjoong’s name on the screen, and the message is two lines. An address downtown that I don’t recognize, and beneath it:Come now.
