Hongjoong fists his hands at his sides, his knuckles going white, and for a second I think he’s going to hit the wall. He doesn’t. He breathes through it, his jaw working, and then he says in a voice that’s gone flat and controlled in a way that scares me more than the yelling, “You know what, I can’t do this right now. This is fucked up, Jae. This is really fucked up.”
“You don’t have to go out of your way,” I say quickly, the words tumbling out, the old instinct to give him an exit, to make it easy for him to walk away the way I always assumed he would. “We can take care of ourselves. You don’t need to do anything for Sungyoon if you don’t want to. I won’t ask anything of you.”
Hongjoong’s mouth twists into something ugly. “Well, how noble of you,” he says, the sarcasm like a slap. “But that’s not how this works, Jae.” He steps into my space, close enough that I have to tilt my head back to meet his eyes, close enough that I can see the redness at the rims of them that he’s fighting to keep from becoming anything more. “You can’t take it back. And you can’t undo what I know.”
He turns and walks toward the front door. His strides are long and stiff, his shoulders rigid, and I watch him go with my heart in my throat.
“Where are you going?” My voice comes out high and panicked.
Hongjoong pauses with his hand on the doorknob. He doesn’t turn around, but he lifts his other hand and points back down the hallway toward Sungyoon’s bedroom door.
“That’smyson,” he says, rough and final. “And I’m going to take responsibility for him whether you want my help or not.”
He wrenches the door open and walks through it and slams it shut behind him hard enough to rattle every frame on the wall.
The apartment goes silent.
My knees give out. I sink to the floor right there in the hallway, my back sliding down the wall until I’m sitting on the thin carpet with my legs folded under me, and I put my head in my hands. My fingers dig into my scalp and I press my palms against my eyes until I see spots, breathing in shallow gulps that don’t seem to fill my lungs no matter how hard I try. The smell of Hongjoong’s angry pheromones still hangs in the air around me, fading slowly, and underneath it I can smell my own scent, sour with fear and guilt and the sharp acrid edge of an omega in distress.
I sit there on the floor of my hallway and I know that my life is about to blow apart. And every single piece of it is my own doing.
Chapter Eleven
The cigarette burns down between my fingers as I stand on the narrow balcony of my apartment, the cherry glowing orange in the dark. The ashtray balanced on the railing is already overflowing, crushed butts piled on top of each other and spilling onto the concrete, and I’m nearly through half a pack. My throat burns and my tongue tastes like ash, and I know I should stop, but my hands won’t stop shaking, so I tap the filter against the railing and light another one off the dying ember of the last.
Hongjoong isn’t picking up his phone.
I’ve called eleven times. I’ve sent more texts than I can count, long ones and short ones and ones that are just his name, and every single one sits on delivered, the little gray text mocking me from the screen every time I check. I don’t know where he is. I don’t know what he’s doing. I don’t know if he’s driving too fast in one of his ridiculous cars or sitting in his apartment staring at the wall or calling a lawyer or doing something worse, and thenot knowing is eating me alive, turning my insides into a knot of anxiety so tight that my chest feels like it’s being compressed from the outside. I take a drag and the smoke scrapes down my already-raw throat, and I cough, hard, bending over the railing until my eyes water.
It’s been hours since Hongjoong slammed my door and stormed out. The sun went down a long time ago and the city lights blur in my vision as I exhale into the cold night air, the smoke curling and dissipating against the dark sky. I check my phone again. Delivered. Delivered. Delivered. I lock the screen and shove it back into my pocket and take another drag with fingers that tremble so badly I nearly drop the cigarette over the railing.
I jump when I hear the front door lock beep from inside.
I turn, cigarette still pinched between my index and middle finger, and step through the sliding door into the apartment as the front door swings open and Sungyoon comes in. He’s got his bags over his shoulder, still wearing the same casual clothes from earlier today, his hair windblown and his cheeks flushed from the cold like he walked here instead of getting a ride. I frown, crossing to the kitchen sink and stubbing the cigarette out against the stainless steel with a hiss.
“What are you doing back?” I ask, trying to keep my voice normal, trying to sound like a parent and not like someone who’s barely keeping it together.
Sungyoon drops his bags on the floor by the entryway with a heavy thud, clearly not intending to leave again, and looks at me for a long moment. There’s a look behind his eyes, too old and too knowing for fifteen, and my stomach begins to sink before he even opens his mouth. He’s standing under the hallway light and his features are sharp and familiar in a way that hurts to look at right now, the angular jaw and the brown eyes and the way his mouth sets when he’s thinking hard.
“Dad,” he says, his voice is careful, sounding as though he’s been rehearsing this the entire walk home. “Who was that man that was here earlier today?”
I go still. My hands are at my sides and I slip them into my pockets so he can’t see the tremor in my fingers, pressing my fists against my thighs through the fabric. I think about what to say. I run through a dozen deflections and half-truths, the kind of evasions I’ve gotten good at over the years, the vague non-answers I’ve perfected for every uncomfortable question about his parentage. None of them feel adequate. None of them feel like anything other than more lies stacked on top of the pile I’ve already built.
I settle on the simplest version. “That was Hongjoong,” I say. “He’s a very old friend from my school days.”
Sungyoon repeats it back to me flatly. “A friend.”
I nod, watching him carefully. He’s wearing almost the exact same expression Hongjoong was wearing in this hallway hours ago, the tight jaw and the hard eyes and the barely-contained energy of someone who already knows the answer and is just waiting to see if you’ll have the guts to say it out loud. The mirror of it makes my gut twist with dread so sharp it borders on nausea. Sungyoon is a smart kid, too smart, has been since he was old enough to talk, and I know with sick certainty that he saw exactly what Hongjoong saw when they stood face to face in this apartment. That he looked at that man and saw his own features staring back at him from an adult’s face and that’s why he came home early, why he’s standing in front of me now with his bags on the floor and that look in his eyes.
“Is that man my father?” Sungyoon asks, blunt and direct and reminding me painfully of myself at his age, the way I never danced around things either. “My other father, I mean.”
This time I don’t even consider denying it. There’s no point. The resemblance is too obvious, the timing too convenient, andmy son is too perceptive to be fooled by anything I could come up with on the spot. I let out a breath that feels like it’s been trapped inside my lungs for a decade and say, defeated, “Yes, Sungyoon. He’s your father.”
Sungyoon bites his lip, and once again it’s like looking at Hongjoong but younger, the range of emotions flashing across his face in quick succession. Confusion first, then hurt, then anger settling over everything else. His eyebrows draw together and his nostrils flare, and I can see him trying to work through it, trying to re-examine everything I’ve told him over the years with what he now knows to be true.
“You lied to me.” His voice is cuttingly quiet. “You told me you didn’t know who my father was. But he’s yourfriend?” He shakes his head in a short, jerky motion. “I mean, you had to know. He has myface, Dad.”
I sigh and look down at the floor, at the scuffed linoleum and the edge of the kitchen mat, unable to face the rightful anger in my son’s eyes. The guilt is a knife in my chest. I don’t have a defense for this because there isn’t one.
