Jinkyung repeats it. The number doesn’t change.
“Is this guy insane?” I ask, my voice coming out a full octave higher.
Jinkyung laughs, pleased, the sound of a man who knows he’s got me. “See? Told you. The man is desperate, and he’s got the money to back it up. If he ends up liking you, the contractpay will set you up to retire comfortably, Yoonjae. I’m not exaggerating. And if he doesn’t, well.” He pauses for effect. “At least you walk away with a very nice payday for one night’s work. Worst case scenario, you make more tonight than you’ve made in the last three months combined.”
I press my lips together and stare at the kitchen counter, at the neat stack of envelopes I can see from here, the ones with red stamps on them. I think about the tutor payment due next Tuesday. I think about Sungyoon’s winter uniform that he’s already growing out of, the sleeves riding up past his wrists because he shot up another two centimeters last month and I keep telling him I’ll get him a new one next week, next week, next week.
I can’t afford to pass on money like this. I can’t afford to pass on the possibility of a long-term contract, not when the alternative is more weeks of silence from Jinkyung’s phone, more bills shuffled into neat piles, more next weeks that never come.
“Fine,” I say. “I’ll do it. Send me the address and the details.”
“Already sending,” Jinkyung says, and my phone buzzes against my ear with an incoming message.
“I need to call a sitter first,” I tell him, already pushing off the counter. “Give me twenty minutes.”
“You’ve got until eight.”
I hang up and stand in the kitchen for a moment, phone in hand, letting the reality of it settle. Then I take a breath and call out past the doorway.
“Sungyoon?”
No answer, but I can hear the faint scratch of a pencil from the living room. I pocket my phone and walk through the narrow hallway, rounding the corner into the living area where Sungyoon is seated on the floor at the coffee table, school books and papers spread out in his usual organized arrangement, headbent over his work. His handwriting is small and neat, filling the lined pages of his notebook in neat rows, and his brow is furrowed in concentration.
He looks up as I come in, and my heart does the thing it always does when I look at that face.
It’s not my face looking back at me. It never has been. The features are too sharp, too angular, the cheekbones too high, the eyes too keen. Brown eyes that catch light the way mine don’t, set beneath straight brows in a face that’s still filling out from boyhood but already carries the kind of bone structure that makes people look twice. And when he smirks, which he does often because he’s fifteen and thinks he’s funnier than he is, there’s a dimple in his left cheek that I definitely didn’t put there.
I’ve never told him who he looks like. He’s never asked. I don’t know if that’s because he doesn’t care or because he already knows the answer would hurt, and either way I’m not brave enough to find out.
“Hey,” I say, leaning my shoulder against the doorframe and crossing my arms. I put on a smile that I hope looks easy. “I’m sorry, kid. I was planning on being home for dinner tonight, but I’ve got to go out. I’m meeting with a potential new client.”
Sungyoon’s pencil stills against the page. His expression doesn’t change much, just a slight tightening around his mouth, a flicker of something in his eyes that he smooths over quickly. He nods.
“Mrs. Han is going to come over to make you dinner and check in on you,” I continue, keeping my voice light. “I already know what you’re going to say, and yes, I know you’re fifteen and you can feed yourself, but she likes doing it and it makes me feel better, so just let her.”
“I wasn’t going to say anything,” Sungyoon says, which I know is a lie, because he always says something.
I push off the doorframe and cross the room toward my bedroom, running through a mental checklist of what I need to do in the next hour. Shower, groom, find something decent to wear that doesn’t look like I pulled it out of the back of my closet.
“Dad.”
I stop with my hand on the bedroom door. Sungyoon’s voice is quiet behind me, carefully neutral, meaning he’s choosing his words.
“Overnight?”
I don’t turn around. My fingers tighten on the door handle for just a second before I make myself relax them.
“Maybe,” I say evenly. “But I’ll let Mrs. Han know to come by in the morning if I can’t make it back. You won’t even notice I’m gone, you’ll be asleep.”
I glance over my shoulder. Sungyoon is watching me with a complicated expression, too knowing for fifteen, his pencil held loosely between his fingers and his notebook forgotten. I’ve never told him what I really do for a living, but he’s sharp and he’s not a child anymore and there are only so many times you can tell a kid you’re going to a “work meeting” at nine o’clock at night and not come home until morning before he suspects something. We don’t talk about it.
He holds my gaze for a beat, and then he drops his eyes back to his notebook.
“Okay,” he says, and nothing more.
I swallow around the thick lump in my throat and go into my bedroom, closing the door behind me.
I shower carefully, taking more time than usual, scrubbing every inch of myself until my skin is pink and warm. I wash my hair twice and condition it, comb it back from my face and let it air dry while I deal with the rest. I trim where I need to trim, check where I need to check, run my hands over my body, checking. Everything functional. Everything clean. The scar on my left side from a client two years ago who got too rough with his teeth is faded enough to pass for an old injury if anyone asks, and the one on my inner thigh is in a spot where most alphas aren’t looking closely enough to notice.
