Page 131 of The Way Back Home

Ryowoon doesn’t move. His expression doesn’t change. He sits there with the towel over his knee, his wet hair dripping onto his bare shoulders, and watches my face with stillness.

I keep going before I lose my nerve.

“There’s nothing for me in Seoul. Hasn’t been for a long time, if I’m being honest with myself.” I swallow. “I’m not selling the store, Ryowoon. I’m moving back.”

His eyes flicker. A twitch at the corner, a shift in the depth of them.

“If you want to leave,” I say, make my voice calm even though my pulse is hammering, “I’ll respect that. But you’d have to sign your half of the store over to me, because I’m keeping it either way. It’s not going on the market. It’s staying.”

Silence stretches between us. The lamp buzzes faintly. Yuro’s tail thumps once against the mat in his sleep.

Ryowoon holds my eyes for a long time. Long enough for me to count my own heartbeats. Then he speaks, his voice low.

“What about your career?” He tips his head slightly. “Teaching was what you wanted. The whole reason you left in the first place.”

“Haemok has a new school,” I say. “They’ll need teachers. I can apply there, get a position. Hire someone to run the store when I’m working.” I’ve thought about this from every angle. I’m not twenty-three anymore, making reckless choices because I’m lovesick. This is something I thought well about it and considered everything that I’d be changing. Weighed what matters against what doesn’t. “It’s not giving anything up. It’s just doing it here instead of there.”

Ryowoon’s jaw works. He looks down at his hands, turns his wrist so the constellation tattoo catches the light. Looks back up.

“And what about me?” he says, like he’s asking me to say the part I haven’t said yet.

I bite my lip. Feel the thud of my heart, the tightness in my throat. Think about the last time, the college pamphlets on his desk, the way his face closed up and got cruel right before he detonated everything between us. Think about how I’m sitting in the same position, asking the same thing in a different way, and how the fear of his answer hasn’t gotten smaller with age. It’s just become something I’m willing to face.

“Do you want to stay?” I ask him.

Ryowoon breathes out through his nose, tips his head back. Stares at the ceiling for a few seconds. Looks back at me.

“Do you want me to?”

I look at him. At the lines of his face I’ve memorized twice over now, once in youth and once in the worn, handsome angles of adulthood. At the scar below his jaw, the piercings in his ears, the tattoos that tell the story of our lives together. At his eyes, brown and deep, watching me. But not with guarded caution anymore. Just open. Waiting.

“Do you love me, Ryowoon?”

I ask so quietly I wonder if he hears it. A question I’ve held onto for over a decade, turning it over in my hands like a stone worn smooth, never daring to set it down between us because of what the answer might cost.

Ryowoon laughs.

It startles me. The sound surprised out of him too, shaking his shoulders. He rubs a hand over his face, his eyes crinkling, and when he drops his hand his eyes are bright. He leans forward. His palms come up to cup my face, fingers warm against my jaw, thumbs brushing my cheekbones. He holds me there, his eyes close to mine, and the laughter fades.

“There hasn’t been a single moment of my life when I didn’t love you, Heo Seyeon.” His voice grows rough, sober. “Not a single one.”

I kiss him. Surge forward and crush my mouth to his, swallowing the last word, tasting it on his tongue. My hands fist in his damp hair, pulling him into me, and I kiss him until my lips go numb and my lungs are screaming and I still don’t want to stop. He grips me back just as fiercely, his arm banding around my waist, hauling me into his lap. I go willingly, my legs wrapping around his hips, my chest flush against his, and at the foot of the mat Yuro lifts his head and huffs and relocates to the hallway, his nails clicking on the floor.

I pull back just far enough to breathe. Ryowoon’s forehead presses against mine, his breath fanning warm across my lips, his hands splayed wide across my lower back.

“Say it again,” I tell him.

His mouth curves. “I love you.”

I kiss him again, harder. Push him down onto the mat, pinning him beneath my weight. His hands slide up my sides, pulling my shirt over my head, and I shiver as the cool air hits my skin and then his palms replace it, warm and calloused and everywhere at once. I fumble with his pants, shoving them down his hips, feeling him grow rigid against my thigh as I grind down. His breath hitches and his fingers dig into my hips and I roll against him, feel the groan rumble through his chest and into mine.

I reach behind me. He watches, his eyes darkening, his chest rising and falling as I work myself open on my own fingers, my free hand braced on his stomach for balance. It stings and I gasp through it, but I don’t slow down because I need him in me. Need to feel him fill every gap that’s been empty for too long.

“Seyeon.” His voice is sandpapery. “Let me—”

“No.” I pull my fingers out, grip his cock, slick and flushed and straining. Line him up. “I want it like this.”

I sink down and the burn splits through me, makes me grit my teeth and dig my nails into his abs. Ryowoon’s head tips back, his throat working, the tendons in his neck standing taut as I take him in. I don’t stop until he’s buried to the hilt and I’m sitting flush against his pelvis, both of us panting, trembling, connected so deep I can feel his pulse inside me.