Page 47 of The Way Back Home

It breaks me out of the spell holding me in place. Rage and indignation wash away the speechlessness.

I scoff. “Yah. Do you really think you have the right to be talking to me that way? Shouldn’t I be the one telling you to fuck off?”

He rolls his eyes. “So why don’t you then?”

I stare at him. “Is that all you have to say to me?”

He looks back at me quietly for a second, his face unreadable. His jaw works, then he says flatly, “I’m not fucking doing this.”

He tries to step around me and my patience snaps.

I lunge, grabbing the front of his jacket and slamming him back against the wall behind him. The impact knocks the breath out of him and he grunts, catching himself with one hand braced against the concrete.

“The fuck do you think you’re going?” I snarl, up in his face, my knuckles white where they’re twisted in the fabric of his jacket.

He hisses, glaring down at me, his eyes flicking to the ground where his cigarette’s landed, crushed beneath my shoe. “You made me drop my cigarette, goddamn it.”

“I should beat your ass on top of it, you bastard.” I shake him, pressing him harder against the wall. “Do you know what I had to go through to find your stupid ass?”

He shoves at me, trying to get leverage, his hands on my forearms. “Then why bother? Goddamn it, I didn’t ask you to.”

We scuffle, grunts and scraping shoes and hands grappling for purchase. He tries to twist out of my grip and I drive my shoulder into his chest, slamming him back again. The wall cracks against his spine and he swears loudly, furious.

“Because we have business,” I bite out, breathing hard, holding him there with all my weight.

His teeth are bared when he shoves at me again, harder. “What fucking business? Whatever we had to talk about was done with a long damned time ago.”

I get right up in his face, close enough to smell the cigarette smoke clinging to him. “I’m sure you thought so, running off like a rat into a hole. Fucking coward.”

He glares at me. Stares down because he’s still taller than me. Even with me pinning him against the wall, even with the angle working in my favor, he’s got half a head on me and I can feel how solid he is beneath my hands. Not soft. Not weak. He’s filled out, muscle and stubborn bulk that doesn’t budge no matter how hard I press.

“Did you just come here to pick a fight, Heo Seyeon?”

I shake him, my grip tightening until I can feel the heat of him through the fabric. “Maybe. Might make me feel a little better.”

Because inside I’m burning up. Seeing him has cracked it open all over again, every bit of anger and hurt and desperate longing I left with ten years ago, and I want to shake him. Want to yell in his face and yes, maybe hit him too. Just to make him feel something, just to prove he’s real and here and not another ghost I’ve been chasing across the country for weeks.

“Then get it the fuck over with,” he says, flat and tired. “Because I’m exhausted and my joints hurt too much to be fist-fighting in the damn street.”

I snort, but his words sink in, cutting through the red haze. I realize I’m panting, my hands still fisted in his jacket, his chest rising and falling beneath my knuckles.

I finally back off, letting him go.

Ryowoon dusts himself off and narrows his eyes at me, his gaze dropping mournfully to the crushed cigarette on the pavement.

“We need to talk,” I say.

He sighs, long and put-upon. “I’m guessing you won’t leave until I humor you either.”

I fold my arms and arch a brow.

Ryowoon runs a hand through his hair, making it stick up at odd angles. “What the fuck ever. Come on then, let’s at least get out of the street. I need another fucking cigarette now.”

I follow him up the steps of the apartment building, my footsteps echoing off the concrete. He stops on the second floor outside a door, but instead of unlocking it he just grabs a lighter from beside the doorframe and drops his bag. Then he walks over to the railing across from the door and leans forward, digging in his jacket pocket.

I glance at the locked apartment door. His, clearly.

“Aren’t you going to invite me in?”