Page 98 of The Way Back Home

I spent years teaching myself to live without him, of filling the space where Seyeon used to exist with long shifts and cigarette smoke and the numb routine of waking, working, sleeping. I built a life that was small and quiet and asked nothing of me but that I keep moving forward. And it worked, mostly. Some nights it didn’t. Some nights I’d lie awake staring at the ceiling of my apartment and feel the absence of him like a missing limb, phantom pain in a part of me that had been amputated. But I survived it. I learned to survive most things.

I’m not sure I’m strong enough to survive this a second time. To have him under me, around me, saying my name in that voice, and then walk away again. The first time nearly killed me. It was a slow, grinding erosion of what was left inside me that still believed I deserved good things. Leaving Seyeon took everything I had and then took a little more on top of it, a debt I’ve been paying interest on for a decade.

And again I have to wonder if I’ve got a choice in the matter either way. Because this is Seyeon. Who’s already proved there’s nowhere I can run where he can’t find me. The man who, when I disappeared as thoroughly as a person can disappear in a country this size, decided that wasn’t acceptable and came to collect me anyway.

I’ve spent my life running. From my father, from this town, from the violence and the hopelessness and the slow poison of watching everyone around me accept that this was all life had in store for someone with my name. Running is the thing I’m best at. Better than fixing cars, better than fighting, better than any of the scrappy survival skills I’ve cobbled together over thirty-four years of clawing through each day. I’ve gotten good at it. Perfected the art of vanishing.

But Seyeon’s better at finding. There’s nowhere I can go that he won’t follow. Ten years, a new city, a fake name online, blocked accounts, no paper trail, and it took one college kid with a functioning pair of eyes and a forum post to undo all of it.

I almost have to respect it.

So no, I don’t think running works anymore. Not from Seyeon, the human equivalent of a bloodhound specially honed to my scent.

And I’m tired of running.

But I don’t know what to do from here. What answers I can give him. He wants to know why I left. Wants to hear me say it, the real reason, not the bullshit I fed him that summer. And I owe him that. I know I owe him that. But how do I explain that leaving was the only act of love I knew how to give him? That I looked at my life, at my father’s blood in my veins and the violence coded into my bones and the generations of broken men stretching behind me, and decided the kindest thing I could do for the only person I’ve ever loved was to remove myself from his life before I poisoned it?

A faint buzzing pulls my attention sideways.

Seyeon’s phone lights up on the floor beside the mat, the screen glowing against the wooden boards. I can read the caller ID from here. His mother’s name, the little contact photo of her face. My hand twitches with the impulse to reach over and silence it before it wakes him. I don’t move.

The buzzing stops. Starts again.

I still don’t move.

Seyeon makes a soft sound, rousing. My chest squeezes as he stirs beneath the blanket, his shoulders shifting, his face turning on the pillow. He picks his head up and I have to bite the inside of my cheek.

His face. God, his face. Brow scrunched, eyes slitted, that plush bottom lip jutting out as he blinks at the room. He looks dazed and confused and so unbearably pretty that the urge to lunge forward and kiss him the rest of the way awake grips me so strongly I feel like I’m going to explode. I want to catch that lip between my teeth, want to feel it give under the pressure, want to taste the sleepy warmth of his mouth. My hands curl against my thighs, holding myself in place through sheer force of will.

Seyeon squints up at the window where gray rain light filters through. Mumbles, “What time is it?”

“Don’t know,” I reply hoarsely. I nod toward the floor where his phone is still glowing. “Your mom’s been calling.”

He groans, drops his face back into the pillow for a second, then reaches out blindly, patting at the floor until his fingers close around the phone. I watch the side of his face as he swipes at the screen, the light spilling across his cheekbone.

“Forgot to tell her I wasn’t coming home last night,” he mutters, thumbs moving over the keyboard. “She’s probably worried.”

He sends the text and lets the phone drop with a clatter. Hugs the pillow to his chest and lies there, one arm wrapped around it possessively, his bare back rising and falling. Then one eye opens, peering at me through the tangle of brown hair falling across his face.

“How long have you been awake?” His voice is scratchy with sleep, lower and gravelly, and my cock twitches against my thigh so forcefully I have to shift my weight. Fuck. Just his voice.

I shrug one shoulder. “Usually up pretty early. Habit.”

Years of morning shifts trained that into me. My body doesn’t know how to sleep past five anymore, no matter how late the night before went or how thoroughly I was emptied out. Seyeon makes a quiet hmph noise at that and starts to roll over.

He gets halfway and stops, groaning sharply as his hand flies to his lower back. He freezes mid-motion, eyes squeezed shut, teeth bared in a grimace, one palm pressing into the base of his spine. My body jerks forward instinctively before I catch myself, holding back, just watching as he grits his teeth through it and pushes himself upright. He sits up, the blanket pooled around his waist, his hair a disaster, then looks down at himself.

“Shit.”

I follow his gaze. My cum is leaking out of him, the change from lying down pushing what was still inside free, white and slick sliding down the inside of his thigh and pooling on the mat beneath him. The sight is like a fist to the gut, a pulse of possessive heat I don’t have any business feeling. I lift a brow.

“That’s what you get for making me put it in without a condom.”

Seyeon cringes, his hand moving from his back to press gingerly against his lower abdomen, rubbing in small circles. “Ugh. My stomach hurts.”

I roll my eyes. “Come on.” I shift forward on my knees, hooking my arm around his waist from behind, pulling him against my side as I start to stand. “Let’s go shower so we can get it all out.”

He groans as I haul him upright but doesn’t fight me on it, his weight settling against my side, one arm slung loosely over my shoulder for balance. We make it into the hallway where Yuro scrambles backward from his sleeping spot just outside the door, startled, his tail wagging cautiously as he takes in the sight of the two of us stumbling past him like survivors of a catastrophe. I steer Seyeon through the kitchen with my arm still cinched around his waist, half carrying him as he winces with each step. Out the back door the rain pours down on us, warm from the season but still a shock against bare skin. The bathroom is only a few steps across the covered part of the courtyard so we duck through it fast, our feet slapping wet tile as we get inside.