Chapter 47
Ireached for him, tentatively pressing my fingers to where his were clenched to his chest, as if he might reach in and pull out his own heart.
When he looked up, the world between us shrunk until suddenly we were standing in the same shared space we’d occupied once, so long ago.
He let out a juddering breath and closed his eyes, hanging his head. His hair fell in front of his face, obscuring his expression. Still holding on, I took another step until I could feel the heat of his body radiating towards me, even through his rumpled suit. He slipped the wallet, and the ring, back into his pocket, patting it once before letting his arm drop back to his side.
I’d spent three years building armour around myself out of a story I’d taken as fact, and he’d stripped it from me as though it had been made of shadows and cobwebs. Now I was laid bare before him.
Slowly, I reached out my hand and cupped his jaw, tilting his face up until he had no choice but to meet my eyes.
“I forgive you,” I said quietly. “I forgive you, Baek Jihoon.”
He took a gasping breath, and I watched the play of emotions flicker across his features, a battle between devastation and redemption, sunrise and sunset. A single tear tracked down his cheek, hitting my thumb, and I wiped it away.
He reached up and took my hands in his, holding them gently as he brought them to his mouth, kissing them softly.
“I wasn’t going to come,” he said so quietly I had to lean in to hear him over the thudding of my pulse. “But then I saw your ring.”
He ran his thumb over the amethyst. Not as shiny as it had once been, but no less beautiful.
“Seeing you still wore it… it made me hope that maybe you didn’t hate me as much as I thought you must.”
I didn’t say anything, because I could barely admit to myself that I’d tried for years to feel anything for him that wasn’t love. Love in so many forms. Unrequited, resentful, needing, betrayed. Ever-present. Even now.
“Do you remember when I gave it to you?”
I smiled at the memory.
“Did you know my birthstone was an amethyst?”
He looked up at me, eyes widening. “No.”
“Yup. My birthday is February 21st.”
He huffed a laugh. “A Pisces. The universe has plans for us all.”
“The universe has plans for us all,” I murmured, remembering his words as if they were tattooed on my heart, because I had really believed that.
“It always felt like fate with you,” he said.
Even though I didn’t believe in fate, I couldn’t deny that there had always been something drawing us together. An irresistible pull that had always been there. From the moment we first locked eyes over a spilled box of cables in the lobby of Pisces Studios, to the moment I looked through the peephole tonight.
I remembered the moment we met so clearly it was like a recording in my mind.
Something had happened then that I’d never said aloud, not even to myself. When I’d looked up and met his gaze – it had been the strangest sensation, because my first impulse had been to say, “ah, there you are.” Of course, I had done no such thing, and I had dismissed it every time I’d thought of it since, because we didn’t live in a fairy tale.
But that didn’t make what I’d felt then any less real.
And I felt it now.
I looked into Jihoon’s eyes, and there it was.
I’ve been waiting for you.
Something shifted between us. Some magnetic rearranging. I saw it on his face the moment he saw it on mine.
He released my hands before he raised his own to my cheeks, hesitating just before touching me. His palms were so close that I felt the warmth from his skin. My breathing hitched, and then he was cupping my face with hands that no longer trembled, and I nearly moaned.
