I look up at his face and see my reflection in his glassy eyes. He’s barely holding it together, every muscle in his body tautas he stares down at me as if I’m the air he breathes. As if he needs to know he can again.
It’s a vulnerability so visceral that I blink and realize I’m teary eyed too.
“I’m nothing without you,” he says, inching closer. “Tokki-ya, the Silent Hunter needs his little rabbit to survive.”
A sob escapes me before I can stop it, and I press a hand to my mouth like I can still hold in the emotion that floods me all at once.
Any restraint or resistance I have left evaporates.
It’s gone in a flash as any wall I’ve built crashes down like his have.
My fingers twine into the fabric of his shirt, and I pull him down to kiss me. His lips on mine, the kiss salty and wet from our tears. But it’s also warm and bursting with the intensity of our feelings for each other.
His arms wrap around me and pull me in even closer, deepening the kiss like he’s trying to make up for lost time.
I kiss him back with everything I have, fingers still bunched in his shirt. We stay like this for who knows how long, lips sealed together and hearts beating furiously, so lost in the moment, time doesn’t matter.
When we finally break apart, we stay close, foreheads resting against each other.
“I love you,” Jin murmurs, brushing my lips with his. “I should have said it more. Iwillsay it more. Every fucking day. Every moment I can.”
“You can start now,” I whisper in teasing.
He draws back enough to flash a handsome and rare smile. “You know, I went to your mother first. Before I came here. I needed her advice. Her blessing.”
I laugh, unsurprised. “Of course you did. It definitely tracks that she had something to do with this.”
As if on cue, my phone rings from my jean pocket. I cock abrow at him and he merely grins wider, both of us aware of who it is before I even check the Caller ID.
I answer by putting it on speaker.
“Hi, Mommy,” I say, my tone amused. “Guess who’s here visiting from Korea?”
“I KNEW IT!” she screams. “Didn’t I tell him? I said, baby, you better go get my daughter before she finds some boring accountant and I’m stuck making small talk about tax returns at Thanksgiving for the rest of my natural life!” She barely pauses to breathe. “Tell me you two worked it out. Tell me I’m getting grandbabies. Tell me SOMETHING!”
“Mom,” I say, laughing as I share a glance with Jin. “Breathe. Remember breathing?”
“Well, baby, I just get so worked up about you two sometimes, I?—”
“We’re going to work it out. We’re back together.”
The next shriek that comes through the phone is loud enough that Jin lets out his own laugh and shakes his head.
It’s only the beginning of what becomes a long, celebratory evening for us.
29.Monroe
“I’m just saying,for a man who claims to be some legendary fighter with impeccable hand-eye coordination, you’d think you could land a few more rings on a peg.”
Jin shoots me a disgruntled look, the summer breeze off the Delaware River ruffling his dark hair as we walk along the pier. “You got lucky.”
“Lucky?” I laugh, bumping my shoulder against his arm. “I beat you bysix points, oh Great Silent Hunter. Not one. Not two. Six. That’s not lucky. That’s being outmatched skills-wise.”
“The rings were weighted unevenly,” he insists moodily. “The odds were in your favor from the start.”
The fact that he’s making up excuses only makes the whole thing funnier.
“Sure they were,” I say, taking a bite of the funnel cake we’re sharing (orsupposedto be anyway but I’ve mostly hogged). “Keep telling yourself that.”
