“You know where. Work.”
“Work?” I repeat with a disbelieving shake of my head. I gesture at his battered knuckles and the blood wetting his shirt. “You call disappearing until three in the morning work? What about me? What about?—”
“You don’t need to wait up for me,” he interrupts. “I never asked you to. Go to bed. Get some rest.”
“I can’t sleep when I don’t know if you’re alive or dead!” I snap, throwing up my arms. “How am I supposed to when my fiancé disappears for hours and comes home covered inblood and won’t say a single word about where he’s been or what he’s doing!”
“You know what I do. You know I can’t tell you. You made the decision to accept that when you decided to be with me—don’t expect any differently now.”
His tone is cold and dismissive. It’s a callback to how he once spoke to me.
Back when I was convinced we were enemies; when he wanted to kill me and inked the inside of my wrist with a death mark.
He was cold then too.Cruel.
He spoke to me as if I were pathetic and he considered me a waste of air. For a long while, until his icy disposition finally melted, I thought he hated me.
Taken aback by the pivot into cold detachment, my pulse races. My eyes start to itch even as I blink a few times and urge myself to stay strong.
But ithurts.
…it hurts that he could still treat me this way. That so easily he could revert back to the old, heartless Jin who seemed to want to crush me like an insect.
“Jin,” I croak almost in a whining tone. I draw a wavering breath, blinking up at him as tears finally come. “How could you… our baby… we… we…”
“I’ve told you before, there’s nothing more to say about it,” he says. “You can handle it your way. I will handle it mine. But there’s no changing it, Monroe.”
“How could you say that? How can you just check out like that? We lost our son, Jin. We need to go to counseling. We need to talk about it. To grieve over it.Together.”
His dark eyes finally flicker with heavy emotion I can’t place before it’s extinguished. Gone so fast it’s possible I’m seeing what I want to see.
“Talking won’t bring him back,” he says, his tone hard. “Nothing will. That’s what you don’t seem to realize.”
“That’s not the point!”
“Then whatisthe point? Hurry up. Tell me. What do you want from me? Would it help if I cry too? If I spend days in bed and mourn? If I sit on some couch with some shrink and let him pick apart what’s inside my head?” he rants suddenly, taking a step closer, holding my gaze. “Tell me what the fuck you want, Monroe, and I’ll give it to you.”
“I want you to be my partner!” I blurt out in a scream. “I want to face this together! Why is that so hard for you to do?”
“Because this is who I am!” he retorts, raising his voice to compete with mine. It’s a rarity, one of the only times he’s ever done so. It doesn’t even seem to register that he has; that he’s allowed this crack in his cold, aloof composure. He simply takes yet another step toward me and sneers, “You don’t seem to understand I can’t change myself. You’ve fooled yourself otherwise. You thought you could have a normal happy life with me.
“But you were wrong—we werebothwrong. This is who I am. Who I’ve always been. Men like me don’t get happy endings. I know that now. I was stupid to ever think otherwise, and so were you.”
I’m struck speechless, heart racing and nerves shot. It feels like I’ve been electrocuted, my brain hazy and frazzled and my pulse out of control.
Then there’s the pain. The hurt from losing our son. From losing Jin too.
When I try to inhale, it’s more of a sputtering breath. It’s interrupted by the sob I’ve been holding in now trying to make its way out.
“You… you don’t mean that…” I mumble, shaking my head. “Jin… please…”
“I do mean it. It’s the truth,” he says plainly. His jaw tightens,his dark eyes still unblinkingly meeting my teary ones. “Look at me, Monroe.Reallylook. What do you see? I’m a killer. A criminal. I’m meant to live that lifestyle. I’m not meant to be what you thought I was.”
“You were going to try! You promised me you would try! You said you wanted this—wanted us to be a family?—”
“And look where that got us. Our son is dead. I couldn’t protect him. If you stay with me, it will only get worse. You’ll be next.”
“So that’s it?” I stare at him through lashes stuck together by tears, my throat aching. “You’re officially giving up?”
