I interrupt her. “The right kind of wild card? What does that even mean?”
“Chaeji is a wild card in the unpredictable sense.” Reaching over to poke at me with her newly shaped nail, Grace says, “You need a wild card that’s a game changer. The one you didn’t see coming who blows up every plan you made and everything you thought you knew. You’re a planner and a thinker. You get in your head about things and want to analyze everything. Sometimes you have to just feel. Just go with the flow. You needto be with a person who makes you want to let it happen. Be in the moment with them.”
My jaw is dropped, and my mouth is probably hanging open in the most ridiculous way. I’m not sure even a world champion poker player could have read me or these proverbial cards the way Grace just did. “Damn,” I mumble, awed and humbled at the accuracy of her assessment.
“Mmm-hmmm.” She slides the file back in the drawer and closes it, looking up at me with a no-nonsense expression. “I know you say you’re not looking for someone, but maybe don’t be ‘not looking’ so hard you miss something that’s right in front of you.”
With that, she pulls her keyboard in front of her and begins typing away on an email like she didn’t just nail me to a wall and hang an artist biography next to me with her name and an ode to her good work. Feeling very exposed and very out of sorts, I make my way into my office.
Does she somehow know what’s been going on? Does she talk to Yung-Sun? Or is all of that coincidence? Maybe I’m reading too much into it and nothing she just said has anything to do with what I’ve been thinking or what’s been going on, and I’m just making connections out of nothing.
I ease into my chair and open my laptop, staring at the blank screen like maybe I’ll find some answers there.
I don’t know what to do about Chaeji. She’s talking about me, speaking our faux relationship into the universe like a shaman trying to make it happen. I need to speak to her. Set her straight. But carefully, because I feel like she’s one wrong move away from something I definitely don’t want to be a part of.
I also don’t know what to do about Yung-Sun. He’s on my mind, in my head, and maybe some other parts, too. I should probably talk to him as well, remind him nothing can or will happen. He shouldn’t be thinking about it and neither should I. I really,reallyshould not.
So that’s it. I have a plan.
Just be an adult.
Have adult conversations.
I’m just letting two people know that our relationships are professional. Not personal. And that’s all.
Nobody needs to get hurt.
I’ve handled plenty of difficult people before. Not that Yung-Sun is difficult. Feisty, maybe. Tenacious, certainly. Alluring, yeah, okay, maybe that too, but it doesn’t matter.
I date women, and I will continue to date women when one comes along that I’m interested in.
Yes. Right.
Good.
I’m glad I got that settled.
?
LUX
“If I uploaded this picture to VOXbox, I could break the entire fandom,” Nikko says, tilting his phone to show me the shot he just took of Chita and Ryo. “Just one single post and the platform goes down.”
Even though I’ve been watching them carrying stuff into Jase and Nikko’s place for the last hour, the photo he’s captured still surprises me. He’s not kidding about VOX, either. They’d log into the fan portal to see the image and just… implode.
Chita in his crop top with the sleeves cut off and baggy sweats, abs out and glistening with sweat, hair pulled off his face into a springy little ponytail, is the kind of sight that fanfic is written about. Ryo, who is generally pretty modest, is wearing a tank top and some track pants that are showing all of his normally well-concealed features. They’re carrying some sort of large box together, and they look really hot doing it. If they weren’t basically my brothers—and Kija wasn’t in the room—I’d probably be a little turned on by all of this.
The fans, though? They’d die.
But Kim Kija is in the room. Wearing a tight black tee shirt with some European sports logo on it and a pair of silver basketball shorts, a combination that is giving me the best view I’ve ever had of his body outside of the slim cut trousers andtailored dress shirts he wears sometimes. I have known he was tall and well-built since the day I first saw him, but the way the shirt clings to his biceps and gives just a hint of definition to his abs, and the slick material slipping over the curve of his ass, ending just above his muscular calves has me ready to get on my knees right here in front of everyone.
“Sun. Seriously.”
“Huh?” I blink at Nikko and the scowl on his face. “I wasn’t doing anything!”
“I know!” He waves his hands around, gesturing to everyone else in the room, actively in motion. “Everyone elseisdoing things and you’re just standing here, staring at Kija-hyung and drooling.”
I scoff, offended. “Excuse you. I am notdrooling. That’s disgusting.”
