“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I just… I thought it would feel different when no one was looking. More awkward. Or forced. But it doesn’t.”
Jax nodded slowly, like he’d been thinking the same thing but hadn’t wanted to say it first.
She took a breath. The words came easier now, floating out over the still water.
“My parents divorced because of me—or at least it feels that way,” she said quietly. “Dad wanted classical. Mom just wanted me happy. When I chose pop, it broke something between them. Min-Jae was there through all of it—the group, going solo, the fallout. He understood the pressure. When my career climbed and his stalled, the resentment built. First breakup. I tried to fix it. It didn’t help.”
She looked at Jax then—really looked.
“And now I’m here,” she said softly.
Jax didn’t speak right away. He just nodded—slow, accepting.
“I get it,” he said finally. “He was there for all the hard parts. That doesn’t just disappear.”
She swallowed. “No. It doesn’t.”
He reached out, brushed his knuckles along her cheek—gentle, almost absent-minded. Then he let his hand drop back to the tile.
“We said no feelings,” he reminded her quietly. “Benefits. Fake for the cameras. That was the deal.”
“I know.” Her voice was small. “But it doesn’t feel fake right now.”
The words hung between them, simple and true, as the cicadas filled the quiet.
Jax held her gaze for a long beat. Then he gave the tiniest smile—not the cocky one he used for cameras, but something softer, almost uncertain.
“Yeah,” he murmured. “It really doesn’t.”
He slid into the water beside her, the floatie rocking gently as he pulled her close. She let him—arms looping around his neck, legs wrapping around his waist in the cool water. No rush. No performance. Just the slow lap of the pool against their skin and the steady beat of his heart against hers.
For the first time in months, the thought of Min-Jae didn’t feel like an anchor.
It felt like a memory.
And Jax—warm, steady, looking at her like she was the only thing in the world worth seeing—felt dangerously close to something new.
Something real.
???
Chapter Sixteen
Aria
The private jet hummed through the night, the Pacific a black mirror far below, catching moonlight in silver fractures. Inside, the cabin was hushed and amber-lit, the flight attendant long since vanished into the galley. Aria sat curled in the window seat, knees to her chest, Jax’s oversized hoodie swallowing her frame. His scent—salt, cedar, and something uniquely him—still clung to the fabric, a tangible memory of Brisbane that made her chest ache.
The week had felt stolen. Lazy mornings in Evelyn’s kitchen, sunscreen-slick afternoons by the pool, nights where the only sounds were waves and their breathing. No flashing cameras, no expectations. Just them. Now the real world was rushing back in, cold and insistent, and the ease they’d found already felt like something fragile and borrowed.
She glanced across the aisle. Jax was half-reclined, tablet glowing in his hands, scrolling through what she assumed were pre-season emails. His jaw carried that familiar focused tension, the one that appeared whenever he was mentally mapping out lap times and strategy. When he noticed her watching, he set thetablet down and offered a small smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes.
“Penny for your thoughts?” His voice was low, intimate in the quiet cabin.
Aria managed a faint smile. “Just… wondering how long the bubble lasts once we land.”
He stretched his long legs, considering her. “Seoul first. Then I head straight to the factory. New car launch, big gala a week later. Good opportunity for us to be seen together.”
The words landed like a small stone in still water. Good opportunity. She hated how easily they both slipped back into business mode.
