Page 88 of Scarbound

Chung-Hee stopped.

Noeul turned toward him. “I said I need to go home.”

Chung-Hee studied him. “Because you don’t want me?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Then what are you saying?”

“I don’t know!”

His voice echoed inside the elevator. Noeul immediately lowered it.

“I don’t know, hyung.” His shoulders dropped. “You kissed me and I…”

He stopped.

Chung-Hee waited.

“I wanted it.”

“But?”

Noeul looked away. “But I remembered.”

Chung-Hee’s expression went still. Neither needed to ask what. The cemetery entered the elevator with them.

Noeul wrapped his arms around himself. “I wanted you to kiss me,” he admitted quietly. “And then suddenly I wanted you nowhere near me.”

Chung-Hee had no immediate answer.

Noeul turned his back to him and closed his eyes, trying to calm his body and mind.

Did he feel the same way he had years ago? Had those feelings deepened, or faded like a flower in the wind? Noeul couldn’t tell.

The attraction was undeniable. But was there more? Could there still be?

The elevator continued downward.

After a while, Chung-Hee spoke.

“I’m sorry.”

Noeul opened his eyes. He almost turned around.

Almost.

“For the kiss?”

A pause.

“For frightening you.”

Noeul’s throat tightened. It wasn’t enough. Not even close. But it was the first time Chung-Hee had acknowledged his fear without turning it into another accusation.

“Okay,” Noeul whispered.

The ding of the elevator reaching the ground floor snapped him from his thoughts. The doors opened, and Noeul immediately stepped out, needing fresh air, needing distance, needing a few minutes in which Chung-Hee wasn’t close enough to confuse everything inside him.