Page 52 of Fallen Starboy

Thoughts of what I’d lost a second time now raced through my mind as I stared aimlessly at the dead potted plants on my windowsill, until an insistent knocking at my door dragged me back to reality.

After today’s ordeal, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know who was on the other side of that door. Or if I even wanted to answer it. Fear raced down my spine, immobilizing me.

There’s a security detail in the hallway. Nobody is coming after you. There’s no way SeoulSOUL knows their man was apprehended yet.

Still didn’t stop my body and mind from initiating the fight-or-flight instinct buried inside me.

“Ma’am?” The voice of the man Pujin sent with me echoed through the door. It only slightly eased the tension in my body. “You have a visitor. Mr. Pujin says he’s cleared and safe.”

He?

“I’m letting him in, ma’am.”

I didn’t have time to form a rational response before the door opened in the next room and the soft sound of footsteps on the hardwood floor heralded the arrival of my uninvited guest.

I was only mildly surprised to see Jun turn the corner and stop in his tracks, his eyes searching mine, wary and concerned as he took in my whole demeanor.

“Arista—”

I turned my back to him, fighting back the tears that threatened to spill over. “You should be with Yejin at your hotel, locked down and protected. What are you doing here?”

“I thought you were coming with us.”

I couldn’t help but notice the betrayal in his voice. It cut deep, because at my core, all I’d ever done in his eyes was betray him. His love, his affection, his dreams, even our future together. Now I could add one more betrayal to the mounting list of misunderstood transgressions against him.

“I was never supposed to be a permanent part of your team. Your security team is more than capable of seeing to your well-being.”

The silence spread between us like a chasm of insurmountable proportions, threatening to swallow us whole if we even tried. I bit my tongue to fight back everything I wanted to say, everything I had buried for so long inside me.

Jun, however, had never been one to pass up a challenge, even the ones that seemed impossible.

He took the first step, just like he always had. In his life, in his band, in our relationship.

Always the first, except for once.

“What if I say I’m not interested in letting you go?”

He doesn’t mean that the way you want him to. He’s talking about a job.

“I can’t stay. I have another job to do at the label?—”

“I’ll pay you double.”

My hands balled into fists as he basically diminished the blood, sweat, and tears that I’d poured into my career to get where I was. “It’s not about the money,” I spat, hating how nastyI sounded to my own ears. “I like my job, Jun.”And I did. I really did.

But not as much as I once did.

“Okay, fine. Keep the job. But stay with us.” I felt his presence close the distance between us, and his hands wrapped around my shoulders, pinning me to the spot. “Stay with me.”

Here it was. “Why, Jun? So you can make me miserable to pay me back for all the ways you hate me? So you can prove to me that I’ll still fall into your bed, even though you despise me to my core? To?—”

“I don’t hate you!”

His words hung in the air, sticky and filled with emotions and truth I wasn’t ready to examine too closely. “You do,” I denied, the words hollow to my own ears. “It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that out.”

“I thought I did,” he whispered, his hands twisting me to face him. “But I really only hated me. Pretending to hate you made it possible to look in the mirror every morning and lie to myself.”

The truth shone in his eyes like a beacon, pleading with me to see through the fog of the last seven years, the lies and desperation we’d both been living in. It hurt to think that he was offering something I’d wanted so badly to me right now, when I knew I could never take it.

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