Page 25 of A World Apart (Between Worlds #1)

“She eventually found work as a foreign language teacher way out in the country. Nowhere near any cities, just this rural little town. She got to stay in Japan for a couple of years.”

“Eventually, she met a boy and, well, you can probably guess what happened.” I laughed again, embarrassed.

“But then she fell pregnant.” I sighed, feeling that odd and familiar pang that always accompanied this story.

“The boy didn’t want to be a father, and his family didn’t want to acknowledge her ? or me, I suppose,” I shrugged.

“The school she’d been working in didn’t want an unmarried, pregnant foreigner working for them, and without a sponsor, her Visa wasn’t valid.

So, she had to leave. She moved back to England and had me. ”

“When I was two, she met my dad and the rest is history. They got married, Ernest adopted me, and they lived happily ever after.”

I smiled. I always ended this story with the same words because, honestly, it’s true.

My parents were so in love that sometimes it was hard to be in the same room as them.

It wasn’t uncommon to come down to the kitchen for breakfast and find them slow dancing in front of the fridge.

My dad built my mum a porch in the garden, just so she could sit outside on autumn mornings with a coffee and greet the day.

Theirs was a love I could only dream of.

Shaking my head, I brought myself back into the present.

“You love them very much.” Jihoon nodded, the statement a fact, not a question.

“Yes,” I said.

“They must miss you.”

I pulled my legs up to my chest and lay my head on my knees, so I was facing him. “I’m sure they do, but they have each other.” I let the silence fall into place between us as I watched him, watching the waves make their slow creep up the sand, ever closer but still plenty far enough away. For now.

“Is it weird for your parents?” I asked, and the question seemed to take him by surprise because he looked at me, a light crease forming between his brows before his face relaxed into an easy grin.

“I think they’re used to it now. I’ve lived away from home since I was eleven.”

“Eleven!” I exclaimed, lifting my head from my knees .

Jihoon nodded, letting his legs fall as he gracefully folded himself into a cross-legged seating position facing me. I mirrored his movements until we were facing each other, knees nearly touching.

“I lived with my imo and imobu ? my aunt and uncle ? in New York when I was eleven. I went to middle school there for three years while my parents travelled for work, and then when I was fourteen, I auditioned for ENT.” He was so matter of fact.

I didn’t know how to feel about it. I couldn’t imagine moving away from my parents at such a young age. That must have been so hard.

“You didn’t move back home?”

He shrugged. “I didn’t have a home. My parents sold our house in Busan when my dad accepted the job abroad. I flew back to Korea in the summer I auditioned and moved into the trainee dorm. I started school in Seoul in August.”

“So fast,” I murmured. “That must have been so weird.”

Jihoon huffed and smiled. “It was, but we were so busy that we didn’t have time to think about it.”

“I’ve heard that idol training is intense,” I offered. It was well known how brutal training was for K-Pop idols. There were so many documentaries and accounts of idols being starved and worked so hard that they’d pass out.

Jihoon was silent for a moment, staring down at the empty bottle in his hands as he absentmindedly picked at the label.

“When you’re in school, it’s not so bad. You wake up, exercise, go to school. Then you train for a few hours. But you get that time off during the day to just be a kid, y’know?” He looked up at me, and I wanted to agree, but honestly, I couldn’t imagine his life.

“English lessons were the best though,” he cocked his head to the side, a small smile playing across his lips.

“Why?”

“Because I had three years of practice from living in New York. It was the one class I was better at than my hyungs.” He grinned.

“My teachers were not so happy though; they had to spend a lot of time correcting the New York accent I’d picked up.

” He said ‘New York’ in a way that reminded me of Joey from 'Friends', and I giggled .

“But because I spent so much of my day in school, I had to work extra hard after classes to make sure I wasn’t letting my trainers down.

“We’d practice for so many hours that I hurt all the time,” he chuckled. “Every muscle was sore, all the time, there was never enough rest time. But you get used to it, so when I sometimes wasn’t in pain, I would train harder because I thought I had been lazy.”

“That’s insane,” I breathed.

He shook his head, but it wasn’t quite a disagreement. “It’s necessary.”

“Did you ever think about quitting?”

“No.” His immediate response surprised me, but then it didn’t, when I considered that the man sitting in front of me was considered to be one of the most talented idols in the industry right now.

“It was hard,” he admitted, “but it was…” he fumbled, his fingers waving in the air as if trying to snatch a word out of it.

“Purpose,” he settled on, meeting my gaze finally. “It was my purpose.”

I nodded. I could understand that. I wasn’t sure what mine was yet, but I understood the desire to fulfil it when a person does find it. He was lucky.

“I wish I knew what I wanted to be when I grow up,” I joked.

“You don’t want to work in music?” he asked, sounding surprised.

“Yes. No. Maybe?” I laughed. “I don’t know anymore.

I always thought I wanted to be a music producer.

It’s what I studied at university. But now…

I’m not sure if being behind the sound deck is what I want anymore.

” I shrugged, trying to play it off, but the truth gnawed at me.

After three years of certainty, studying toward that goal, realizing I might not want it anymore was… terrifying.

“I thought working at Pisces would be a fun sidestep into the career I’ve always wanted, but now I think maybe it’s shown me it wasn’t what I thought it was.”

Jihoon nodded thoughtfully. “You’ll find what you’re meant to do.”

“You think so?”

He held my gaze and smiled ? a wide, confident smile, the kind of confidence I could only aspire to.

“Of course. You’re smart, you work hard, and you’re brave.”

“I’m brave?” I asked uncertainly .

“You moved across the world on just the idea that you might find your purpose. That’s brave.”

“So did you, and you were far younger.”

He waved his hand dismissively. “That’s how I know you’ll find what you’re meant to do. Where you’re meant to be.”

We fell into a comfortable silence, watching the waves make their steady climb up the beach as the sun began to bleed across the horizon.

“It’s getting dark,” he said, looking around as if suddenly becoming aware of the dusk that was rapidly falling, turning the clear blue sky to a softer shade of pink and orange.

“We should probably start heading back,” I said, but I didn’t make a move to stand. Jihoon nodded, holding my gaze. “We fly back in the morning,” he said, quietly.

“I know.”

Neither of us moved and neither of us dropped our gaze. I didn’t blink for so long that I began to feel tears threatening in the corners of my eyes. Even when I did blink, I could still feel them there, a constant reminder of how this evening would end.

“We should probably head back,” I said again.

Jihoon sighed, but rose to his feet with a fluid, effortless grace that I could only aspire to.

He looked down at me and held out his hands, his long, graceful fingers reaching towards me.

I reached up to take them, gasping only slightly at the way my skin slid against his, cool at first, but then so warm.

His firm grip enclosed mine, calluses grazing my skin, the contradictory feeling of softness and roughness making this moment somehow more real.

He pulled me up, and suddenly he seemed to tower over me, his eyes holding mine with such intensity that my fingers tightened around his.

Slowly, he drew me closer until our chests were almost touching, the air between us charged with an almost tangible feeling. The world around us faded, leaving only the gentle sound of waves lapping at the sand, the ocean’s rhythm the backdrop to whatever this was .

His lips parted and his soulful brown eyes roamed over my face in a slow caress, until they purposefully flicked back up to meet my own. A giddy, thrumming sort of need vibrated within my chest; a pull I could no more deny than the need to keep breathing.

I tilted my head up slightly, my head falling to the side.

He didn’t make me wait long. Jihoon lowered his head, his nose brushing softly against my own before his lips found mine.

He pressed gently at first, as if mapping my lips with his own, but then he pressed against me more firmly, his lips moving mine, the urgency increasing as my lips parted on a sigh.

He let go of my hands to wrap his arms tightly around my waist, pulling me against him so close I had to wind my own arms around his neck.

My fingers ran up from the base of his spine to tangle lightly in his hair, finding it was as soft as it looked.

He groaned against my mouth, the sound reverberating through me and making me press closer still.

There was no gentleness now, only a wild sort of desperation to feel everything all at once.

When he lightly traced his tongue along my top lip, I bit down softly on his full bottom lip and honestly, if he’d lain me down in the sand, right then, I would have let him.

Instead, he pulled back with a pained groan that had nothing to do with my light nibble of his lip.

He pressed his forehead against mine as we both stood there, panting.

It took me a moment to understand why he had pulled away; his phone was ringing in his pocket, the sound breaking through our bubble and killing the moment.