Page 26 of Fallen Starboy

Chapter

Twenty-One

ARISTA

Leaving again hurt just as much as it did the first time, but it was for the best. For their safety. If I didn’t leave, and those assholes sent someone else after me, who was to say someone wouldn’t get hurt in the crossfire? I couldn’t put Yejin or Jun in that position again.

It would be better for everyone if I went back to living alone, closed ranks around them with new staff, and returned to my old position in the label.

Who are you kidding? Do you think the label will stop seeking him out just because you’re out of the picture?

He had Pujin. Pujin had a capable team of security detail personnel, all better equipped to deal with this situation than I could ever hope to be.

They’ll hunt you down regardless. You’re just running away to avoid the conversation you don’t wanna have with the man you’re still in love with.

And that right there was the crux of the matter. I didn’t want to explain myself. I didn’t want to rehash the old pain, go through the emotional roller coaster one more time. Jun would never trust me, never believe me, no matter what I told him.

He had an established life with Yejin. And a long time ago, I decided there was no place for me in it.

To change that would be selfish.

The plan had always been to get out as fast as I could.

So why was I filled with so much regret at my actions, when I was the one who made the decision?

I shuffled around my apartment, running the water to clear the pipes, opening curtains, even watering the plants the housekeeper had clearly neglected while I was away. Some of them might spring back, but others were long past their tipping point and would need replaced, or tossed out.

Rest in peace to my hydrangea, I guess.

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 nasty I 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.

I didn’t deserve that happy ever after.

“I know the truth, Ari.” Words that didn’t feel real. How could he know when I’d never told a soul? “They’ve been after me, too, in my emails. I knew they were coming. But until now, I didn’t realize they’d come for you, too. On more than one occasion.”

My mind transported me back to the night when I woke up in a hospital with a concerned nurse and doctor hanging over my bed.

They helped me get a flight back to the States, helped me escape the man who’d run me off the road after cutting my breaks, helped me slip out the back and keep my child safe until she was born.

Even then, I knew someday the label would come back for me. I just hoped that if I removed myself from their radar, they’d let me drift into a peaceful, non-threatening existence.

I should have known that none of us would ever be safe.

“The company will make sure I’m protected. I’ll get a detail outside of my building and?—”

Jun didn’t give me the chance to make false promises.

His lips crashed down onto mine with a reckless heat, devouring me like he’d been starving in the desert for years, and I was an oasis.

Melting under his touch wasn’t a choice.

It was as inevitable as getting wet in the rain.

As unavoidable as a sunburn in summertime. As instinctive as breathing.

I closed the distance between us, hating that my resolve to remove myself from his life was crumbling with a single touch, an embrace, a frantic display of desperation between two people who’d fucked up every opportunity they’d ever been given.

I had all these grand ideas, this plan to fade back into the background and take my promotion.

To go back to how I’d been living before he walked back into my life and turned it all upside down.

And now, I couldn’t think of a single one.

“Arista,” he breathed against my lips, “I’m tired of pretending you don’t belong in my life.

I haven’t been the same since you walked away.

” His hands trailed down the sides of my arms, snaking around my back to tug our bodies together so that all I could feel was him.

“I know why you did it. I know what happened to you. I should have realized it sooner.” I didn’t know where one of us ended and the other began.

Our heartbeats felt in sync, uniform, two beating as one.

His words were just the chain that cemented the connection, that made it impossible to escape. Not that I wanted to.

He’d always been my other half, my home.

“Please, don’t run away this time, Ari.”

The last walls around my heart shattered as his voice cracked, a single tear streaming down his cheek to mingle with our entwined lips.

The salty taste struck a chord in me, and with a desperate moan, I gripped his shirt and dragged him backward, never once breaking contact as I maneuvered us to my bedroom from memory alone.

My heel throbbed as I kicked the door open and backed into the room, a hand frantically searching the wall for the damned light switch. When I couldn’t find it easily, Jun leaned back, breaking the kiss, eyes searching mine as he reached out over my hand and found the fucking thing with ease.

Like he’d been here before.

Or like he belonged here.

“If we turn on the lights, are you going to run away from me?”

I didn’t have an answer for him. Turning the lights on felt like a big step, but I wanted, needed to see him. I needed to face this demon myself if I was ever going to overcome it.

“I don’t know.”

“Then leave it off.” His lips were on my neck, his hand over mine, curling our fingers together as he pulled it away from the switch. “Don’t think. Don’t focus. Just feel.”

I swallowed back the instant urge to contradict him. To tell him I needed to see.

I didn’t, really. And that was the part that scared me more than anything.

If I let myself feel, I might not have the strength to turn him away. And he knew that.

“Okay,” I said finally, letting my head fall back as he kissed his way up the side of the column of my neck. “Okay.”