Page 34 of When Worlds Collide (Between Worlds #2)

“ O oft, you look like grumpy. Did Milo pee on you again?” I grimaced at Becka.

Milo was the very sweet but very geriatric Chihuahua who belonged to Becka’s downstairs neighbour.

Unfortunately for Becka, he seemed to have recently claimed her – attempting to pee on her whenever they crossed paths.

I found it hysterical, but it just made Becka, well, hysterical.

“Ha, fucking ha.” She raised her hand, waving her middle finger at the screen.

“Okay, so I’m guessing that face has something to do with work?” I schooled my expression into something more diplomatic.

“Ding, ding, ding.” She sighed and massaged the bridge of her nose, tossing her glasses onto the table in an uncharacteristic display of frustration.

“Yowch,” I said sympathetically. “Everything alright?”

“Same shit, different day.”

“Wanna talk about it?” I offered, taking a seat at the kitchen counter and sipping my coffee.

“Not really much to tell,” Becka said with a shrug. “No one knows what hole TK’s crawled into, and we’re scrabbling to reschedule. That’s nothing to do with me, but I’ve been roped into helping.”

I winced. It hadn’t even been a month since the firestorm of my departure from Pisces – and consequently LA – and the shit had officially hit the fan.

Or at least, quietly. I’d told Becka ENT was suing Pisces.

She already knew. I guess I was the only one na?ve enough to think those confidentiality agreements meant a damn thing.

I felt a flare of disgust at the mention of Trevor Kyle. I could almost feel the ghost of his finger as it trailed along the base of my spine. I gave myself a mental shake.

“How’s Jeremy?” I asked. I’d been worried about him ever since I found out he was the one who emailed ENT the confirmation that Trevor Kyle had knowingly filmed us in the conference room.

Becka waved a dismissive hand. “Same as he ever was. Mere minutes from putting his head through a wall.”

I barked out a laugh. It was as astute observation.

My curmudgeony ex-boss often looked on the verge of a breakdown.

He was also probably one of the coolest people I’d ever met.

I’d had that opinion long before he put his neck on the line for me in my firing meeting.

Now that I knew he’d gone several steps further and sent that data to ENT?

I had no way of knowing if he’d done it because of his principles, or if he’d done it on my behalf. But, I liked to think…

“How’s he getting away with it?” I asked, shaking my head.

Becka blinked slowly at me. “Didn’t we already talk about this?”

I searched my brain. I had been so wrapped up in the Jihoon-of-it-all, had I forgotten this detail? After a moment’s pause, I confidently replied, “No, I’m pretty sure I’d remember.”

Becka sighed again. I didn’t envy her. I also couldn’t help the twinge of guilt, knowing that this whole thing was kind of my fault. Granted, I wasn’t the scumbag producer who’d secretly filmed a client kissing his intern girlfriend on company grounds, but…

“The sooner this is over and I can get back to posting fluffy content about studio bloopers, the happier I’ll be.”

Becka, as Pisces’ social media manager, usually handled PR. But that would have been underselling her many talents. I admired Becka more than I admired pretty much anyone.

“This part is just between you and me, capiche?” she said, suddenly serious as she narrowed her eyes at me. I pulled my fingers across my lips in answer.

“So, you know my dad and Jeremy were college buddies, right?”

I nodded. That friendship was the whole reason Becka has been able to get me an internship at Pisces, who notoriously did not hire interns. Becka’s dad had called in a favour. Not because he cared about me, but because Becka was his little princess.

“Well, because my dad’s a lawyer he drafted a letter for Jeremy to give to management.

I don’t know exactly what was in the letter – dad wouldn’t say – but it had the words ‘whistleblower protection’ and ‘company liability’ in it.

I got the impression that he was spinning it as some kind of way to protect Pisces.

Whatever that letter said, it worked. Jeremy hasn’t missed a single day of work. ”

“Wow, Becka. Your dad is kind of awesome.”

She smirked and tossed her bangs out of her eyes. “He has his moments.”

“But no one knows what’s going on with TK?”

“Fuck only knows,” Becka grumbled. “The worm has well and truly wriggled off the hook.”

Silently, I disagreed. I suspected he was just laying low, and the thought made me uneasy.

Another day had passed without me doing anything about my job situation. After receiving the invitation from ENT, I’d been so distracted it had completely slipped my mind.

Today, Jihoon had gone into Gangnam to work on his mix tape, so I spent my time wandering around Itaewon, on my way to a Korean language class I’d enrolled in, much to Jihoon’s amusement.

“Why go to class when I can teach you?” He’d said, nuzzling my neck, as we lay in bed that morning.

I threw one leg over his, and he reached for it, pulling it higher up until it fell over his hip.

“Hmm, because you’d be a terrible teacher.”

“I am an excellent teacher.” He grinned against my lips, and I playfully caught his bottom lip between my teeth for a moment.

“I don’t think students are supposed to be in bed with their teachers.”

He said something in Korean that I didn’t understand, but it sounded naughty.

“If you let me teach you, you’d understand exactly what I’m going to do to you now.

” His voice rumbled in the way that I loved before he reached his hands up to cup my face, pulling me towards him for a toe-curling kiss.

His tongue darted into my mouth and told me, wordlessly, exactly what he was going to do to me.

But, as predicted, I hadn’t learned a single word of Korean in bed that morning, so here I was, walking down a busy, freezing street in Itaewon on my way to my very first Korean language lesson. With a real, accredited language instructor.

I passed by a small office wedged in between a homeopathic pharmacy and a family-run mart. The signage on the office door made me pause.

Emigration Corp. Marriage. Fiancée Visa. Translation.

It was a bit shabby – all of the buildings and businesses around here were – which had been a surprise to me, coming from the more touristy area of Itaewon.

It wasn’t the words that gave me pause, so much as the memory of the passport agent and what she’d said to me as I entered Korea and insisted I was staying with a friend.

“Your friend could always marry you.”

I pushed that thought down – way down – but it had the uneasy result of bringing to the surface the ticking clock that was always in the back of my mind. I’d been in Seoul two weeks now, and I was no closer to getting a Visa to stay here past the 90-day tourist window.

My mind flashed back to this morning, once we’d finally rolled out of bed. I’d cornered Jihoon about it in the kitchen, as he was pouring water into the coffee machine.

I’d walked up behind him, running my hand up his warm back, delighting in the softness of his skin. “Joon?”

He didn’t turn around. “Hmm?”

“I need to figure out what I’m going to do for work.”

Jihoon put the water filter jug back in the fridge, and turned around to face me, leaning casually back against the counter. I tried not to get distracted by the way his pyjama bottoms hung low on his hips.

“You know, you don’t need to work. You can apply for an extension.”

“I do need to.” My words were sharper than I intended, but I was done freeloading.

I’d come to learn, or at least suspect, that Jihoon quite liked the idea of supporting me; but I didn’t. It didn’t make sense to me. We weren’t… married, we didn’t have kids, there was no need for me to sit at home all day, playing housewife.

Plus, I was truly terrible at cleaning. I could push a vacuum round, or do the dishes, but beyond that, no one wanted that to be my full-time occupation.

“I want to work,” I tried again. “I want to find something I can be good at. And I don’t want to just be renewing a tourist Visa every other month – which I’ll eventually not be able to do, anyway.” I took a step back, needing room enough to breath.

“Unless, you don’t think I’ll be here that long?”

He frowned. “Why would you not be here long?”

I shrugged. “Not having a Visa makes leaving easier.”

Jihoon went very still. So still, it seemed even his chest stopped moving with his breaths, but maybe that was just me.

“Do you want to leave?”

“No.” I swallowed. “But that will happen, if we don’t make plans for me to stay. Right now… I’m a visitor.” I put my hands on my hips, resisting the urge to fidget.

Jihoon was silent as he regarded me, a tic working in his jaw.

“I don’t want you to leave.”

Air whooshed out of me, and I dropped my hands to my sides. “Then I need to work.”

He nodded. “Okay. I will talk to people at the company. Today.”

“It doesn’t need to be ENT,” I said quickly. I didn’t want him to think I was using him to get a convenient role.

“No, it makes sense,” he nodded again. “It is a good place to start.”

“If they’ll have me,” I crossed my arms over my chest, finally giving voice to something that had bothered me ever since we’d first discussed working for ENT.

They were a massive entertainment company, managing some of the biggest names across various media industries.

I was… an intern. Worse; an intern that got fired for fooling around with a client.

I groaned, rolling my head back onto my shoulders. “What if they don’t want me?”

“Then the chicken shop down the road is hiring.”

I opened my eyes to stare at him.

“It’s true. I saw the sign in their window.” His lips twitched.

My head was throbbing. I’d gone into that Korean class thinking that starting right at the beginning would be – if not easy – manageable, considering I’d been learning already using an app.

Total. Bollocks.