Page 9 of When Worlds Collide (Between Worlds #2)

I got up and did all the things a normal person did in the morning; I brushed my teeth, I brushed my hair, I slapped on some moisturiser from the little tube I’d gotten on the plane and made a mental note to buy some more at the first opportunity, and then I got dressed.

“Boo, you whore!”

A wide grin split my face as I looked down at one of the best people in the world.

“Why are you in the bathroom?” I asked, recognising those cubicles from my nine months of interning at Pisces recording studios.

Becka rolled her eyes. “I had to run in here when you phoned,” she whined, sitting down – presumably on the toilet.

“Aww,” I cooed, “are you so excited to see me that you pissed yourself?”

“Yes, that’s exactly right, I’m peeing myself right now.” She deadpanned. “No, bish, I ran in here to hide the fact that I’m talking to ‘Pisces Most Wanted’.”

“I’m sorry, what?” I laughed.

“You heard. You’re officially an urban legend, congratulations. If Celine knew I was talking to you – and on company grounds – she’d lose her shit. Hence, our little tête-a-toilet.” Becka gestured around with a well-manicured hand.

It took me a second to process what she was saying.

“Oh. Oh! Everyone knows?”

Becka shrugged, but I saw the wry twist to her lips. “Yup.”

I frowned. “Well, that doesn’t sound very discreet of her. I must have missed the point in my firing meeting where the chief operating officer told everyone to blab about it.”

“It wasn’t her – it was TK, that rat.” Becka sneered Trevor Kyle’s abbreviation like it personally offended her, which it probably did.

My frown deepened. The last I’d seen of TK, it was off the back of a very unsubtle warning from the COO about non-disclosures. I was surprised he’d said anything about what happened in that meeting.

“TK is telling people about the conference room?”

“Not exactly.” Becka looked deeply uncomfortable, shifting her gaze to the side, and nibbling the skin around her thumbnail. It was a terrible habit she had when she was nervous, and just then, it was making me nervous, as well.

“Becka, stop cannibalizing yourself and just tell me what’s happened.”

A tight knot was beginning to form in my stomach, and I had a sudden realisation that this was maybe why Jihoon had been acting so agitated about going into ENT today and yesterday morning.

“Okay, but just to be clear,” Becka started, dropping her hand, “this is brand new information to you? The idol hasn’t told you anything?” Her eyebrows rose as she finally met my eyes.

The knot in my gut tightened and deciding not to comment on her habit of calling Jihoon, ‘the idol’, I replied, “No.”

“Wow, okay,” she pulled a face and paused, seemingly choosing her words. “There’s a video-”

“A FUCKING WHAT?” I exploded, barely noticing the way Becka flinched before she started flapping the hand that wasn’t holding her phone.

“Babes, shut the fuck up,” she hissed at me. “Chill.”

I tried. I really did. I took deep, calming breaths as I moved over to the sofa and flopped down on it, conscious of the way the knot in my stomach had frozen into a ball of ice.

“Continue.” I took a breath. “Please.”

Becka sighed. “I know this sounds bad, but I’ve seen it.

It’s not as awful as it sounds. But yeah, there is a video of you and-” Becka caught herself, giving a nervous once over, cocking her head as if listening intently, before turning back to the screen.

“And your boyfriend, but it’s not like he’d bent you over the table-”

“Becka! Jesus H Christmas,” I groaned, throwing my head back onto the blessedly well-padded cushions.

“Okay, okay, sorry. But you get the point. It’s tame. Hell, in another life it might even be cute. In the grand scheme of things, it wouldn’t be a big deal. It’s not your fault there’s a video, and you’ve already lost your job over it. Legally, you’re in the clear. But…”

Lifting my head slightly, I opened one eye to look at the screen. Becka was nibbling her nail skin again.

“Becka!” I barked. “Germs!”

“Fuck, yeah. Thanks,” she replied distractedly.

“But?” I prompted her.

“But,” she sighed. “It’s ‘the idol’ of it all.”

A cold realisation swept over me. “Has everyone seen it?”

“Pretty much. But it’s not as bad you think.”

She kept saying that, but it had yet to be ‘not as bad’ as I thought.

“How can it not be as bad as I think?” A laugh unexpectedly crawled up my throat, tinged with hysteria. If anyone shared that footage outside of Pisces…

“You’re not recognisable,” Becka blurted out.

“What?” Snapped back to the conversation and halted from my internal spiralling, I refocused on Becka.

“Yeah, no, I think you’re good. You were never full-frontal to the camera-”

“Whoa, hold on.” I held up a hand. “Just where was this camera? There was no one else in the room with us.”

“It was the conference camera. I don’t know why it was even on.” Becka frowned, as if this was the first time this convenience had occurred to her.

I growled. “I fucking do. Remember who sent us the message to clean up the conference room that day?”

A shadow passed across Becka’s face as realisation struck.

“Fucking TK…”

“He knew Jihoon was still in there, and he must have known I was with you in the admin office, and obviously Celine wasn’t going to go clean the room up. It was always gonna be me – the intern. He set me up!”

“THAT FUCKING RAT!” Becka howled, then immediately shrank back down, looking down under the stalls before being seemingly confident she was still alone in the bathroom.

“Ky, what are you going to do?”

“What can I do?” I threw my hand up before dragging it back down my face. “You said I wasn’t recognisable?” I picked back up on the thread from before my realisation of Trevor Kyle’s treachery.

“Yeah, not even a little bit,” Becka rushed to confirm.

“Jihoon is clear as day though. There’s several minutes of him face on to the camera, but because he stood up when you came into the room, you’re completely covered the whole time because the idol is so tall.

” Becka sounded relieved, but this was still a fucking disaster.

“But there’s footage of us kissing?” I needed to hear confirmation of the full extent.

“Yeah, babes, it’s pretty obvious.”

“Is there sound?” I thought back to our flirtatious conversation, and although my memory is fuzzy…

“Are you asking me to sleep with you, Baek Jihoon?”

“Yes.”

“I would be delighted to.”

I cringed. In the moment, it had felt like a cute, flirty exchange, but the idea that everyone had heard it… made my stomach twist.

“It’s faint,” Becka admitted, “you can’t really make it out, but yeah.”

I breathed in through my nose, trying to fight the way my head was starting to throb.

“As you can imagine,” she said, “Liam Fenway is shitting a brick over the whole thing.”

Yes, considering the chief operations officer was the one to fire me – correction, allow me to resign – over the incident, I could well imagine he wasn’t happy.

“He’s basically threatened to sack anyone who breathes one single syllable of it outside of the building.”

Thank God for small mercies, I thought to myself wryly.

“I’m surprised Ji- your boyfriend,” she corrected herself, “hasn’t told you any of this.” Becka’s eyes narrowed on mine in speculation, probably seeing the stress lines I could feel carving themselves into my forehead.

“Yeah, well, there hasn’t been a lot of time to talk about it,” I replied, tiredly. Immediately, I knew this was the wrong thing to say, as Becka’s whole face twisted into a lecherous grin.

“Oh, is that right?”

“Becka…” I whined.

“Too busy getting busy?” Her eyebrows were waggling at me in a most unflattering manner.

“Becka, I swear to G-”

“Yeah, I bet you’ve been doing a lot of swearing to God. Oh, God, oh God-” she scrunched her eyes closed and moaned like Meg Ryan having an orgasm over a pastrami on rye sandwich.

Just then, Becka sat upright, eyes as wide as saucers, and I heard banging on the cubicle door, before a shout: “This is a place of business!”

Becka and I locked eyes, hers horrified, mine wide as saucers, before I let out a scream of laughter so loud I almost choked on it while Becka loudly responded, “It was a joke!”

I was inconsolable for a good, long while, tears streaming down my face in an outpouring of stress as well as amusement and by the time I’d pulled myself together, Becka had left her little cubicle of shame and was leaning against the sink.

She raised one well-plucked eyebrow. “Done?”

“Oh, Sally,” I wiped a tear from my eye, “I needed that.”

“Yeah, yeah, yuk it up.” She rolled her eyes, but I saw the grin she was suppressing. “Hey, is that your hotel room? Take me on the grand tour before I slink back to the office.”

Dutifully, I stood up and walked to the front door of the suite, beginning right at the start with the ridiculously large entry way and its many cupboards.

By the time I ended in the room of mirrors – the bathroom – Becka had whistled and commented on all there was to see and I’d turned the camera back to front facing.

“Wow, babes. You may be his secret girlfriend, but at least he hides you in style.”

The laughter died in my throat.