Timeout

Part 16

"Hey!" he says and sits up.

"May I come in?"

Immediately, he nods. "Of course!"

Slowly she walks in and sits with a loud sigh next to him on his bed before she gently takes his hand and lays it in her lap while holding it tightly.

"I talked to my boss earlier..." she says,staring at the door. "She... she said she'll do anything to bail you out of this if Emery's parents press charges against you..."

Oh shit.

He didn't even think about that.

Gosh, what else? Hasn't he suffered enough?

"But this isn't why I'm here!" she mumbles before Kyun has the chance to answer. "While we were talking, she kept on asking if we were really talking about you here. Cause she couldn't imagine that you could be capable of that. And this got me thinking. I mean... I thought about this a lot before but... suddenly it was so clear..."

Their eyes meet and he gulps heavily.

"So crystal clear that I'm ashamed that I never considered it..."

Kyun follows his mother's words, a little confused. "What do you mean?"

Sighing, she turns her body to him and holds his hand a little tighter.

"It was Emery, wasn't it? The one that hurt y/n?"

Fuck. Hearing your name hurts so much.

He bites his lip, to stop himself from crying cause the mere thought that his mother still believes in him and knows he would never beat up someone without a good reason, relieves him so much. Hesitantly, he nods and gulps heavily again.

"Why didn't you say anything?" she asks desperately.

Groaning, he gets up. "Cause this doesn't change anything!"

"It does!" his mother replies firmly and gets up as well. "Cause you're not the brainless, violent jock! You're a boy that loves someone so much that he can't stand the thought that someone hurt his love like this. In the past few hours, without this information, it was almost like I didn't recognize you anymore. And now? This matches the boy I raised so much more... you defended—"

"I didn't defend her!" he mumbles. "I was blinded by rage! She told me to stay out of this! She told me to not let myself get provoked. But the mere thought that he... did this to her..." his voice breaks. "And still tells everyone she's some kind of easy slut cause she slept with him... she didn't want this!"

Without being able to control it, he starts to cry for real and his mother pulls him into her embrace. It doesn't matter how tough he acts, and how mature. He needs this. Like a toddler, he clings to her and cries into her shoulder.

For the first time, he notices that his career ending before it even began and his failed school education don't matter. But losing you and what happened to you hurt him so damn much...

"She's so broken..." he sobs. "She lost her confidence and the sense of how much she's worth..."

For the first time, he lets it all out. He was always so strong. It's not that he was pretending, cause he really was stronger when you were with him but right now... he had no idea how much this strained him. His mother strokes his back gently before pulling him back to sit on his bed.

"When she... when she was here overnight... she.." he bites his lip at the thought of how much you were shaking when you suddenly got triggered. "She was crying so much cause she was scared I'd leave her if she didn't sleep with me? Mom... how... how could she think that?"