Beautifully Cruel

Chapter 30

JENNIE 

An hour later, we're still in bed. Face to face this time, his arms wrapped around me, our bodies pressed together, my toes resting on the tops of his big feet.

"Just out of curiosity, what size shoe do you wear?"

He lifts his brows. "If you're wondering if I'll try on a pair of your heels and strut around naked for you, the answer is no."

I laugh weakly at the image his comment evokes. "You're strange."

"You're stranger."

We smile at each other. He rubs the tip of his nose against mine. The sweetness of that simple gesture sends a pang of despair through my heart, and I close my eyes.

Clearing my throat, I say, "I'm guessing like a size sixteen."

"Wrong."

I open my eyes and look at him. His smile is smug. "Bigger." Then he examines my expression for a moment, his smile fading and his gaze turning intense. "What is it?"

Damn him and those sharp wolf's eyes."Just...life."

He cups my face in his hand, his brows drawn together. He demands, "Tell me."

"I can't."

"Why not?"

I swallow, looking down at his chin to hide my eyes. "I don't want to ruin the moment."

"Too late. I'm already thinking the worst."

"I shouldn't have said anything."

His voice hardens. "Tell. Me. Now."

Shit. Me and my big mouth. In a small voice, I say, "Fine. Um...how may days do we have left?"

His whole body tenses. It seems as though he's not even breathing. In a husky voice, he says, "Why? You want to leave early?"

I squeeze my eyes shut and shake my head, working up the courage to tell him the truth. "I don't want to leave at all."

He's perfectly still for a long, horrible moment. Still and silent, except for his breathing, which is shallow and fast.

I whisper, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make you angry."

He huffs out a breath, squeezing me closer to him. He says faintly, "Angry? Jesus, Jen."

I take that to mean he's not angry, but what he might be feeling, I don't know. Except whatever it is, it's making him breathe harder, his heart pound like a hammer, and his arms crush me like a vise.

After a few moments of silence, he seems to get control of himself. Or at least his voice sounds more normal when he says, "Three days."

My heart turns over. My stomach fills with butterflies, then with a sourness that crawls up my throat, like I might have to vomit.

Three days. My god, it's been weeks that I've been here. It seems like hardly any time at all.

When I lie there tense and silent for too long, Taehyung growls, "Goddammit, Jen, talk to me before I lose my fucking mind."

My held breath bursts out of me, and I blurt, "I want to keep seeing each other."

He makes a soft sound of pain and releases me, rolling onto his back to gaze up at the ceiling.

Panic flares inside my chest, burning hot. I lift up onto an elbow and stare at him with wide eyes. "I know you think I won't be safe being around you because of your work, but we could keep it a secret. I'll go back to my apartment and my job and we could see each other every once in a while, or—or maybe like only on the weekends or something—"

"No."

His voice is flat and final. A knife plunged through my heart.

Glowing with shame, I collapse onto my back and cover my hands with my face, screaming at myself for being such an idiot. A pathetic, clingy, lovesick idiot.

Look at me. Begging. My mother would be horrified. I'm horrified.

I hate myself for being so weak.

I jerk upright and swing my legs over the bed, intending to run into the bathroom to pull myself together, but before I can rise, Taehyung grabs me.

He drags me back against his chest and pins me there so I'm sitting between his spread legs, chained by his arms.

His voice achingly raw, he says, "If there was a way, I'd find it. There's no way out for me, you understand? This thing we're doing...you have no idea what it's costing me to be away, what I had to arrange—"

"What it's costing you?" I interrupt loudly. Heat creeps up my neck. My pulse is flying. "How about what it's costing me?"

His voice rises. "You've got your whole life ahead of you. You've graduated law school. Soon you'll pass the bar and become an attorney. You'll be living your dream—"

This time it's my harsh bark of a laugh that cuts him off. "Stop with the inspirational speeches already! That dream you're talking about is more like a lifelong nightmare. It's not what I aspire to be, it's what I'm driven to be by the worst thing that ever happened to my family, by the worst thing that ever happened to me. My brother was my best friend and the best person I've ever known and he was fucking murdered—"

I stop abruptly, choking on a sob.

Silent, Taehyung holds me.

My sense of shame intensifies, because I'm not the only person in this room who's suffered a loss. Taehyung has me beat in that awful category. I lost one brother, but he lost his parents and six siblings.

Shaking, I close my eyes and whisper, "I'm sorry. I'm being overly emotional. I know you've...that your family...." I take a steadying breath. "Let's just forget it."

"Your brother was murdered?"

His voice is strange. Low and devoid of emotion, except for a faint trace of darkness. Of danger. Unnerved by the quality of it, I simply say, "Yes."

He waits, his body vibrating with tension. He wants more of an explanation, but I'm loath to get into the details, so I sum it up instead.

"That quote you told me at the restaurant, about how freedom for wolves often meant death to the sheep..." I sigh deeply, suddenly overcome by a wave of fatigue. "Hyunjin was one of those unlucky sheep."

Taehyung says slowly, "And you decided to dedicate your life to avenging him."

His voice is getting more and more odd. It's fervent and fevered, like he just discovered buried treasure. Like he stumbled upon a pirate's chest overflowing with jewels and gold.

I turn my head and feel his burning gaze brand the side of my face. "What did you think I meant that time I said that when it was too late for revenge, justice had to take other directions?"

"You told your mother that you'd never let what happened to him happen to any of your clients—I took that to mean he had a drug or mental health problem, that he died by suicide or overdose, that he was an attorney and so you wanted to be one, too."

"He wasn't an attorney. He never even graduated from college. He was just a good ol' boy with no money and a recreational drug problem who got on the wrong side of a very powerful man."

Behind me, Taehyung is still and silent again, thinking hard. I'm not sure if that's the end of the conversation, until he murmurs, "It's almost like fate had this in mind all along."

I furrow my brow in confusion. "I don't understand what you mean."

He pushes me forward off the edge of the bed so I'm standing, then stands himself. He turns me to face him, forcing me to look up into his face by gripping my jaw in his hand.

His eyes are the blackest I've ever seen them. Murderous black. Serial killer black.

Black as a bottomless pit in the darkest corner of hell.

"We're going to get dressed. We're going to have something to eat. Then you're going to tell me exactly what happened to your brother, and you're not going to leave anything out."

He pauses, eyes glittering, then adds, "Including the name of that powerful man."