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“Take me home,” I said as I strapped myself into the shotgun seat in the Corvette, feeling like a wave of emotions was breaking over me. “Please, take me home.”
Taeyong side-glanced at me, pursing his lips as his knuckles tightened over the steering wheel. “Are you sure—”
“Yes.” My voice was slowly dropping to a whisper as the pressure on the inside of my throat built up, choking me from the inside hard enough to cut off any attempts at speaking.
His lips disappeared into a thin line as he gunned the engine, the expression on his face echoing his thoughts, which probably involved ignoring my pleading. But in a few minutes—or maybe more, I didn't realize—we were in front of my house.
The sky was still dark, the light from the stars clinging to it like miniature diamonds. It was two, maybe three a.m., at the most. The street was silent, as it usually was around my house, where the neighbouring buildings were mostly empty and no one came out of their doors before seven or eight in the morning.
Hastily, I undid my seatbelt with shaking fingers and slid out of my seat. Without realising it, I was shivering all over, more than I normally would have in the coolness of the air. My eyesight was blurry, which I later found out was because of the gathering of tears as they slowly leaked onto my cheeks.
I wiped them away with the back of my hand, kneeling in front of the aloe vera pot at the front to retrieve the spare key. The door unlocked with a familiar click, and I walked into my house, the feeling hitting every one of my senses, making me feel like an empty cola can collapsing under pressure.
Despite all that had taken place in the past two years, I had never dreamed of leaving. Even now, when I was fully aware of how this was the only plausible escape—courtesy of Baekhyun—it still felt like a sucker punch to the gut. My father was missing, maybe kidnapped by the bikers, and I was leaving the country.
Alone.
I squeezed my eyes shut again as hot tears slid down my face. No. There was no way I could survive that, a life in another place, even if it meant I would be able to escape this life fruaght with danger. At that moment, all I wanted was to curl up in a ball and let out all my anger and frustration.
The immediate danger I had been in during the past few days had been enough to push the biting worry into the darker recesses of my mind, but I felt the full force of the separation only now. I hadn't heard from my father for over a week. The anxiety was crippling, pushing me down into the dirt, leaving me to wallow in my own guilt.
