Crash Landing on You - Edelweiss Diaries

Part 20 - Homecoming I

She didn't have the patience for a guessing game. "You were responsible for making my father's hospitalization news public?" she asked calmly.

He was silent, possibly assessing the gravity of her tone.

"I thought it was Oppa who had done it," she said with the disappointment showing through. "If you had planned it all along then why didn't you let me in on it?"

"Would you have agreed to any of it?" His voice was equally quiet and tense.

"Are you going to deny the amount of risk in your plan?" she cried.

"It was more important that we beat your Oppa at his own game when there was limited time to act," he began in a matter-of-fact tone. "I hardly had 36 hrs head start which gave me even less to do the paperwork for the shell companies. Moreover, everything had to work like clockwork from the time the news hit the streets and the stocks got dumped for me to scoop them up without getting your oppa's attention. There was no place for dilemmas or arguments."

He took a deep breath. "I couldn't risk telling you and have you discuss it even with close family. I didn't know who we can trust around you."

He was justifying it all and her heart clenched from the one detail that he was failing to grasp.

"How about trusting me alone? Your wife?" Her wild sobs choked her. "Tell me Ri Jeong Hyuk'sshi... do our marriage mean nothing to you because we signed a paper napkin? Is this not a real marriage?"

She had little doubt that he would entertain her with any more explanation. "Are we truly husband and wife at all when you bought a 9% stake in our company without even a mention?"

The tears kept falling and when he didn't answer for a long moment, she knew he was framing his position then. Gosh! she knew him too well and yet, nothing at all.

"I might have told you had you come to me with your problem." He sounded pained and hurt, nearly sounding helpless. "Asked me for help. When were you going to tell me your father was hospitalized? Or that your Oppa was buying his way back in or called for an emergency shareholder meeting?"

She wanted to tell him that she wouldn't want him unsettled when he was as far or make him desperate over not being able to aid with her life's woes.

"I'm not the one in the hospital but knowing I would be stressed, is enough for you to lose your sleep," she said and closed her eyes shut. It wasn't lost on her that it sounded like an excuse.

"So perhaps we are both to be blamed," he offered, his voice laden with emotion. "You know the irony of it all Yoon Se Ri? The first conversation we had as strangers back when you crashed onto me, you wanted my help to get home. Now we have a home together and yet, you wouldn't come to me."

He was right. In the name of love, they had not truly come to lean on each other. Their interdependence was non-existent. They were together and yet, separate. From that vantage, their lives appeared as two parallel lines intersecting for brief windows of time.

"Is that a fair comparison Ri Jeong Hyuk'sshi?" she countered. "What I didn't tell you and what you did end up doing as a result of that are not at the same level."

She sniveled reckoning they were now at that place where the roads forked. Would they pick the same paths that would keep them together? "Before I say anything I regret just leave me be. I need some space."

Her words grew caustic from her own hurting. "Or will you be the one deciding that too?"

Not fair, her heart screamed. He'd never said or done anything with the intent to restrain or overpower her. But the harshness felt necessary when she no longer wished for them lightly tread around each other. If anything it was an attempt to tear down the veil that still remained between them.