Hey there! Before you read this chapter, I just wanted to recommend that you listen to this song as you read. It's a beautiful cover of Say Something by Eric Nam and Boa from Spica. I wrote a majority of this chapter to this song on repeat and it really matches the feel of the chapter, and I want you all to feel what I felt myself as I wrote this in full force... Of course it's up to you, but I definitely recommend it. 

I desperately try to say something, anything, but all the words I want to say get caught in my throat. It’s almost as if there’s a weight pressing down on my vocal cords. All I can do is helplessly look back into Jongin’s eyes, wondering why I ever let this happen. Wondering why I ever let the happiness that I knew was there disappear for something that was theoretical.

Right? Because anything I thought Baekhyun and I had was merely based on a theory; a theory that seemed so thrilling. But I had no idea that the thrill would only be for a moment, as all thrills are, and that I would the one that would have to pick myself back up after free falling. Not Baekhyun, not Jongin, but myself.

What’s killing me even more is that Jongin’s eyes are dry and I know that he’s holding back tears. He hates crying in front of me, even if I know the tears are there. He likes to cry alone and it bothers me so much, but to think of him crying alone because he thinks he’s alone is going to do so much more to me than just bother me.

“I didn’t.” Baekhyun’s voice breaks the silence. His voice is quiet, but it packs quite the punch to the delicately tense situation. I tentatively keep my eyes on Jongin. His face doesn’t change. “She doesn’t love me.” I slowly turn my head and after one last look at Jongin, I turn my eyes to Baekhyun. Is that what he thinks? That I don’t love him? “You have nothing to worry about, Jongin. She loves you so much. Her heart has no room for anyone else.”

My heart has no room for anyone else because there are two people in it.

Jongin doesn’t say anything, but his eyes come back to mine, trying to validate Baekhyun’s statement. Before I can even think of saying anything, Baekhyun stands up from the bed.

“I should go.” ‘You don’t have anywhere to go’, I want to tell him, but I know I have bigger pills to swallow. Baekhyun will be okay, I reassure myself. 

Baekhyun walks to the door and Jongin doesn’t move out of the way. They stare at each other for a few seconds, Jongin's stare hard on Baekhyun's soft eyes, and I mentally cross my fingers that they don’t fight each other, but Jongin grudgingly steps out of the way and I hear Baekhyun whisper a small “sorry”. Baekhyun doesn’t take one glance back at me as he leaves.

Jongin and I stay frozen in place as we listen to Baekhyun rustle in the living room before he steps out. The door opens, inviting the sound of pouring rain into the house, and closes silently. With the close of the door, the aura of the room changes completely.

Jongin’s mad. No, he’s furious.

“I didn’t even have a chance to put up my coat,” he says calmly. It was like the calm before the storm. There’s nothing scarier than someone who’s calm and mad at the same time. I’d honestly rather be yelled at for hours than have to deal with a quiet interrogation of rhetorical questions and disappointment laced scoldings.  

He walks down the hallway, probably to put his coat on the hook by the door and comes back revealing a slightly ed button down and slacks.

He flew down right after work, I take note. He didn’t even have time to change into comfortable clothes, and just jumped on a plane right after work to see me. The guilt just kept piling on to me by the ton.  

He slowly steps into the room, hands in his pockets, and maintains a good distance from myself.

I don’t blame him.

“Why?” I open my mouth to answer, but he shakes his head. “No,” he pauses and stares at a large picture of us hanging above the dresser. One of our friends owns one of those cameras with the fancy long lenses and took a high definition picture of us in a Japanese garden one day. We weren’t posing at all and we didn’t even know he was taking the picture. It was completely candid, but it looked like a shot right out of a magazine. We were just so happy. We didn't need to do anything to look like that, it just came naturally. He had it printed on a canvas and gave it to us for Christmas a couple years ago.

“How long?”

I was worried he was going to ask that.

I try to think back.

It’s been so long that I can’t even come up with a clear number. But I know it’ll upset Jongin if I can’t even come up with a simple time frame. He’s a computer guy. All he knows is numbers. He needs a number.

“You don’t even know how long it’s been?” Jongin snarls. A hand shakes through his hair as he paces back and forth. “How can you not know how long it’s been? Do you even know how long we-”

I think back to Taeyeon's wedding date and subtract the time. It's been longer than I had thought. 

“5 months,” I whisper.

“What?” he practically whispers back and stops cold on his feet.

I know he heard me, but I know I have to repeat what I said.

“5 months,” I confirm, cringing inside. I didn’t even know that it had been five months. Granted, we weren’t always together the whole five months, but I would be lying if I said I wasn’t ever thinking of Baekhyun during the breaks in between.

Jongin’s eyes close as he takes a deep breath. I stare at his perfectly sculpted jaw line as his Adam’s apple bobs up once in a gulp. He turns completely away from me and stares out the window.

“You betrayed me for five months,” he says barely above a whisper. His breathing gets so heavy that I practically flinch at every exhale. “I’ve loved you for seven years of my life. Seven years." We hadn't been together for seven years, I notice. "I loved you in high school, I loved you when I left, and even when you weren’t mine back in college. I’ve loved you for seven years and you betray me.” Oh. He turns around for a moment. “You don’t even know if you love him back either is the sad part of all of this,” he scoffs and faces the window again. He knows exactly how I feel just by looking at me. He knows I haven't even made up my mind about this whole situation. He's about to know so much more, and I don't know if I can handle watching my own fiance's heart be demolished by my own strike.

“What’s even sadder is that I love you even when you’ve cheated on me.”

I feel my heart sink in my chest and I still don’t even know what to say. I can’t tell if saying something will help mend the situation or just make things worse. I’ve been quite the risk taker lately, and I can’t seem to find the courage to even open my mouth.

Jongin lets out a dry chuckle and I quickly snap out of my reverie, feeling scared that Jongin could even let out such a sound in a moment like this. “So that one time I called you worrying about what you were doing with a guy at ing Bed, Bath, and Beyond, you lied to me?” His temper’s slowly rising and my blood begins to run colder and I drown myself deeper in guilt. But it’s probably only a fraction of the pain that Jongin is feeling at the moment so I it up and accept the fact that there’s little to nothing I can do to make this situation any better. What’s done is done and I can only sit back and watch as the damage I’ve done finally takes its toll.

“Was I a bad boyfriend? I’ve done nothing but love you and cherish you and sure I go away on these business trips often, but I call you every day and I make sure you’re okay. What did I do to you that you felt the need to go behind my back and-” his voice cracks and I know he's finally broken. He stays facing the window, hiding his tears and I clutch my hands together tightly, trying to calm myself down.

“I love you so much,” he whispers and I can hear the tremble in his voice. “I was always afraid that I loved you more than you loved me because you never said that you loved me as often as I would tell you, but you showed me with actions rather than words and you never needed to say it. I just knew. Your actions always spoke louder than your words, but what are they trying to tell me now?”

A sob escapes his lips and it becomes harder to keep my distance from him. I want to tell him I still love him the same and that he could never love me more than I love him. I want to hold him and have him feel that although I betrayed him, my feelings for him hadn’t changed. I want to do so much. But I stay quiet, letting tears slide silently down my face, as I watch my actions destroy the thing in the world that is most precious to me.

Jongin calms down and finds it in him to speak again and I slowly take a deep breath, knowing everything that comes out of his mouth will be agonizingly painful.

“How far have you gone with him?” He’s no longer whispering. His voice is calm once again and it packs quite the impact on me considering his question has an answer I don’t think he’s ready to hear.

I try to stall. I don't want to tell him how far I've gone. It wasn't like it was a one time situation. There were multiple occasions and I knew what I was doing. I knew. Normally, people cheat once when they're piss drunk and feel so guilty about it. They tell their loved one right away, they drop everything to make sure that they fix their mistake. I on the otherhand, have dug myself so deep, I don't know if I can get out. 

"How. Far," he repeats sternly, and I quietly heave a sigh.

“All the way,” I murmur. I close my eyes and take a deep breath knowing that I might as well just say it because I know he’s going to ask. “Multiple times.”

Both of his hands cup his face as he crouches to the ground. He doesn't even try to restrain his crying this time. His sobs are loud and constant and his back rises and falls irregularly. I want to wrap my arms around him and tell him everything will be okay. But I don't. Because I'm not sure if everything will be okay. 

I know that did it. That single fact ruined him. I know he had hoped that maybe this was all just an innocent crush I had on an officemate and that the worse we had done was exchange flirty remarks with each other in an elevator. We could have easily made it through this if that was the case. But it wasn't. It’s so much worse than Jongin will ever be able to fathom. 

He calms down and lifts his head from his hands and slowly stands up, turning around and finally facing me. His eyes are puffy and tears stain his chiseled cheeks and run down his perfect jaw line. He was a beautiful disaster. A disaster that I had created.

“Am I not good enough for you?” he manages to choke out. I rapidly shake my head. “No?” He pauses. “Then why? This is all I want to know. I don’t care about the details. I don’t care about everything in between. I don’t care how sorry you are.” I feel a jolt go through me. He didn’t even want me to apologize to him? “I just want to know why.” I shudder under his cold stare. "We're getting married next week! Why in the hell would you do something like this?!"

I try not to flinch by the loud volume of his voice, but it's probably evident in my face that I'm terrified.

I know he’s going to be furious with my answer, so I don’t speak at all. I keep my eyes in my lap as the endless tears continue to stream down my face. They’ve nearly soaked through the collar of my sweater and my eyes are almost becoming sore.

“Look at me,” Jongin harshly whispers and I reluctantly comply and meet his swollen eyes with my own. “Why would you ever even think of doing this to me? To us?”

“I-I don’t kn-know,” I hiccup, and I quickly look back down, knowing too well that Jongin is upset with the answer. ‘I don’t know’ is never the proper answer to any question, he would always tell me. 'It's not that you don't know, you just don't want to say it.' But I genuinely don't know.

“Our entire relationship is on the line, and all you have to say to me is ‘I don’t know’,” he seethes. “You don’t know? You don’t know why you would throw seven years down the drain to be with some guy you met a few months ago? You just don’t know?!” He grabs my wrist and aggressively pulls me off the bed and onto my feet. “Well, you know what? I don’t even know why I’m still dealing with this.” He begins pulling me out of the bedroom and dragging me down the hallway and my eyes widen as I realize what’s happening.

“Wait, Jongin, please, no, don’t do this,” I plead as I try to release myself from his grip.

“I flew back down here after struggling to find a seat on any airplane knowing well that everyone was waiting for airlines to open back up after the storm. I'm hungry. I’m tired. And this is the last thing I should be having to deal with.”

We’re nearing the door and I’m still desperately trying to pull away. “Jongin, I’m so sorry,” I sob. “We can work this out okay, baby. You know I love you so much. You don’t have to do this,” I beg through tears.

He stops just before the door and turns to me. He towers over me with a menacing look and I shrink down in fear. "What else am I supposed to do?" he whispers gently. He gazes down into my eyes and for a moment, it almost looks like he's willing to forgive me. But he quickly turns away and grabs me by the shoulders this time. 

He unlocks the door and shoves me out the door into the cold pouring rain. The cold hits me like a well deserved slap in the face and the rain thunders in my ear. I quickly snap around and try to talk to him, but the door slams right in my face, and I hear him turn both locks.

My crying becomes incontrollable as I slam on the door, begging and pleading for him to just open the door and listen to what I have to say—even if I know I don’t have anything to say.

“Jongin! Please! It’s cold and it’s raining and I-”

The door opens and he stares at me sympathetically for a mere half-second before shoving my phone and my car keys in my hand and slamming the door shut again. I stare at his shadow in the window and hope that he'll find it in his heart to open the door. But he only stays by the door for a moment, before shutting of the lights. 

I stare down at the keys and notice that he took the house key off. A whimper escapes my lips. I don’t know if I’ll ever even walk through the door in front of me again. I don’t know if Jongin will ever even speak to me again. I don’t know what’s going to happen next, and I suddenly understand why Jongin has such a hatred for those three words.

I hate that I don’t know, but all I do know, is that I’ve finally landed from falling, and that no one is here to catch me.
 

;A; hands down the most difficult chapter to write of this fic. Even I shed a tear myself, but it may just be because I'm in a Jongin phase idk. 

But on a lighter note, this fic reached over a thousand subscribers and I just wanted to thank each and every one of you! I never thought I'd ever be featured and I can't believe it actually happened! I just really wanted to let you all know that I appreciate all of you readers so much <3 Thank you so much, even if you're a silent reader, for reading and commenting and upvoting. It just means a lot that I can reach out to so many people with something I like to do in my spare time. ;~; I love you all and I hope you are all starting off the year well and I will hopefully have an update for you guys soon ^^