He’d finally left the hospital for the first time since he’d flown in to find a hotel. He’d gotten some sleep and taken a real shower. The shower in the gym at the hospital got lukewarm at best. He dressed and ran his fingers through his hair, then returned to the hospital with his baseball cap in place. He didn’t wear sunglasses with the cap. He knew from experience that it would tip the press off that he was trying to go unnoticed. He saw a few members of the paparazzi milling around, but lucky for him, they were looking for a petite woman with long, honey colour hair, so he’d been able to slip right by them unnoticed. He quickly made his way to the stairwell and then headed up to Yoona’s room.

When he walked in, she was standing up on crutches and her suitcase was on her bed. “What’s going on?” he asked uneasily.

Yoona looked up at him with a wide grin on her face. “The doc says I can go home today. Apparently I’ve made amazing progress.”

He knew they’d been talking about her going home, but the way the doctors had been talking, Yul had assumed they meant in a few days at the very least. He swallowed past the lump of disappointment in his throat and laughed weakly. “Well, you’ve always been way above average,” he told her. “Who’s taking you home?”

“Tiffany and Sunny. Sunny just got back in from Charlotte this morning. They found a house that they liked, so they made an offer and it was accepted. Isn’t that great?”

“Yeah,” Yul said with as much enthusiasm as he could muster. He really didn’t want to talk about Sunny and Taeng right now.

“Tiffany hired a full staff to take care of me. I shall want for nothing,” she teased.

Yul walked around to the side of the bed she was standing on and sat down beside her suitcase. He leaned forward, with elbows on his knees and sighed. He looked up at her. “I don’t… want… anyone else taking care of you,” he told her softly.

“Tiffany and Sunny will be there most of the time,” she said, throwing a t-shirt in her suitcase.

“That’s not what I mean, Yoong. I want to be the one taking care of you.”

“Yul…”

“I need to be the one taking care of you,” he said firmly.

Yoona sighed and shifted on her crutches. “How long are we going to do this, Yul?”

“Do what?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Dance around the subject? Play house? However you want to say it,” she informed him.

“For now, I feel like I need to dance around the subject. I can’t… lose you right now, Yoong,” he said feelingly.

Yoona bit her bottom lip. “Do you think that there is going to be a good time to lose me?” she asked him.

“No,” he said honestly. “I know there’s not gonna be, but I can’t lose you for now after almost losing you forever. Let me have a little more time with you,” he implored.

“Yul…” she said and he knew she was going to say no.

“For now, Yoong,” he said adamantly. “You and me… we’ve always looked to the future. We never lived for the present. Let’s live in the present for once.”

He could see her weakening. “I don’t want us to part ways just for you, you know. I’m worried about my own heart, too.”

He stood up and placed his hands on her cheeks. “Don’t,” he told her. “Don’t worry about the future right now.”

“I kind of can’t help it,” she told him.

“Come home with me, Yoona,” he pled. “Just for a little while.”

He heard her take a deep breath and watched the indecision play across her face. “Okay,” she finally said softly.

Yul let out a breath he didn’t even know he’d been holding. He smiled down at her. “Okay,” he whispered back.

After Tiffany’s slip of tongue that morning, they didn’t want to take any unnecessary chances with the press linking Yoona to Yul, so Tiffany and Sunny brought Yoona to her apartment to drop her off. The hospital had

“Oh,” she said, surprised. He’d been busy.

“When does the flight leave?” she said.

“When we get there”

“Are we flying first class?” she asked, curious.

Yul grinned down at her. “Something likes that.”

They were into her room, and Yul gently placed her on the bed, insisting that he’s pack her suitcases and get everything ready so she didn’t get too worn out on her first day home from the hospital. He was putting some of her clothes into a suitcase when he dropped one of her shirts on the bed and picked it up. It was then that he noticed the carefully folded quilt at the foot of Yoona’s bed. He could have sworn his breath stopped, and he had to remind himself to start breathing again. He placed her shirt in the suitcase and then gently picked the quilt up, unfolding it. The article that had caught his eye was the mini Duke Basketball jersey that Sunny had made for his son during their freshman year of college. It was identical to Yul’s number and all.

As Yoona watched Yul’s reaction to the quilt, she felt a lump form in . After Yul Jr. had died and Yul had left, Sunny and Taeng had been the ones to go back to the apartment and clean out Yul Jr’s room for her. She hadn’t been able to do it herself. She had thought that Sunny had given all of his clothes away, until the day before she left for Stanford. It was then that Sunny presented her with the memory quilt, made of Yul Jr’s clothes and some scraps of material.

Yul lifted the quilt to his face and inhaled deeply and then waited. Yoona watched the flash of disappointment cross his face as he discovered that Yul Jr’s little boy smell was nowhere to be found. When he lifted his eyes to hers, she saw the ache that was still in their depths. “Let’s bring this with us,” he whispered hoarsely.

Wordlessly, she nodded and watched as he placed it in her suitcase. He stood there for a minute looking at it, debating, and then took it back out of the suitcase, placing it on the bed beside Yoona. “I’ll carry it,” he said softly.

Again, she nodded.

---

Yoona had to work to keep her jaw closed as they boarded the private jet. “What are you? Best buds with Donald Trump?” she teased.

“Oh, yeah,” he responded. “The Donald and I go way back.”

Yoona laughed as she was making her way to one of the plush leather seats against the sides of the plane. She finally reached one and sat down, sighing with a mixture of relief and exhaustion. Yul was immediately at her side. “You all right, Yoona?” he asked.

She nodded tiredly. “Yeah, I guess I’m just a little tired,” she admitted.

“Yeah, well, the doctors said the pain killer would do that to you,” he reminded her.

“I know,” she said, watching as a uniformed man made his way over to them.

“We’ve been cleared for takeoff. Are you ready, Mr. Kwon?” the man asked.

“Yes, thank you,” he told the man.

The man nodded, and made his way back to the cockpit of the plane. Yul reached over and buckled Yoona’s seatbelt. “Yul, I’m not an invalid, you know,” she told him, even though she enjoyed his fussing.

He smiled softly. “I know,” he agreed. “But you’re just recovering from a major accident. So if I go a little overboard, I make no apologies,” he told her.

She closed her eyes and leaned the back of her head against the window. She opened them again when she heard a door open. “Rosie!” she exclaimed in surprise, watching her hospital nurse walk through the door at the rear of the room. “What are you doing here?” she asked, excited.

Rosie smiled at her and sat down, buckling her own seatbelt. “Mr. Kwon said that he was going to need me for a few days,” she told Yoona.

Yoona’s eyes flew to Yul. “Is there anything you can’t do?” she asked.

He grinned and shook his head. “Not that I’ve found,” he admitted light heartedly. “I asked Rosie to come with us because I’m going to have a lot of meetings for the first few days we’re in New York, and I didn’t want you to have to be alone all the time,” he told her.

“That was nice of you,” she said on yawn. Yoona was asleep before their flight even took off.

When she woke up again, she opened her eyes dazedly and looked around. Not recognizing where she was, she shot up straight, and immediately wince in pain. “Its okay, Yoong,” she heard Yul say.

She sighed and laid back. “I forgot where I was,” she admitted.

“Mr. Kwon, you have a phone call,” she heard someone tell Yul.
 

“Thank you,” he said then picked up the phone. “Kwon Yul,” he said. “Donnie! How are you?” he asked, giving her a teasing look.

Yoona’s eyes widened and she sat up again, slowly this time, not taking her eyes from his face.

“Yes, this flight is wonderful,” Yul said. “How’s the wife?” he inquired. Then, after a few seconds, “Good, good, well, you give that baby a kiss for me,” he said. “Ok, bye Donnie,” he said, as Yoona pulled the phone from him. “Yoona…” he said.

“Donald? Kwon ‘Im’ Yoona here. I was wondering if I could be on the next season of celebrity apprentice,” she said teasingly.


“Well, probably not the next season because shooting has already begun, but definitely the season after that,” the voice on the other end of the phone said.


Yoona gasped and threw the phone at Yul. “Oh my God!” she exclaimed.


“Sorry about that, Donnie,” Yul said. There was pause. “Oh, she’s a spitfire all right,” he agreed, winking at her. “All right, I’ll talk to you later,” he hung up the phone. When he looked over at her, she sae the amusement in his eyes, she slapped him hard on the arm.


“You jerk! You set that up!” she said as he laughed. “I can’t believe you did that!”


He nodded. “Yup, it was fun too,” he admitted.


“Fun, huh?” she said.


“Yup,” he said again, as she threw a pillow at him. He easily caught it and put it back behind his head, leaning against it grinning.


Yoona sighed and closed her eyes again. Irresistible, she thought anxiously. She hated it when he smiled like that, because she liked it way too much. And that scruff he had going on. Wow! She opened on eye to look at him, and he was looking at her, grinning. Damn! She thought.


His grin got even wider. “What’cha lookin’ at, Yoong?” he teased.


“Nothing,” she denied, blushing.


“Those pink cheeks suggest otherwise,” he said knowingly.


“You need to shave,” she told him. “That’s what I was thinking,” she closed her eyes again.


Yoona’s eyes flew open and she jumped as she felt the rough texture rubbing against her cheeks.


“There was a time when you loved this scruff,” he reminded her, pulling away.


He heard her sharp intake of breath and watched as she swallowed nervously. He sighed and sat back, brushing her hair away from her face.


“We should be in New York soon,” he told her. “And listen… I have a lot of meetings over the next few days, so I won’t be there a whole lot.”


“Okay,” she said softly.


“But I don’t want you to think that I dragged you all the way here just to leave you all alone. As soon as I have everything squared away, you won’t be able to get rid of me,” he promised.


“Okay,” she said again. She chewed on her lip thoughtfully. “So, do you have any idea who you’re going to sign with yet?” she asked.


He grinned at her. “What do you know about my status?” he asked.


She blushed lightly. “Well, I never stopped being a basketball fan,” she told him.


He grinned. “Who do you think I should sign with?” he asked, genuinely interested in her answer.


“Do you like playing for the Knicks?” she asked.


He shrugged. “Sure. Basketball is basketball,” he said.


“So any team would do, then as long as you were playing?”


“Yeah,” he said.


“Well, I’ve always thought there was something to be said for loyalty,” she said on a shrug.


“Which is rare in my business,” he said.


“Right,” she agreed. “But who do you want to sign with?” she pressed.


He sighed. “Lately I’ve been thinking it’d be nice to sign with Charlotte,” he said.


“Really, I didn’t think they had any offers on the table,” she said.


“They don’t,” Yul said, revealing in the fact that she knew so much about his career. He took it as a good sign that she was keeping up on him. “They don’t think they can afford me, but it’s not about money for me,” he said. “Not anymore.”


“What’s it about?” she asked.


He smiled softly at her, kissing her on the forehead, “Going home.”