Chapter 20

Yoona walked slowly down the stairs and to the kitchen. Yul had taken her to the doctors that morning and they’d told her she no longer needed her cast and that she could start walking in little spurts. They’d cautioned her to take it easy and to pay attention to her body and rest her leg when she needed to. She opened the refrigerator door, and reached for an orange just as there was a knock on the door. “Come in,” she called assuming it was Tiffany. She had said she might stop by later this morning after her conference call with Yoona’s record company. They’d had to push back the release date due to her accident, and they were anxious about getting the album to press, but it wasn’t Tiffany who walked in when the door opened. It was Kwon Mike. Yoona took a deep breath, reminded herself that like it or not, this was her husband’s father. She shut the refrigerator door and straightened.

“Hello, Mr Kwon,” she said. Although she’d tried, her voice made it very clear that his mere presence annoyed her.

“Hello, Yoong.”

“It’s Yoona to you, Mr Kwon.”

“Please, call me Dad,” he said. “After all, you are leading my son on again if I’m not mistaken.”

“What do you want?” she asked on a sigh.

He looked her up and down. “You’re chubbing out, Yoong,” he said.

“I’ve been sedentary for more than a month,” she remarked dryly. “What do you want?” she repeated.

“Oh, just stopping by to see my favourite daughter-in-law,” he told her.

“Well, you’ve seen her. So you’re more than welcome to go now,” she invited him.

“I’m here to talk to you about my son,” Mike said.

“What about him?”

“I just want to make sure everything is okay with him.”

“With all due respect Mr Kwon... which by the way is none, you haven’t done Yul any favours over the course of his lifetime,” she reminded him.

“Well I guess that makes two of us. So, what are you doing back here, Yoona? Did you come to break my son’s heart again?” he accused coldly.

“What happens between Yul and me is none of your business,” she said.

“That’s where you’re wrong, Yoona. Every single time you enter his life, his priorities become askew. I think his contract with the Bobcats is a prime example of that.”

“I had nothing to do with that,” she said.

Mike sneered down at her. “Everyone thought you gave up so much for Yul,” he said, changing the subject. “Touring, Stanford, but as it turned out, you’d only put it on the back burner. As soon as you got the chance, you left for Stanford. One had to wonder if you’d planned on leaving him all along,” Mike said softly.

Yoona shifted uncomfortably at his accusations and swallowed nervously. There wasn’t any truth to what he’d assumed, but the way he was looking down at her, with pure revulsion made Yoona edgy.

“It was awfully convenient for you when your son died, wasn’t it?” he said.

Yoona blinked a few times in disbelief, certain she’d heard wrong. No one could ever be so heartless as to say that to anyone who’d lost a child. But those were the only words spinning around Yoona’s head. Tears immediately filled her eyes, and she looked down. She wasn’t sure what came over her, but in the next second, she knew she’d be damned if she’d let Kwon Mike do this to her. She lifted her head and pulled her hand back, and then with every ounce of strength she possessed, she brought her hand to his cheek. A loud crack sounded in the room at the contact.

Mike grinned down at her. “You’ve got guts, Little girl,” he said, then walked calmly out the front door. From the look on her face, the damage was done. Kwon Mike smiled to himself as he walked to his car.

After he left, Yoona’s arms flew to her midsection and she hugged herself tightly. She slowly crumbled to the floor sobbing. The pain in her leg was excruciating but she didn’t care. It lessened the pain in her heart.

Yul knew that something was wrong before he’d even pulled into the driveway and saw an unfamiliar car there. He wasn’t sure how he knew... only that he did. It had always been that way with him and Yoona. Whenever things hadn’t been all right with her, he’d known immediately. He jumped out of the SUV and sprinted to the front door then let himself in. He yelled her name, but there was no answer. He ran from the kitchen into the living room and when he saw that Yoona wasn’t in there, he ran up the stairs. He walked into her bedroom and froze in his tracks at the sight of her open suitcase on the bed.

“What’s with the car in the driveway?” he asked with a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach.

She gave him a weak smile. He noticed that it didn’t reach her eyes. “I have to go. Reality calls,” she said softly, tossing her make-up case into her suitcase.

“You said that you were going to stay,” Yul argued.

“I... it was the aftermath of the lovemaking,” she said not meeting his eyes. It sounded lame even to her own ears.

“No, it was not. You said you loved me, Yoona,” he reminded her.

“And... part of me always will,” she said. She couldn’t lie to him about that. She just didn’t have it in her.

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” he asked. “Knowing you’re out there... part of you always loving me, but I can’t have you?” he said scathingly.

Yoona didn’t say anything, just continued throwing things into her suitcase.

“Are you going to say anything?” he yelled.

Yoona cringed at his tone and she knew she was breaking his heart again. She could almost hear it shattering. She shook her head slowly, hers breaking as well.

“Yoona...”

“No, Yul! We tried, but we couldn’t make it,” she said in a raised voice.

Yul laughed  bitterly. “It’s not that we couldn’t make it, Yoona. It’s that we didn’t make it. We could have made it, if we’d both fought harder.”

“Well we didn’t.”

“Well I’m fighting now,” he said, straightening away from the doorframe and crossing his arms over his chest.

“Yul...”

“Go ahead and leave, Yoona. Do whatever you want to do. Go wherever you want to go, and see whoever it is that you want to see.”

Yoona’s head snapped up. “That isn’t what this is about, Yul. I’m not seeing anyone.” She knew now that she was leaving, but it was important to her that Yul know their time together hadn’t been a lie. She snapped the suitcase shut and walked briskly out of the room past Yul. She walked into the kitchen with Yul right behind her.

“Then who was the guy at the restaurant, Yoona?” he shouted.

Yoona put her suitcase down by the door and sighed, finally resigning herself to the fact that Yul would never trust her. She slowly turned around so she was facing him, the kitchen table separating them. “It was Nickhun,” she said softly.

“Wha... Nick... Nickhun Horvejkul?” Yul asked in disbelief.

Yoona nodded.

“Are you sleeping with him?”

“Are you serious?” she asked. She was so angry that her voice came out deadly calm.

“Yeah, I’m serious. Are you sleeping with him?” he repeated angrily.

Yoona laughed incredulously and put her palms on her head, then ran them down her face. “This is one of the reasons why we don’t work,” she said sadly.

“Yoona...”

She shook her head. “No, I’m not sleeping with Nickhun Horvejkul and after the time we’ve spent together, if you couldn’t tell that I hadn’t been with anyone in a long time... since you, as a matter of fact then I don’t know what to tell you, Yul.” She choked on a sob. “Except that I’m not sleeping with Nickhun Horvejkul,” she repeated. “I’m actually paying him.”

“What?” he asked, his head still reeling from the fact that she hadn’t been with anyone in all their time apart.

She nodded her head. “Yeah, he’s been blackmailing me for the last two years.”

“With what?” Yul asked.

“Us!” Yoona said. “He told me if I didn’t give him ‘hush money’, as he calls it, then the press would ‘accidentally’ find out about us.”

“That son of a !” Yul said.

“Yeah, well, don’t tell you’re surprised.”

Yul sighed deeply, looking at the floor. Finally, he lifted his eyes to Yoona’s again. “Don’t go, Yoona,” he begged.

She smiled miserably. “It’s never going to work, Yul.”

Remembering what Tiffany had told him, Yul grasped onto the very last straw within his grasp. “Yoona... if you don’t stay with me, I might never be able to forgive myself for leaving you,” he said softly.

“Don’t say that, Yul,” she said firmly, her voice filled with desperation. “You’re going to be fine,” she said emphatically. She needed to believe that he was going to be okay.

He continued as if she hadn’t spoken. He leaned forward, the knuckles on his fists resting on the kitchen table. His face was dangerously close to hers. “Then go, but know this. One day you’ll come back to me Kwon ‘Im’ Yoona,” he promised.

“Yul...”

“Because the sooner you leave, the sooner you’ll be back,” he said with false confidence.

Yoona wiped at the tears on her cheeks and walked to the door. She stopped and kissed him softly on the cheek, and he closed his eyes, savouring the moment. She pulled away and cleared .

“Thank you for taking such good care of me,” she said sincerely. “I won’t forget it.” She stood there for a minute just looking at him, as if memorizing his every feature. She picked up her suitcase and then walked away. Again.

Yul watched her get into her car and leave the driveway then he closed the door. He leaned up against it and slowly slid to the floor. He put his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands and began to cry.

Yoona hurried to the car, tossing her single suitcase into the backseat. She slammed the door shut and then climbed into the front seat of the car. She backed out of the driveway and started driving. When she was certain she was out of sight of the house, she pulled over and rested her head on the steering wheel, letting the sobs take over her body. The tears were coming in a steady stream down her cheeks now and she wiped at them impatiently. As much as she hated to admit it, there were some things that Kwon Mike was right about. Every single time she came into Yul’s life, she wrecked it. First... she’d left him for the tour, and then... she’d left him to go to Stanford. As far as she was concerned, her track record was proven and it wasn’t very flattering. She decided after Mike left that she was going to do Yul a favour and walk away now, before they got even more entangled. It had nearly killed her to walk out, but she couldn’t let Yul fall in love with her even more only to break his heart further down the road.

She took a deep breath and was just putting the car back into drive when her cell phone rang. She pulled it out of her purse and looked at the caller ID. “Hello?” she said after flipping it open. She tried to keep the emotion from her voice.

“Yoong? It’s Yoon. Siwon found a loophole,” she said eagerly.

“A what?” Yoona asked confused.

“A loophole, in your contract,” Yoonhee said, trying to jog her sister’s memory.

“That’s great, Yoon,” Yoona said.

She heard Yoonhee sigh on the other end of the phone. “You left him,” she said quietly.

“I left him,” Yoona whispered.

“Yoona...”

“I’m okay,” she said.

“When did my little sister turn into a liar?” Yoonhee asked.

Yoona choked on a fresh sob. “So, tell me about this loophole,” she said changing the subject and pulling back onto the road.