“I deserved it….. I did. It’s karma, and this is exactly what I should get.” He mutters it in a breathy, almost non-existent splice of words, still looking down and his hands, trembling the same way mine are. “It doesn’t make it hurt any less…. or mess me up any less. That you’ve been lying this whole time…. Pretending… Making me hope…. Was this punishment? Revenge? Did it give you a kick to see me falling all over you and trying to rekindle past memories?” Jyeon finally raises his head, his eyes so steeped in sadness and betrayal that it cuts me deeply. His words are slow and etched with bitterness. Questioning me in his mind and coming up with so many reasons I would drag this charade out and pretend not to know. I can see why he would think it was a ploy to hurt him, that it was vindictive and mocking. Despite everything he did back then, I never wanted to wound him this way; it wasn’t a manipulation of any sort.
“I……” I don’t know what to say and shake my head. My words trail to silent air because I don’t know how to explain when he’s looking at me that way. As though I ripped the rug out from under his feet, stabbed him in the heart, and yet he doesn’t explode. I wait for the mad and cruel to appear, the cold, cutting words he can throw like spears, and instead stands a man grasping for reasons that the person he thought he knew could do this to him.
“I …… I know I have no right to be angry or hurt about it, after what I did ….. that I brought it on myself… but …. Sohla, you never once wanted to let me know you were okay? Even if you didn’t want to come back? You didn’t think about the pain we were in? How crazy we were going without you? You couldn’t have given us a message even if we never knew where you were? Ended our suffering with one fucking text? I never stopped longing for you and hoping you were alive, yet you didn’t give a shit about it.” His voice breaks, and tears fill his eyes. His raw emotion is spilling out, and for the first time in a long time, my guilt racks through me at an insane depth. It’s as heavy as steel and makes everything inside me throb. Seeing him break. Seeing him react this badly to something I assumed was a minor detail I could act my way out of. It’s worse than I imagined, and I lose all bravado.
“I thought you messed with the car. I thought you would hurt me if I came home. End it properly. I thought it was better for everyone if I died that night.” I start to whimper, caving because I can’t be the one to strike a blow like this to the man I love. Even back then, I was so feeble when it came to hurting him, no matter what he did, and it hasn’t changed. Regretting this and knowing Greta was right. I should have played this ruse to the end so I wouldn’t have to deal with how he’s looking at me now. This was so stupid. I don’t know what I was thinking.
“Did I become that much of a monster in your eyes? Did you truly think I would fucking kill you? I couldn’t even stand to see you hurt from catching me with her, so how the fuck could I plan to murder you?.... Didn’t the way I always ended up bowing to you, chasing you, whenever you were hurt, never make you stop and think that I gave a shit?” His temper rises and swirls in the air, replacing his agony, but I know it’s because I’ve wounded him. He reverts to self-defense when he’s in pain, and I knew this would be the outcome. It’s what I hoped for in separating us. His wall is coming up, and our war is starting all over again. I am exactly the same.
“I know that now… I see that it wasn’t you that messed with the car. I didn’t back then. I only saw someone who hated me and wanted me out of his life for good. Someone who fell in love with someone else and didn’t want me in the picture or messing with what was his.”
“That’s not true ….. I never wanted you gone, and I never loved her. I never hated you. I was caught up in pain and the inability to forgive. I asked you for a divorce because I was angry and reacting to our whole toxic mess, but I knew that it felt like shit to ask for one. We were so fucked up in every way, and both did things to maintain that wall between us until we hit the tipping point, Sol….. It doesn’t mean I didn’t care about you or that we couldn’t have salvaged something once we stopped with the bullshit.” He paces around in a circle, caught between anger and heartbreak, and I can only stand there like a dumb statue and watch him. Helpless.
Hearing his words and ashamed of myself for choosing this path to push him away. Stiff with the sheer effort of not crumbling at his feet and telling him I am sorry. Now I know tonight he didn’t sit with her and be what she wanted or needed; it’s changed my whole perspective again. Greta was right, and this was about her all along.
“I know that now.” My voice is small and weak. My eyes shift to the floor as my legs give out on me. Hating what I started, but it can’t be undone. The fight I used to possess, the cold and cruel viper that showed face whenever he wounded me, she’s nowhere to be seen anymore. I’m not like I was before. And neither is Jyeon, not towards me. He’s trying so hard to keep himself in check, even if I just did deliver a cutting blow.
“Then why keep lying to me these past two weeks? Why pretend you don’t know… why wait until I feel like this? That something’s between us before ripping my heart out?” Jyeon’s temper flares higher and ignites the anger inside me that he doesn’t see my side of this and only recognizes how it affects his heart.
“You think that’s what I’m trying to do?” I bite back, raising my voice in a temper, simmering with many conflicted feelings. “That I’m still that heartless and vindictive?” Offended that he thinks it.
“I don’t know what this is. And yeah, it’s who you used to be, and well…. still are, if tonight is any fucking indication. What have we been doing these past two weeks if you have always known? Why go along with it and pretend? Why let me close? Why let me kiss you? Why not straight-up divorce me the second I rolled into your restaurant and put an end to it with one sentence and honesty? … Why let me bring you home at all?” Jyeon scrubs his hands over his face to stem the building dam he’s holding so tightly onto and turns away from me, so I don’t see his torment.
“It wasn’t exactly planned. We’ve been navigating in the dark after you guys dropped into my life like that. Do you think I ever expected you to walk onto that island and see me? I didn’t trust any of you or know what to do or how to be. All of this has been confusing and emotionally draining, and I was scared. I still don’t know what happened with the car…. it was a major factor, and someone wanted me gone. You have to understand how I was …how I felt. I went through hell that day… from you and her to the mess I made of everything, crashing in the water and walking alone on the island for twenty-four hours before Greta found me close to death. I was beyond mentally fucked up and so out of my depth.” I clench my fists as it all comes pouring out at him. Minor hysteria is building from within. Desperation mixed with resentment, and it’s pouring out in verbal diarrhea.
“I always relied on you… loved you, looked to you, felt safe with you, and suddenly you were the enemy, and I was the person you wanted to cut out and remove as though I was nothing more than poison…. You even called me that. You broke my heart and kept adding wounds upon wounds. What else was I supposed to think?” I start to cry through my breathy words, my voice shaking and true emotions welling up and overspilling. “I was broken and wounded and suffering from shock and emotional devastation. I felt like everything that was my safety net, my life, had been ripped away, and I had nothing to return for…. I intended to at some point, but then I heard on the radio how you found a body, and it cemented your guilt…. You killed me…. You erased me, and it hurt, Jyeon… it broke me all over again. I had only doubts and suspicion, and a destroyed, broken life in ruins behind me left.”
There’s a pause between us as he absorbs my words and all of this. His posture is straightening, and he shifts on his feet, uneasily still with his back to me. I can see how his shoulders heave, which tells me his breathing is shallow and erratic while he rationalizes everything I’m spilling out. My words touching a nerve.
“You know why I did that. I explained it. It wasn’t like that.” He turns slowly, and his red-rimmed shining eyes and furrowed brow are another slice to my already gaping wounded heart.
“How was I supposed to know anything? In our last encounter, you told me you never wanted to see me again and were moving in with her. You made it clear I would have a war on my hands over OLO.”
“I’m an asshole who says stupid shit when he’s backed against a wall, and no one knew how to stick a knife into me and twist it as you could. It was your gift to fuck me up and always leave me second-guessing all my decisions when it came to us. I said a lot of things that night that I never meant. I didn’t expect it to be the last time I saw you….. I came back when I cooled down, hating myself for being like that, but you had taken my car and gone…. If I had known what was coming, Sohla, I would have held onto you. I would never have walked out. I would never have left you alone.”
This is too hard for me. Dredging it all up and dissecting what can’t be changed. He’s wearing me down and creating more confusion in my mind and soul. I don’t know what’s up or down, and all my earlier decisions lie in ashes on the floor. This is what I hate the most about Jyeon. That he ruins my sanity and makes me want to believe in him. Despite everything, my heart wants to rely on his version of the truth. I want to put faith in his love and how he felt when he found out I was gone.
“I don’t want to do this; we’re going around in pointless circles and churning up old wounds that can’t be changed. Pointing fingers and making this worse. I didn’t want any of this.”
“What is it you want then?” His low and quivering questions surprise me. The deflation in his tone at me backing away, and I wonder if he’s told himself this was always about payback and that me coming clean is because I genuinely want it to end and go home. To leave him behind. “A divorce? Apologies? Me taking the blame for everything and delivering all that’s yours to you wrapped up in a bow? If that’s what you want and need, I’ll give it to you. I would erase all of it if I could.”
“I….. I don’t know what I want. From one minute to the next, I’m in turmoil, confused, and scared every time I let you close. I want to go home where it’s safe, and you can’t mess with my head, where there’s no Claire, no Sohla, no anyone who ever hurt me. I can focus on taking one step at a time and looking for my sense of peace.” It’s as honest as I can be. No further in making decisions but knowing my feeble self wants to run far away. My scars are not even close to healing, and I have no desire to dig in and make them deeper.
Jyeon moves back and crumples onto the couch behind him, exhaling heavily, and drops his hands between his legs as he slumps forward. Looking exhausted and so emotionally done with all of this. It’s like all his fight dies, and the rage and fizzing energy he wears, typically like a cloak, disperses into the dim light around us.
“For two years…… my life has been empty. I was a walking zombie who focused on work, juggling everything alone, and trying never to give up hope that you would walk back in the door one day. I don’t even remember why I pushed you away as much as I did anymore because all I have felt in your absence is regret and agony at not seeing you. Living with the void you left behind and struggling to breathe without you. I know I am the last person in the world that deserves your love or forgiveness, but for me…. that’s the only thing in this world that matters to me.” He kicks his boot toe against the edge of the rug. Pulling my gaze to the immature habit of his youth.
“You want me to get on my knees and beg for a chance? I will…. You want me to quit OLO and relinquish all my shares? I will…. You want me to leave this life behind and follow you wherever you wanna go? I will, Sohla. Even if it’s to your remote island to work in a café for the rest of my days and never come back here…. You want me to throw off every tie I have with this life to ensure you would never be hurt again? I fucking will. I’ll do anything you ask or need to have another chance with you. It’s all I have wanted since the night I stormed out and left you standing in the kitchen. I’ve lived this way without you, and it sucks… it’s miserable and pointless and wouldn’t hurt me to throw it all away as long as I got to be with you again.” A tear rolls down his cheek, and he sniffs the next one away, scrunching up his nose and tensing his jaw. He looks thirteen years old again and lost like we fought, and teen Jyeon is sad that his Sohlly bunny won’t talk to him. My heart can’t take much more of this, and I move to the nearest armchair before my legs give out completely. Wilting and wishing I never answered the phone tonight at all.
“What are you saying?” It’s a tiny whimper, overwhelmed at his confessions and sincerity in this as he shreds what’s left of my willpower to death. He has no idea how much my soul wanted this from him so many times back then. Little Sohla who was besotted with her handsome best friend.
“You wanna know what my future plans were? What goals and dreams I had?” He snorts under his breath in a weird, sarcastic chuckle as though it’s something ironic, and I blink away my constant stream of silent warm tears. “It was waiting for you. Everything paused the second you disappeared. It was not giving up… not moving on in any way, shape, or form from where you could find me or come home to me. My only goal was to stay true to you and never allow myself to believe you were gone or doing anything to jeopardize your coming back…. Sad, huh?... I stopped living as though I was the dead one.” His eyes stay downcast, focused on his fingers as he picks at his nails, and I bite my lip to quell the sob that’s building in my throat.
“Jyeon….” It hurts even to say his name while feeling a million miles away. Closed off and bleeding.
“But it wasn’t like that for you. You knew where we were; you chose never to look back and didn’t care about a future without me. I’ve been deluding myself that I just had to find you and bring you home, and I could make up for everything. Stupidly hopeful that this was a second chance, I could earn your trust while you regained your memories. I could make you fall for me, so I had a fighting chance at holding onto you when you did remember.”
And I guess I knew it, which is why I was scared of letting go further. Because it was working, and he has no idea how much I wanted to be pulled in by him and carry on the fantasy, I didn’t have to face reality. To finally have him be the one to cling to me in desperation.
“It’s not that simple. Of course, I missed you, cried for you, and tormented myself over my decision almost daily. Greta kept me sane when I was at my worst…. It wasn’t about not wanting a future with you; it’s that I knew I never had one. That we were broken and over. I wasn’t trying to hurt you; I didn’t think I could. I thought only of my pain, needs, and what I had to do to survive. I can’t make you understand unless you lived through it. None of this was some masterminded game of revenge…. it’s just a messy screwed-up fallout because I never had any intentions or plans.”
I catch his eye, and we lock gazes for a moment. Deep hurt on both sides and a sea of wounds between us inflicted by each other. I can’t even think who was to blame anymore because none of it was that simple or clear-cut back then. We both did wrong. It feels like a massive gulf between us, and I have no clue how to navigate it.
“And now? Do you want this to end so you can run away and not dissect what’s here between us still? You wanted to hurt me so I would back off? Is that what this was… using old methods to keep me out? Thinking it would hurt me enough that I would push you out of my way and go?” Jyeon is calmer than he was, but he’s still brewing the hurt from finding all this out.
I guess he’s slowly churning it over. Sense and logic are moving back in; the initial shock is numbing out. Seeing my game plan and recognizing it as a systematic Sohla move.
“Maybe. I told you….. Whenever you get close…..” I close my eyes and wipe my hands over my face, trying to hold back the floodgates, but it’s pointless. Sitting across from him and tense all over. I feel like we are going in circles. “I’m scared of you. Scared of how much power you have over me and my heart. Scared of how easy it is for you to break me. I am terrified of returning to the frame of mind where I can’t bear to live without you.”
“You think you don’t hold the same power over me?” Jyeon slumps back against the couch, rests his head on the back ledge, and stares at the ceiling. Exhaling heavily. Casually lounging as though he has nothing left. “You have no idea how ingrained in me you are. How scared I am of you walking away and wanting closure to this……. I’m terrified of you choosing to end this and let go, finally. What will I have left? All I have survived on these two years is hope.”
“It’s this…. it’s so easy for you to say it, but do you ever stop to think it’s not easy for me to believe it? You never treated me like you loved me, not once in our life together, and now you’re asking me to put blind faith in you and step back where I’ll be completely immersed in you again.” I get up and walk to him, so I tower over him, using my robe sleeve to dry my cheeks and sniff through the now never-ending stream I have zero control over. “I don’t know what it is I would be getting. I don't want it if it’s how we were back then. I have nothing to reference except an empty marriage that pushed us to break. Endless years of you hurting me where I was endlessly sad.”
Jyeon lifts his head and squints at me, confusion sweeping over his expression, and then he sits up. Locking his focus on me, he softens at what I’m saying.
“It wouldn’t be like that. You’re right, I never treated you like I loved you, and I never once treated you like my girlfriend or wife. This would be different. I‘m different.” Jyeon slides to the front of the couch and stands up, so he towers over me, all anger dissipating as he steps to me and automatically wipes my face with his sleeve. Gentle, caring, attentive affection that makes me swallow hard and hiccup.
“Is that all this is? Fear of me pulling you back into what we’ve left behind…… Thinking I would be the same husband I was back then?... Sohla, this isn’t anywhere near the same as it was. I was such a deluded idiot back then who didn’t know what I had right in front of me, and I tried to keep distance between us even when we were sleeping together.” He brushes my hair from my face and tucks it behind my ears, tending to my mess, drying me, and tidying me up. He tugs my robe around me to cover my exposed, cool skin.
“Do I seem like the same guy I was back then? That I would be that stupid?” he leans in and rests his forehead against mine, sliding his hands to mine and interlocking our fingers. Keeping our arms draped by my sides, I don’t fight him off or pull away. I don’t have any energy in me at all after all this. Tired, I slump against him slightly, shaking my head and reverting to a feeble girl.
“We both changed. We both took time to reflect on the past and experienced life without the other, and I hated every second of it. If that’s what you truly want from here on in….to go back, cut me off, and end it all here, then tell me without doubts. If that’s what will make you happy, then be honest. All I want is for you to be happy, even if that means I lose you again…. I love you that much.”
The words shrivel in my throat, and I cannot make myself say them even if my life depended on it. I stare at him with doe eyes, misty and blurred from the unshed tears, yet nothing formulates in my mouth. I can’t physically make my heart and mouth lie that I want him to let me go.
Jyeon watches my expression and sees my struggle, picks up on my indecision, and pulls me towards him, enveloping me against him in a tight hug. My face nestles against his throat, and I sink into his hold, feeling his heart pounding like a war drum through his chest. Hating how this always feels like home and so necessary to my sanity when he does it. I'm submerged in how he feels and smells and know I have zero fight in me as my body gets heavy and goes limp, knowing he’ll hold me up.
“That hesitation is all I need. I’m not letting you leave my life without giving it everything I have first. You’re mine, Sohla. I’m yours. Just have a little faith in me so that I can turn us around and earn your trust. I can make you happy in a way I never even tried before. That I’ll work my ass off to erase everything from before.” He tightens his hold to the point it almost becomes uncomfortable, yet I inhale slowly and find strength and comfort in having him around me. My arms are snaking up under his and around his waist of their own accord. It’s useless to fight his pull on me, and I can’t stop my soul from yearning for what he has to offer.
So much for deciding to end things tonight, have him hate me, and run home to leave this all behind.
I’m so useless. Never in control of my actions when it comes to Jyeon Park.
“You have one chance,” I murmur weakly, knowing I’m taking a leap off a cliff for the second time in my life. Voice sleepy and quiet, childlike in the deliverance because there’s no fight left in me. I am submitting to the inevitable and resigning myself that I already knew this deep down.
It’s why I wanted to run away so badly and hoped he would be the one to put the wall back up between us tonight. I’m already in hot water and beyond the point of return with my feelings for him, and I was never going to be able to fight them. Jyeon should have walked away from me, like him of old, but he chose to stay and fight for us despite my hurting him. I never expected that, yet I’m glad he isn’t easily giving up on us. That he’s holding on as much as I used to.
“I only need one…… I won’t waste it…. I swear…. Come on, let’s go sleep together and deal with this tomorrow. When we’re both less emotional. I’m exhausted, and you seem beat. It’s not like we have never shared a bed, and I don’t want to leave you after this. I’m too traumatized and need you right next to me, or else I might have some mental breakdown. It’s been a long night. A long day.”
“Jyeon, I don’t think….” I pull my head back to protest about the sleeping arrangement, and I’m silenced with a swift locking of his lips to mine. He swoops so fast I have no way to counteract it, yet his soft, warm lips on mine melt away the last of my rejections. Pressed in tightly so my nose is squished into his face. Like a magic touch, he quietens my mind, takes control of my body, and I surrender fully.
It's a lip-to-lip lingering peck, enough to hush the voices in my head and his fingers find their way to my neck and jawline as he holds us together. Cradling me gently and tugging me in, we fit together snugly. Soothing the wounds of tonight and pulling me deeper into this with him.
Finally, he pulls away a tiny hairbreadth and rubs his nose against mine. Locking his eyes on me, the edges of his mouth upturn subtly.
“Tomorrow is a new day. A new start….. I’m not holding back any longer, so be prepared. There are no secrets about our past between us anymore…… My Sohla came home. Finally, we can stop focusing there and start focusing on now. I will show you exactly what kind of husband you can expect from here on in.” He winks at me and slides his hand back into mine, tightly linking us, and doesn’t wait before tugging me in the direction of my bedroom without further protest.