by J. S. Lee
“And we have the gym,” Xiao added. “I can move the weights into my room.”
“I’d happily share again,” MinMin added.
CX nodded and looked at him. “I’ll share with you.”
“Deal.”
“Guys, none of you should have to share,” Sungmin sighed. He shifted his weight, crossing his long legs beneath him. “You’ve all been kind enough to let me stay here, but it’s time that I moved into my own place. You’ve worked hard over the years and you’ve earned this. You don’t need me here.”
“Of course we don’t,” Youngbin agreed, “but we want you here.”
“Why?” Sungmin looked confused.
“Because you’re one of us,” Xiao informed him.
“What he said,” JongB agreed.
“You’ve been with us since day one,” Youngbin told him. “You’re not just our manager. You’re not just our friend. You’re one of Onyx.”
“That’s nonsense,” Sungmin said, flustered.
“Even our fans can see that, so why can’t you?” Jiwon muttered. He wasn’t wrong. As we’d gone from city to city, there was always a small group of fans dedicated to making sure Sungmin was well looked after, and their Black Gems, as a whole, acknowledged Sungmin as one of the group. None of the other members of the team, myself included, had ever had that same privilege.
“You’ve always been there for us, and we’re going to be here for you, because you are family,” Xiao continued. “We just assumed you knew this, which is why we’ve never said it.”
“It’s true,” CX agreed. “And we want you to know that you’re perfect as you are, and we wouldn’t change a thing about you.”
“About that,” JongB interrupted, poking his hand up. “If you could perhaps not yell so much…?”
“Stop doing dumb shit and he won’t yell,” Jiwon informed him, smacking him upside the head.
JongB spun around. “You can’t talk! You did the same thing!”
“I did it to stop Kate leaving us, not to get laid!”
“Keep yelling at them, because if you don’t, I will,” Youngbin sighed.
I watched as Sungmin looked at them all, clearly trying to work out what their angle was. “It would still be better if I got my own place.”
“If that’s what you really want, that’s fine-”
“No, it’s not,” JongB said, cutting Youngbin off.
“That’s fine,” Youngbin repeated, glaring at JongB. “But we don’t want you to go. You’re one of us.”
Sungmin watched them all warily. “Can I be one of you that isn’t JongB?”
“I vote we all pile on Sungmin.”
My eyes widened because that suggestion had come from Jiwon and not JongB. As there seemed to be a mass wave of Onyx moving like a tsunami to Sungmin’s bed, I backed out of the room, closing the door on the boisterous noises.
Tonight was for them. I was just happy knowing they were all back home.
제22 장
ON
The atmosphere in the house improved, but it still wasn’t back to normal. I wasn’t even sure what normal was anymore, but it didn’t involve Sungmin giving me a wide berth.
To the best of my knowledge, the seven of them all slept in Sungmin’s room that night. The following morning, I’d gone to get a glass of orange juice and discovered all the alcohol had gone from the refrigerator.
Although some of them were nursing hangovers, there was an instant change in dynamics between the seven of them. It was as though Sungmin had taken his manager armor off and could relax with them.
We had the two days together as they had said, and then it was a mixture of who was in and out of the house as the group continued with their non-promotional activities.
Seeing as though Sungmin wasn’t in any hurry to talk to me, and this was one of the rare occasions where I had everyone around, I had decided that I would let things settle and then talk to Sungmin.
Unfortunately, Holly screwed that plan up.
We’d all been in the living room playing Mario Kart. Although the air conditioning was on, sandwiched between Xiao who was a human hot water bottle, and MinMin, who was unbelievably cuddly, I was hot.
They were engrossed in the game, so I pressed a kiss against their foreheads and extracted myself from between them, Although it was the middle of summer, I opened the patio doors and wandered into the back yard, closing the door behind me.
It was raining; a common feature of the Seoul summer. It did mean that the humidity and the temperature were much more pleasant in the late afternoon. I pulled a chair from the outdoor table and sat on it, under the porch and stared out across Seoul.
The house was high in the hills. From the front of the house, I could just about make out the tip of Namsan Tower, but in the back, the whole city spread out in front of us. The rainclouds hung low in the sky and the view wasn’t as far reaching as it was on a clear day, but it was still a sight to see.
I’d been out there a while when the door opened. I glanced over my shoulder and found Sungmin walking towards me. “The Vice Chairwoman called.”
Interesting greeting. “OK?”
“She says Atlantis has been hounded for an official statement in relation to that article about Moonhee.”
“What do you want to do?” I asked him. I looked up at Sungmin. He refused to meet my eyes. “I guess you’d best tell her to deny it then,” I said, wondering how Holly was going to spin that considering I was all over Sungmin in those photographs.
“Oh,” he said, his tone flat. “Sure.” He turned and started walking back to the door, pulling his phone out of his pocket as he did.
I stood. “Hold up,” I called after him. I’d had enough of this. “We need to talk.”
He turned back to me. “Do we? Because you’ve made your feelings clear.”
“Yes, I have,” I agreed, exasperated. “But for some reason, you’ve not listened to any of them!”
“I proposed and you said no. I offered a simple solution to this and you turned it down,” he snapped, his eyes going dark as he finally looked at me. “I got your feelings loud and clear.”
“Sungmin, everyone was proposing, and I turned everyone down. I don’t want to get married to just one person, and more importantly, with you, I don’t want you to think you’re a ‘solution’. You have some warped idea that women won’t like you because of a stupid scar, and I swear I wish I had punched Moonhee about that now, but you’re wrong. And you can’t use me as some stupid excuse to cover up the fact that you’re too scared to start dating again. You don’t like me; that’s fine. But I’m better than that, and you’re better than that.”
The reason I’d avoided this conversation with Sungmin wasn’t because I was scared of having the conversation. It was because I was scared that I was going to unleash the gates of hell and tell him exactly what I thought in my usual tactful manner. I hadn’t held back, and my words were cutting. But he didn’t get upset.
Sungmin got angry.
He marched over to me. “Are you stupid?” he snapped at me.
I backed up, managing two paces before the backs of my knees hit the chair I’d been sat in and I fell into it.
Sungmin slammed his hands down on the arms of the chair, boxing me in. His face swung in towards me and as I braced myself for him yelling at me, he kissed me. Rough and angry, his lips mashing against mine.
When he pulled away, his cheeks were pink, but the anger was still in his eyes. Clutching onto the chair arms, he glowered at me. “Is that the action of someone who doesn’t like you?”
“One angry kiss is not going to make up for weeks of you ignoring me. How the hell is any girl supposed to know you like them when you’re being a dick to her?”
“What did you expect?” he snapped. “You’re seeing six guys. What could I bring to this relationship?”
“You!” I yelled. “How has none of this sunk in with you? I’ve told you – I don’t want you changing anything other than
how you see yourself!”
The anger seemed to dissipate, only to be replaced with disbelief. “I didn’t think you would be interested, and I didn’t want to put you in a position where you were uncomfortable because of my feelings.”
I sucked in a deep breath, feeling suddenly exhausted. “I don’t know what this is. I don’t know what this is going to be, but I do know that, no matter what the others said to you the other night, you shouldn’t feel under any obligation. I’m pregnant. I don’t know who the father is, but I do know it’s not you. That’s a lot for a person to take on. I don’t know if this will go anywhere or if you truly want it to. It’s OK if you don’t, and you are still part of this family and I still want you to stay here.”
Sungmin stared down at me, staring at me in a way which had me questioning which hybrid of language I had used. He was still clutching at the chair, hovering over me, which had to be uncomfortable. “Why don’t you sit down?” I suggested.
“I’d rather kiss you,” he muttered.
“OK,” I responded, instantly.
He leaned in again. This time, there was no anger in the kiss, only a fiery need which had my toes curling. The whoops and cries, barely muffled by a sheet of glass, were what caused us to break the kiss. Sungmin sighed, resting his forehead against mine. “This is…”
“Weird?” I supplied. “Yeah. But we come as a package deal; buy one, get six free.”
Sungmin sighed, finally standing upright. Refusing to acknowledge the others who were still clapping and grinning like idiots, he focused on me. “What do we tell the Vice Chairwoman?”
“Does she have to say anything?” I asked. “This is no different to saying I’m dating one of them. I don’t want anyone to think I made a choice, and I swear it’s nothing to do with you, or your scar, or anything like that,” I promised him.
“I understand. But I think you need to. I think we need to.” I accepted Sungmin’s offered hand and let him help me out of my seat. As we approached the door, the group scarpered. When I walked inside, the six of them were sat on the two couches looking anything but natural.
I moved over to one of the couches and sat down beside CX. “Sungmin and I were talking-”
“Didn’t look like talking,” Youngbin scoffed.
“If that’s talking, can we go talk in the bedroom?” JongB sniggered.
MinMin looked over at me and tilted his head. “You seem to have gotten your Korean mixed up there.”
I raised my hand and flipped them the bird. “The press has suddenly decided they want our statement on what happened.”
“They want Atlantis to confirm we’re dating,” Sungmin nodded, his cheeks flushing.
I leaned forward, sighing as I dropped my head into my hands. This was exhausting. No matter what I wanted, I wasn’t going to get it. That outcome was just not a possibility in this country, and certainly not with Onyx being idols.
“Kate?” CX peered up at me.
And then I realized it didn’t matter what I wanted. These guys weren’t going anywhere. But they were the ones with everything to lose. I sat up and shrugged. “It’s not my choice,” I told them. “You guys are the ones who have to live with the consequences. If you think I should tell the world I’m dating Sungmin, let’s do it. If you think it should be JongB or Xiao because neither of them are Korean, I’ll do that. They had the story about me and Jiwon…” I shrugged again, feeling exhausted. “You guys are the ones who have to decide this, and I’d hoped we wouldn’t have to, but I have no self-control and pretty much gave us no other option, so I will agree with what you want and need.”
There was a long silence, with each of them looking at each other. Youngbin cleared his throat. “We spoke about this the other night,” he admitted.
“You did?”
Youngbin nodded. “With Sungmin.”
I looked up at Sungmin. He held up his hands and shrugged. “Of course, you did. What did you decide?”
“Allowing the press to think Sungmin is with you is the ideal option, and we still haven’t told all our parents everything.”
“Then, what do we do?”
“That,” CX said, softly. “They know what it’s like and we can tell them you’re just doing that for our benefit, until we’re in a position to be able to explain things properly.”
“OK,” I agreed. I looked over at Sungmin. “Congratulations. You’re about four and a half months away from becoming a father.”
“Do you want to watch a movie?” I asked CX. It was just me and him in the house. Everyone else was out with other projects and it would be a few hours before Sungmin dropped MinMin off for the night. CX was in his room, busy reading. I’d had a photoshoot earlier in the week and had been finishing up the touchups and now I was bored.
CX looked up from his book and nodded. “What do you want to watch?”
“I don’t care,” I said. I didn’t. I really just wanted to snuggle with him on the couch. I let him pick the movie, and closed my eyes, not sleeping, but not watching the movie. We were stretched out along the couch on our sides, with CX’s arm draped over my stomach.
Outside of the house, in the wide world, the news being released had been interesting...
Neither Sungmin nor I were idols, and there was no issue of us dating. At first, people were happy. Sungmin had been jilted at the altar and the original consensus was that he had moved on. Unfortunately, it hadn’t taken long for people to speculate on how pregnant I was and then did some math and started guessing when Sungmin and I got together.
Even though the statement had said ‘after the wedding we had grown close’, there had been a large enough group of people – mainly Moonhee fans – who had decided I was the reason they had split.
Which, of course, had led to the articles about me dating Jiwon resurfacing. Some people had been apologetic, claiming they had been mistaken, while others claimed I was just working my way around the group.
If only they knew.
It was only because I was hiding at the house already that I wasn’t expressly told to do it anyway until the story died down. I was going through waves of being strangely used to this, to ranting at how unforgiving fans were.
“Just let it go,” Sungmin had told me.
Much as I would have loved to be able to tell him it was easy for him to channel his inner Elsa, he was getting it worse than I was. Moonhee fans were posting horrible comments on any news story.
The television went silent and I opened my eyes, finding the movie paused. “You need a drink?”
“Are you watching this?” he asked.
“Nope.” CX let out a long sigh and I wrinkled up my nose. “That doesn’t sound happy.”
“I spoke to my mom earlier.”
I leaned forward slightly, keeping my body pressed up against him, but making it so that I could look up at him. “And?”
“I told her you were pregnant.”
“And on a scale of one to murderous, where does she fall?” I asked warily.
“She saw the statement about you and Sungmin-hyung dating.”
Carol Baskins level, then.
“She’s insisting on visiting. I told her we were likely to be back in the studio for a promotion soon and it just wasn’t possible.”
I shifted my body slightly, “It’s not like she’s not allowed here.”
CX’s hand left my belly to play with my hair. I closed my eyes, enjoying the feeling of his fingertips on my scalp. “She’s as OK as she can be considering she’s about to become a grandmother, while her only son is unwed, and she barely got chance to learn anything about you in Jeju. But she’s also excited about a nursery. We lived in a small house growing up and I never got a nursery. She wants her grandchild to have one.”
“Baby Gem can have a nursery,” I said. “The house is big enough.”
“Exactly. If she comes, I’m going to have to explain a house with eight bedrooms and all of them being used.”
I poked an eye open. “You�
��ve spent the last six or so years living together, haven’t you?”
“Not with a girlfriend.” He started tracing the outline of my face. “A girlfriend – a wife and a baby – should have their own house. She’s not really going to understand this.”
“I thought you wanted to wait to tell her?”
“She asked about Sungmin and you, and I stupidly said it was because you were pregnant, and we wanted to hide the story. Now she wants to come and make sure you’re taking care of the baby and I’m taking care of you. She was mortified when I said we hadn’t bought a single thing for the baby.”
That last part was true. I’d seen things in stores, but I’d never been able to buy it. Irrational paranoia that someone would see it had always set in. I could go to a fan meet, but I couldn’t buy a baby grow? My brain made little sense sometimes.
But the big things, like a cot and bassinet… I didn’t even know how to buy that. I mean, the walk into a store and pay for it part was obvious, but what if the guys wanted to come with me? Which meant online shopping, and that meant a delivery. It was on my list of things to discuss with Holly. She just always seemed so busy when I tried to call.
“I’m sure we can work something out,” I told him. “I mean, it’s just me and you right now. If we coordinate with Sungmin, I’m sure we can get a time when it’s just us in the house again.”
“And how do we pick a room for the nursery?”
I shrugged. “We claim it’s a spare room that one of the others use on the rare occasion they come around, but tell her it’s a good choice and buy the stuff we need. Figure the rest out later?”
CX leaned over, claiming my mouth with his. And this conversation was over. I wasn’t complaining. CX’s teeth tugged at my lower lip as his hand slid down my throat, over my breasts, and then under my top. I moaned into his mouth as he dipped his hand into my bra and teased my nipple.
I reached up, threading my hands through the soft curls of his hair. He might have been the youngest, but the way his tongue played with mine had an ache forming between my legs as though my clit was calling out for him.
