by J. S. Lee
I hugged myself, trying to keep the despair at bay. I thought telling him would have helped. It hadn’t.
Captain Shin looked at his watch. “Now, I’ve wasted that much time driving back to Seoul and trying to hunt your ass down, that I’ve missed my dinner. Does anyone know anywhere that does a good jjimdalk?”
“I don’t understand,” I muttered.
“There’s a really good place I know in Jongam-dong,” CX supplied, helpfully. Jongam-dong was to the north of the city. “It’s popular as well, so you’d probably have to wait for a table.”
“But what about his punishment?”
“Kate, just let it go,” Xiao said, gently.
I shook my head, feeling on the brink of tears again. “No. I appreciate the time with Youngbin, I do, but if he’s still going to end up with a dishonorable-”
“Relax,” Captain Shin told me. “New mothers don’t need all this stress. No one is getting discharged. Confinement for a month and a dock in wages seems reasonable for going AWOL.”
I looked at Youngbin. He looked as surprised as I felt.
“Jongam-dong… that’s probably a few hours,” Captain Shin muttered, heading for the door.
I waited for him to leave and then I marched up to Youngbin and punched him hard in the arm. “Don’t you dare do stupid shit like that ever again!” I snapped at him.
“Kate, it’s fine. We’re all fine.”
“We nearly weren’t,” I said before punching him again.
Youngbin wrapped his arms around me. “I don’t care how many times you hit me, or how much you shout at me, I would do it again. For anyone in this room.”
I closed my eyes, letting the anger and fear leave me. Dating idols was anything but easy, and often stressful, but I wouldn’t change it. This was exactly where we were supposed to be.
Epilogue
A Few Years Later
I sat at the dressing table, applying tinted lip gloss to my lips. Beside me, Jemma was mimicking me like a pro. I stared at her through her reflection, watching her as she squeezed her lips together.
We had never come across a reason to need to find out who of Onyx was her biological father, and over the years, as she had grown, I’d thought I’d seen bits of them all in her. Right now, she was sitting with the sass of CX; something she couldn’t have learned from behavior as he had spent the last eighteen months in his mandatory enlistment.
There was little of me in her, looks wise. Her hair was a lighter shade than most Korean kids, more like my natural brown hair, but still not enough for it to be obvious.
“You both look beautiful,” MinMin said from the bed.
“That’s because I am,” Jemma told him, matter of factly.
MinMin turned to JongB who was stretched out next to him, scrolling through something on his phone. “You know that’s you, right?”
“Can’t help it if she got her genes from me.”
“No,” Jemma said, turning to face the two. “I’m too small to wear your clothes, silly.”
JongB set his phone down and sat up, tilting his head at her. “But you’re not too small to wear mummy’s makeup?”
Jemma grinned, the smile missing a few teeth. “No, because this is Daddy Xiao’s makeup.”
JongB blinked rapidly a few times, and then he shrugged. “Carry on.”
“I’m going to go color,” she declared, sliding off the stool.
“Excuse me, missy,” I said. “Not so fast.”
It took her a moment and then she bounded over to the bed, climbing up to MinMin and JongB to give them a hug and a kiss. On the way out, she did the same to me, and then she scarpered down the hall.
We’d lucked out with this kid. She had been hard work when she was a baby, not settling easily, and I think it had taken almost two years before she slept through the night, but she had grown into someone smart and cute.
So far, she had only questioned having so many dads once. It had been a few days into her first week of school and she had been confused about why the other kids only had one dad. She’d come home crying because she had been devastated that the other children weren’t as lucky as her.
While MinMin and Xiao had explained things as best they could to a six-year-old, Sungmin and I had tackled the teacher and the parents. That had been surprisingly easy.
As Jemma had grown older, the rest of us had sat down together and planned things out so we could continue without having to worry about anyone finding out about us. As the years passed and more and more fans had been commenting about Onyx’s lack of girlfriends (who’d have thought I’d ever see that day), we were more worried about the fall out on Jemma.
It was only ever me or Sungmin that turned up to school to pick her up and drop her off, and because most of the other parents knew who Onyx were, it was easy to tell them that we were close and Jemma just called them dads.
We were either convincing liars, or that made more sense than them actually being her fathers, that everyone seemed to believe it.
Tomorrow, when everyone was finally back together, we were going to try to explain it to Jemma as best we could.
I stood, smoothing out the white fabric of the lacy sundress I was wearing. It earned me a wolf whistle from JongB. “You know, I think we have time to get you out of that dress.”
“Jongsub, I have just spent two hours getting my hair and makeup done. We’re not doing anything that involves me getting out of this dress.”
“Then keep the dress on?” MinMin offered, grinning mischievously. “We’ll make sure your hair stays just as it is.”
I rolled my eyes and hurried to the door. “That’s what you said last time. We were late to the party and my hair was a mess. You have both showered, done your hair and dressed. We’re not going to be late today.”
“You still looked beautiful,” JongB informed me.
“Not today,” I told him, blowing them both kisses as I walked out of the room.
I walked to Xiao’s room, pausing in the doorway. As I expected, he was working out. “You need to get showered and dressed now,” I informed him.
“Do I?” he asked, lowering the weight on the Leg Press so he could turn around and look at me. “Wow.”
I could have said the same thing back to him. The number of tattoos on his body had increased over the years. Over his arm, shoulder, and chest, was a dragon, its body made up of hundreds of scales in the shape of their jewel-shaped logo. Hidden in the design, so small that a fan would need a super zoom or uber close contact, was Jemma’s name and date of birth. He’d had the sense not to put it near the nipple piercing as that attracted a lot of attention whenever he pulled his shirt off.
Which was frequently.
“How are you feeling?”
“Excited,” I replied.
“Not nervous?”
With a happy smile, I shook my head. “Not even the slightest. And if you want to keep it that way, you need to make sure you don’t make us late. So, go shower and get dressed.”
I wandered back to the living room, finding Jemma kneeling at the coffee table, busy drawing. Jiwon was on the couch, dressed and ready to go, but he was busy watching something on the television. He flicked it off when he saw me. “Damn. You look beautiful.”
Jemma set the pen down and scowled at him. “You said a bad word.”
With a glower in my direction, Jiwon pulled his wallet out, extracted a thousand won note and held it out. Jemma bounded over, took it off him, and skipped to her bedroom. “That girl is going to be able to start her own entertainment company at this rate.”
“Stop giving her reason to take money off you?” I suggested as she bounded back in.
Jiwon gave me a weird smile, like his face had frozen in a sarcastic laugh. He turned his attention to Jemma. “Is that a picture of you and all your daddies?”
“Nope,” she said, continuing to color in the blue of a t-shirt. “This is me and my boyfriends.”
I swear someone had a magic remote, p
ointed it at Jiwon, and hit pause. “Your what?” he said, slowly.
“This is Minhyuk, and this is Eunhyuk, and this is Jinwoo, and this is Posun,” she said, pointing to each of the stick boys on her picture.
Jiwon looked at me like this was my fault. “This right here is why I said we needed to send her to an all-girl’s school.”
“Uh-huh,” I muttered, moving over to the coffee table and pointing at the remaining person on the page. “And who is this, Jemma?”
“That’s Seri. She’s my girlfriend.”
Jiwon looked at me, then at the paper, and then to Jemma, understanding washing over him. “Oh, you mean friends who are boys or girls.”
“Nope,” Jemma said, continuing her coloring, oblivious to the turmoil she was putting her dad through. “I want boyfriends and girlfriends like mommy.”
“Girlfriend?” Jiwon moved so that he was crouched down in front of Jemma. “Baby girl, when you’re old enough, you can have as many boyfriends and girlfriends as you like.”
She set her crayon down and gave Jiwon a solemn look. “Daddy, I’m already old enough.”
There was a long, silent stare-off, and then Jemma gave him a bright smile and continued coloring. Jiwon got to his feet, fished another thousand won bill out of his wallet and dropped it on the table. “This is your damn fault,” he said, pointing a finger at me.
He marched off, heading towards his room, almost taking Sungmin out in the process. “Where are you going? We need to leave.”
“I am getting my phone so I can research all-girls’ schools. In Siberia!”
As he disappeared, Sungmin looked over at me. “He found out about Jemma’s boyfriends?”
CX was the last member to go into enlistment and the last one to come out. He’d been around for Jemma’s first words, steps and lost tooth. He’d been lucky not to be the one to miss out on her first day of school.
But he’d also been the one with the longest enlistment time, opting to join the police force. The upside was his release from service was slightly more low-key than had he been in the army.
Or it would have been if he hadn’t underestimated the number of fans that were waiting for him. Not only was it the end of his enlistment, it was the mark that Onyx would be coming back as a six-member group.
While Youngbin, Xiao, Jiwon, JongB and MinMin had gone to pick him up to take him ‘home’, Sungmin, Jemma and I had taken a separate car to a mansion in the country that we’d rented for the weekend.
As Jemma skipped around the rose gardens, I sat with Sungmin watching her. It had taken about three years, but he had finally become confident enough to not wear makeup when we were back at the house.
“It’s going to get busy again,” he muttered.
“You chose to go back,” I pointed out.
“We work. We’ve got our rhythms and our tells, but it works. Much as I trust Taeyoon, he can’t handle us by himself.” He gave me a look that he gave me frequently: done with Onyx’s shit. “In the six months I quit, MinMin pierced his tongue, Xiao covered himself in tattoos, and JongB bought a pony.”
“To be fair, that pony was nothing to do with Onyx.”
“No, but we already live in a circus and if he’s left unsupervised, we’re going to end up with all kinds of animals and someone, who inevitably isn’t Jongsub, cleaning up after them.”
“I’m not complaining,” I promised him. “Onyx is Onyx. They wouldn’t be them if they weren’t in that group. Although, I’d appreciate not having more in the house to look after.”
“Where’s my Baby Jem?”
The three of us looked up as CX appeared, leading the others.
“Kate, you’re drooling,” Sungmin muttered.
Hell yes, I was. Walking towards us, all in immaculate black suits, were Onyx. That was a photoshoot right there. Years ago, they’d done one similar while we had been in Europe, and I knew it had been a success, but this would have sold more suits.
Jemma charged across the grass, doing a flying leap into CX’s arms. He swung her around before snuggling into her. I got up and hurried over to him, waiting for him to shift Jemma onto his hip so that he could hug me too. “You look incredible,” he told me before kissing me.
“I’ve missed you.”
“Holly said she would meet us at the pagoda,” MinMin said, bouncing side to side with too much energy.
Seeing as though Jemma was in no hurry to let go of CX, he carried her around the back of the country house, until we got to the pagoda. It was a traditional Korean style, which seemed a little out of place with the more modern architecture of the house behind, but it was beautiful.
Inside was Holly. She gave a happy squeak when she saw me, running over, holding her skirt in her hand to stop it blowing around her, and giving me an excited hug. “You look gorgeous,” she told me.
“Not looking too bad yourself, Holls,” I grinned.
She was in a pretty flowered dress with a flared skirt and a modest neckline. She was wearing ridiculously high heels and still only just got close to my height. She’d also curled her hair. That must have taken a while as it had grown long.
She ushered us into the pagoda where all the members of H3RO were waiting; Tae, Dante, Nate, Minhyuk, Kyun, and Jun. The only other guest was Jaehyun, holding onto Nate’s hand. We’d toyed with the idea of inviting our parents, but Xiao’s were too old to make the flight, and both myself and Jiwon hadn’t heard from ours in years. In the end, we decided to keep it to the people we trusted.
The pagoda was hexagonal, and the members of H3RO stood at the edges, armed to the teeth with phones or cameras. And that was it.
Holly cleared her throat. “Dearly beloved, we are-”
“Dude, it’s not a church. It’s not even a real wedding,” I said, rolling my eyes at her.
Holly shot me a scathing look. “I have waited years for this. This might not ever become official in a court of law, but this is official for you, so no, it’s not a real wedding, but this is a real marriage. Now shut up and stop objecting to your own wedding, because I have a part for that.”
“Don’t worry,” Dante piped up. “If Jun dares to object, I’ll throw him in the pond.”
“Jun is standing right here and has no intention of objecting!” Jun objected.
Holly cleared her throat, giving me a pointed look. “Dearly beloved, we are here today so that Sang Sungmin, Kim Youngbin, Peng Xiao, Seo Jiwon, Im Jongsub, Gong Minhyuk, and Ren Yongsik can finally fulfill their dream of marrying Kate West.
“The thing about a wedding is that it’s a symbol of your love and commitment to another person, but the marriage is the real show of your relationship. As far as I’m concerned, you’ve been married for years, and the only people who need to know that are you.
“So, without further ado, because we’ve all waited far too long for this, does anyone object? No? Great.” Holly didn’t even give anyone the chance to speak. “Right, where’s that pretty girl looking after the second most important piece of jewelry here today?”
“I’m here!” Jemma declared, sticking her hand into her pocket.
JongB dropped to a crouch and tapped her on her shoulder. “You dropped this,” he whispered at her, holding his hand out. On it was a silver bracelet.
Jemma beamed at him, swiped it up, and handed it to Holly.
“Thank you,” Holly smiled at her. She looked at me, and I held my arm out. “I am so glad I didn’t decide to add talons to my fingers,” she muttered, referencing the acrylic nails on my hand. She managed to undo the clasp and reattach it around my wrist.
It was a simple chain, with a lock pendant for a clasp. I knew from trying it on that it was a fiddly lock, and I was glad she hadn’t had her nails done either. On the front of the small lock, just above the keyhole, was a red garnet heart.
“Kate, these men here are about to give you a token of their love and devotion to you. Do you accept?”
I nodded. “You bet I do.”
Holly look
ed at the others. “Have at it. Get that token on there before she changes her mind.”
I laughed, but one by one, Sungmin, Youngbin, Xiao, Jiwon, JongB, MinMin and CX stepped forward, clipping a heart shaped birthstone to the bracelet.
Finally, Holly turned to me. “Your turn.”
Xiao, who had been standing next to me pulled a small jewelry box out of his suit jacket pocket and handed it over. I took it from him and dropped to a crouch in front of Jemma.
“I need to make a very important request from you,” I told her as she reached for my bracelet, playing with the charms. “I love your dads very much, but we wanted to do something very special for their token and we need your help with it. You see that lock?”
Jemma nodded.
“Each of your daddies has a key to that lock, but I need you to look after it for them, because we all know boys can be silly and lose things. Can you do that for me?”
Once again, with her expression solemn, Jemma nodded.
I opened the box and pulled out a necklace. It was silver, like the bracelet, but hanging from it were seven silver keys, each one with a garnet on it. I carefully put it on her.
“I won’t lose it ever, Mommy,” she told me.
“And that, I’ve decided, means you’re all wife and husbands!” Holly declared, clapping her hands. “Go kiss.”
I’d read somewhere that onyx was a protective stone, used to help shield you when battling your adversaries. Throughout history it had been believed that it brought the knowledge that separation was nothing more than illusion and that no matter what, reunion would come.
Onyx was forever.
Whoever had written that had been correct.
If there was a competition for the luckiest woman in the world, I had just won it. My life was complete.
And I still had a lifetime to live with Onyx.
The end.
… No, really… Onyx may pop up in other Atlantis books, but we really have reached the end of this series.
If you have enjoyed the story so far, please consider leaving a review where you bought this book. Reviews really do help authors out, and I (like Onyx) would be exceptionally grateful for your comments.
