She had picked out a simple outfit—a polka dot dress, black cardigan, and the pearl earrings her grandmother gave her. Her hair was pulled back in a bun, and she forwent any makeup. Her eyes still burned from the camera flashes and her ears rang from the rabid questions the reporters yelled at her.
Months living in relative seclusion had numbed Jin to how the outside world operated. In New York, she was Jin, a woman the neighbors didn't know much about other than she would smile at you, even if you didn't smile back. Here, she was a priority witness in a high-profile case against her former lover. New York had been dark, sheltered, and alienating, but the quiet was a comfort. Here was a fishbowl—light seeped in from all sides and there was nowhere to hide. The stark contrast was blinding. She entered the courtroom with her head held high, ignoring how loud the click of her heels was against the hard wooden floor. Taking her seat behind the Prosecutor General, Cho Soohyun, she no longer cared that her word would be a blade at Shen’s throat. She’d draw a smile across his neck with it if she could.
The night she’d deciphered the riddle, Aiden sat her down and told her of Chaerin’s death. It felt like someone had taken a cleaver to her chest. She didn’t come out of her apartment for days. She ignored everything, including the fact that watching over her was Aiden’s job. After a week, he used his key to get in and that appeased him for a while, but when he tried to talk to her, he got a bedroom door slammed in his face.
She didn’t cry. She didn’t deserve to cry.
“What if he finds you?”
Jin never thought Shen would find Chaerin. She never told the police about her last visit to Chaerin’s place. She never thought outside of her own stupid fear.
She didn’t deserve to cry.
The courtroom was curved, so from her seat she had a clear view of the defense's table. Every now and again, Shen leaned back in his seat, his attention straying to her. He stared at her with cold, dead eyes, his mouth a thin line. Contemptuous. Unforgiving. Jin ignored him because his bullying tactics hadn’t worked in the past—why did he think they would work now?
Shen’s eyes followed her, burning into her back as she took the stand. A voice in the back of her head kept screaming have courage, young lion, have courage. Courage, courage, courage. So she did. She returned the look with as much fire as she could muster from her soul. She wanted him to remember that although she didn’t know a damn thing about him, he knew her. He knew her sharp words, he knew how stubborn she was, and he knew her dogged determination. He knew exactly how strong she was.
And now she wanted him to know that he didn’t scare her.
Chaerin’s grave was the first place she visited the moment the trial was over.
It was sweltering outside. A heat haze rose from the ground, bending things at funny angles. Jin found Chaerin’s grave along the grass and soft soil in the back of the cemetery. Grass was sprouting from the dirt, and someone had recently laid fresh flowers around the base of the tombstone.
“It’s just a rock,” she murmured as she looked down at it for the first time. Compared to Chaerin’s larger-than-life personality, the tombstone was simple.
It was a small chunk of granite with her name carved into it, her birthdate, and the day she died. It said nothing about how talented she was, how extraordinary or beautiful she was. It couldn’t convey that. It didn’t say how she hogged the covers at sleepovers or sometimes left the milk out. How she was sweet and overprotective. It didn’t say any of that. Just the day she was born and the day she died.
“Hey, Chae. How have you been? Busy? Up there telling everybody what to do and how to do it? Do they have television shows up there? Heaven TV or something?” She stopped wringing her hands long enough to laugh. “Sorry, that was corny.
“I came to tell you that it worked, Chae. Just like I told you. We won. If you could have seen the look on some of the women’s faces when the judge said guilty, you would have laughed in his face. Aiden did. He laughed so hard they almost kicked him out of the courtroom.”
She bent down, placing her bouquet of flowers on the ground next to the tombstone.
“I hate this,” she whispered as she fingered the indentions of Chaerin’s name. “I hate it so much and it hurts so bad. I told you everything would be fine. I said that it would be fine over and over again. It was never okay. It was never fine.
“They tell you that in time you’ll let go, that the burn will go away, that it won’t feel like someone reached into your chest and butchered your heart. That you won’t die, that it’ll keep beating just so you can still feel the pain. They tell you a lot of things.”
Tears came and Jin reached up and touched her face. It was the first time she’d cried since she’d heard the news, and now the tears wouldn’t stop, not even when she tried to blink them away. “All I want is to go back in time and fix all of this.” Jin bent forward until her forehead was flush with the cold granite and sobbed. “I miss your stupid face so much.”
By the time she’d regained her composure, she had lost track of time. It was beginning to get dark and Aiden was waiting for her in the car. Jin wiped under her eyes and stood up. “If you’re not too busy, have someone watch over us, huh?” Jin stooped low and kissed Chaerin’s tombstone before she turned for the car and walked away.
August
Jin and Aiden sat in her apartment, surrounded by half-packed boxes while they tried to seal away this chapter in their lives with cheap packing tape.
Jin wanted to ask Aiden questions—what plans did he have now, where was he going, would she ever see him again? Things were awkward, and Jin thought it was because the one thing tying them together was gone. She was staring at the line they’d crossed months ago and now it was hard to see where Aiden's obligations ended and where his desire began.
“Hey,” she said out of nowhere. Her voice came out throttled, so she cleared her throat and tried again. “I wanted to say sorry.”
Aiden looked up from his job of packing the glassware. “For...”
“Shutting you out after Chaerin died. My head...it wasn't on straight. I took it out on the wrong person.”
To Jin’s surprise, Aiden laughed, his head shaking as he went back to work taping up the box. “You don't have to apologize for that. I wasn't expecting one.”
“Really? Because you totally deserve one.”
“Really,” he said. “I understand.”
A moment passed in silence before she looked up at him again. She stood on the bank of the Rubicon, wondering if he'd step out into the water to be swept away, or stay by her side where it was safe. “I’m not going back. To Seoul.”
Again, he surprised her. “I know.” His next words rushed past his lips. “I was offered a position. Here. And I was going to tell the moving guys when they got here, kind of surprise you, but then I thought about how stupid that would be. There’s a place I found for us—”
Jin offered him a raised brow. “Us?” she asked, studying him from across the room.
“Yeah…us.”
“Don’t you think we’re moving a little too fast?”
“Possibly.” He rubbed the back of his neck, slowly, as if he wanted to say more, like there was an ocean of words waiting. “But I don’t know if there’s a better way of getting to know someone other than”—he paused and eyed the blue tipped walkie-talkie—“all of this. But if you need slow, I can do slow.” He diverted his gaze to his hands. “I can do slow.”
“Do you know what it feels like as your body slams into the ground when your safety net disappears without warning?” she said suddenly. “We can be each other’s safety nets. Sort of like I catch you, you catch me?”
Aiden chuckled. “I know how a safety net works, Jin.”
“Well good.”
Silence stretched between them.
“No falling?” Aiden asked, his eyes locked on hers.
“No falling.”
Chapter Seven
(Five years later)
Manha
ttan
October 4; 11:38p.m.
“You left. How are you going to pay for that, Jinni? Answer me,” Shen roared and Jin flinched.
She didn’t have an answer. When her lips pressed together in a thin line, opting to keep her silence instead of feeding into his insanity, Shen opened his arms like he was offering her peace instead of razor-edged hostility.
“Jinni,” he implored, the anger draining from his face. “I came to get you back. You know I’d never hurt you.”
Jin looked from Aiden, tied up and nearly unconscious, to Shen’s hand, slick with Aiden’s blood. “I sent you to prison. Why would you want me back?”
“Because I do,” Shen snarled. “Now come here!”
“Over,” Aiden wheezed in between labored breaths, blood painting his lips with each word. “Over my dead body.”
“Oh, is that so?” Shen’s sneer morphed into a grin as he slowly turned toward Aiden.
“Shen,” Jin called softly. He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, a bit expectant, a bit impatient. She lowered the gun to the ground and took steady steps across the room, watching Aiden in her peripheral vision.
The moment she was within arm’s reach, Shen lunged for her, snatching her to his side, his hand digging painfully into her hip, taking his time as if Aiden wasn’t bleeding all over their floor, as if he hadn’t broken into their home and as if he wasn’t holding them hostage at the end of a barrel. Shen wrapped his arms around her, staining her clothes with Aiden’s blood and squeezing her with a familiarity that she thought she’d forgotten. It was delicate, soft. Once this meant something to her, but now she had to fight back the churning in her stomach.
“You don’t understand how much I’ve missed you, Jinni,” Shen whispered against her neck.
I don’t care! Don’t talk to me! Go away!
Jin tried to raise her arms to hug him back, but they were lead weights at her sides. It wasn’t like he noticed. He was too concerned with her body, his hands roving over her curves as if he still owned the key to such intimacy.
Don’t touch me. Get off of me. Stop it!
She bit down on her lip, hard enough to draw blood so she could ignore how disgusting his hands felt on her. She pulled the corners of her lips up to match his. “You did?” she asked, finally getting one of her hands to grip his forearm.
“Of course! Your face. Your voice. All of it. It’s been years, Jinni. I shouldn’t have had to do this to see you. Is that something that you understand? That I had to do all of this because you made me? Because you forgot about me?”
Jin blinked. He’s insane. He…he’s completely insane.
“No, Shen…no. I never forgot you. Not for one moment.” Jin’s forehead thudded against Shen’s chest after she forced the confession out of her mouth. “I’m so sorry.”
“Are you? Really?” he asked, tilting her head back to look at him. “Are you sorry?”
“With all my heart.” Her eyes wanted to close and she forced them to stay open. “I’m sorry I hurt you.”
It was absolutely fascinating, seeing the sadness and the hostility melt off Shen's face. His lips curled into a smile, a genuinely bright smile evocative of a time when they were happy together. Still beaming, he inched closer to her and Jin prepared herself for a kiss. Her eyelids slid down as his lips hovered over hers and his warm breath washed across her face and she tried to think of a moment, somewhere far out in space where she'd thrown it, of a happy memory of them that would allow her to get through this.
She felt his lips touch hers briefly before she heard him speak. “You know Chaerin at least begged before I killed her,” he whispered.
Horrified, Jin’s eyes snapped open. “What—”
Before Jin could finish, Shen grabbed her face in his large hand and shoved her, hard, away from him, laughing when she slammed against the wall.
“You’re sorry. You’re sorry? That’s hilarious! You don’t know what sorry feels like!” Shen laughed as he pulled a shiny Glock from his waistband. “And- and-and now you’re spewing this…this bullshit to save this asshole? Him over me?” Shen voice was guttural, loaded with anger and disbelief, and that scared Jin more than the gun. “Well, Jin-ni, it’s obvious you have prioritization issues, so I’m going to solve that for you.” His gun leveled on Aiden. His stare was hard on her. “Think of it as a gift.”
“Shen, wait!” Jin struggled to stand, her hand slipping against the streak of blood on the wall. “No!”
Her left hand landed on something hard and made of steel, and something sang in her blood—frenzy, the absence of gravity, momentum and adrenaline all at the same time. A voice in the back of her head was screaming at her. You are running out of time! You are a warrior! Warriors fight! Get up and fight!
Intuition took over. Her pupils dilated, time snapped, her mind shifted faster than her reason, and without realizing it, she was moving.
Chapter Eight
The discharge of the gunshot was muffled, like he was miles underwater, and the speed of sound was skewed. The pain, though, was instant. It was demanding and it was hot and it shot down his side like a thick agonizing miasmic poison.
He forced his focus somewhere else—on Jin, anywhere other than the pain— but everything was hazy, slow. It could be the only thing that could account for the way she moved. Moved because there wasn't another word adequate enough to describe the speed she pushed up from the floor, her hand a blur as she aimed and fired, shrieking while she squeezed the trigger over and over again. Each shot tore into Shen, and his body collided with the pristine cream wall behind him. His cigarette hung immobile from his mouth as he slid down the wall, leaving a trail behind that matched the one on the opposite wall. “Jinni?” he whispered, a sliver of heartbreak bubbling over his lips as he slumped against the floor.
Shen’s eyes fluttered back and closed, and Jin’s breathing broke down into dry heaving sobs once Shen stopped moving. Aiden shook his head, groaning. The room wouldn’t stop spinning. Jin broke out of her shock, and he watched as she closed the gap between them. The gun fell to her lap as she clawed at the knots of the rope.
She suddenly paused with the rope still clutched between her fingers. Her eyes shifted back and forth like she was making a silent decision, and slowly, her gaze turned toward Shen’s slumped body.
“No!” Aiden shouted. Jin froze and he immediately regretted yelling. “Don’t look at him, okay? Look at me. Keep your eyes on me—only me.”
She nodded and continued untying him. Finally, with the last knot undone, the ropes slacked enough for Jin to slip them up over his head. His body collapsed against hers. She was screaming now, panicking, hyperventilating but he couldn’t make her words out.
“Jin,” he croaked. “I need…I need you to calm down.”
Jin looked at him like he was crazy and Aiden winced when she pressed down on his wound, watching as blood washed over her hand. He wished they were somewhere else…on an island, in the city under the stars, space. He wished he’d done what he promised. He wished he’d protected her.
Aiden shook his head again and the entire room tried to slip out from under him. I’m going to pass out. “Do you think you can help me move to the living room?”
She shook her head hard, incredulous anger on her face, and began yelling again. The look in her eyes was frantic. He concentrated and read her lips. “You can’t move! We need hel…”
Time slowed.
Aiden’s ears popped and he could hear again. Reality disconnected, like he was outside his body, or maybe he was sharing someone else’s. He inhaled sharply, and his skin prickled with energy. As he turned his head to look at Jin, the realization hit him that the things he was feeling…weren’t coming from him. It was like he was living through Jin.
If you live among lions, you have to act like a lion.
Jin looked feral, untamed. Her hair blew around her face, flowing in an unseen current. Her pupils had dilated until only a thin ring of iris remained, and her
lip curled back over her teeth. Aiden felt her muscles tense and watched her head turn hard to the right.
A lion.
Time sped up.
Jin twisted, swung the gun, and aimed. The click of the trigger was followed by the resounding blast of a discharging gun. His ears rang. Blood sprayed his face.
A tiny escape of breath that sounded like his name filtered through the air before Jin’s body slumped forward. Aiden rushed to wrap his arms around her body before she slid to the floor.
“Jin. Wake up,” he commanded. He shook her again, crazed, his fingers digging into her arms, adrenaline eradicating his pain all together. “Jin. C’mon, babe. Wake up.”
She didn’t move.
Aiden searched her over, like if he stared at her hard enough, he could reverse time. “Why didn’t you run, huh? Didn’t I teach you to run? Didn’t I teach you to leave if you were in danger?” He shook her harder. “Do you hear me? Wake up!” Frantically, he heaved her closer, his embrace so tight that his arms were shaking. “Please…”
Aiden didn’t know how much time had passed. A minute, a few hours, seconds, before his vision spotted black and he passed out. When he woke up, he was in a hospital gown with scratchy sheets pulled up to his chin. His eyes fluttered as he tried to fight the urge to go back under, to give in to the weariness, the absolute exhaustion consuming his entire body.
His eyes slid closed again, and when they opened, they shifted to the side, expecting Jin to be there, watching over him like that one time he caught a cold—
What am I going to do with you? I tell you not to go out in the cold without a jacket and you go out in the cold without a jacket. You aren’t Superman. You’re human. Here, open your mouth. Oh, relax, it doesn’t taste that bad. Take it like a grown man and I’ll give you a kiss to make it all better, okay? Tch. Men are such babies when they are sick.
The Halo of Amaris Page 6
