The woman standing at the counter glanced back over her shoulder at Iheon as she said it.
As if she’d been right there beside him yesterday, the day before, always. So utterly unbothered. She even smiled.
Her eyes curved into half-moons, her lips bowed up, and there wasn’t a trace of guilt in any of it. Pure.
“Just wait a little. Dinner’s nearly ready.”
The woman, wearing an apron he had no idea where she’d dug up from,
“There wasn’t a single thing to eat in the fridge. If I hadn’t stopped at the market on the way, we’d have gone to bed starving.”
wearing a face that had thrown awkwardness to the dogs,
“I saw you on the news. You’re handsome enough to start with that you came across well on camera, but it didn’t capture the real thing at all, and that upset me.”
slicing cherry tomatoes for a salad...
Not a shred of the sheepishness you’d expect from someone who had vanished for half a year without a word.
Not one month. A full six. That was how long he’d wasted clinging to a question whose asker had disappeared.
All that time he’d spent floundering without an answer, her absence had eaten into him like rot.
And now, just as abruptly as she’d gone.
She’d turned up out of nowhere, that composed.
No, past composed, with a face brazen enough to make his skin crawl. And what was all this she was going on about?
Iheon’s dark brows twisted hard. The anger that had caught fire climbed to the crown of his head until the base of his skull throbbed.
Set aside the sheer absurdity of not being able to read her intent at all. Surely this, at the very least, wasn’t the way to do a reunion.
“Lee Jei.”
He called her name in a voice dropped all the way to the floor. Cold enough that anyone hearing it would know he was furious.
“It’s almost done. If you’re not going to change, just wash your hands and come sit.”
“What exactly do you think you’re doing with me right now?”
“Aren’t you hungry? I am.”
Iheon had never once been cowed, not even standing in front of the most monstrous criminals alive.
Years of making a living out of analyzing the abyss inside other people had left even his nature ruthlessly clear-headed.
Precisely because he was that kind of man, he had no history whatsoever of being jerked around by anyone.
And yet in front of Lee Jei, that formidable composure of his turned into a flimsy sheet of paper and got crumpled without mercy.
Why did you do it? Why did you leave without a word, and why come back now?
And why are you so fine with all of it when I’m not?
He’d thought he would have so many questions if they ever met again, but looking at the state of her, only one was left.
The humiliation was unbearable, and Iheon walked past the island counter straight at Jei.
Even with a man bearing down on her like that, blazing, the woman kept her placid face and stayed absorbed in slicing the cherry tomatoes that were going on top of the crisp green vegetables.
Iheon grabbed the wrist of the hand holding the knife and wrenched her around to face him. He had the knife out of her hand in one motion and flung it into the sink with a clatter.
“What if you got hurt? That’s dangerous!”
She said it with her eyes gone round as if startled, and it was galling. Because she had no right to be worried about him.
“Is this fun?”
Iheon penned Jei in between himself and the counter and looked down at her with eyes like a blade. A sneer slipped out through his twisted lips.
“Is it fun, toying with me?”
“...”
“I can’t even begin to fathom how little you must think of me, to act like this.”
His big hand clamped down hard on Jei’s wrist. Far too much strength for a wrist so thin it looked ready to snap.
“At the very least, shouldn’t you be saying you’re sorry to me? If you’re so worried about a knife like that hurting me.”
His teeth ground together on their own. Jei didn’t answer the low, growling snap of his words. Instead she quietly looked at the hand crushing her wrist. His knuckles had gone white with the force of it, and she didn’t show so much as a flicker of pain.
He’d expected some excuse out of her. What she gave him instead was a faint smile.
“I’m hungry. Let’s eat first and talk after. I’ve got something to say too.”
That placid tone, no different from any other day, and something in him snapped all over again.
“Fuck.”
He let go all at once of a grip tight enough to leave a red handprint, and with that same hand he seized her cheek.
“Wait, Iheon. The stew’s boiling-,”
“Shut that mouth.”
Iheon tilted his head and swallowed Jei’s lips.
There was nothing tender about it. His lips crashed down and crushed hers, rough, and he was relentless about it, like he meant to take her breath away from her.
His tongue pushed in through her parted lips and ransacked the small space of her mouth. A kiss that shoved forward any which way, without giving their breathing even a moment to melt together.
He’d thought she would push him off, but Jei opened her mouth willingly and swallowed his breath down sweet.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
Curses he couldn’t get out piled up beneath his throat as he sucked greedily at his wife’s lips, lips that made him dizzy.
It disgusted him that her mouth was still so familiar to his. And even so, he’d missed this mouth so badly that he could hardly make himself let go.
Goddamn it.
Iheon pressed harder with the hand gripping Jei’s cheek. Holding her so she couldn’t turn her face away, he drove in through the gap between her lips.
Hot breath tangled, and wet lips twisted and locked together. He swallowed her once, then bit down again without letting go. He dragged roughly at the corner of her mouth, then sank his teeth into her lower lip until blood beaded on it.
Pushed that hard, she had every reason to shove him away and tell him it hurt, but all she did was take a quiet fistful of his sleeve.
Iheon’s twisted brows drew tighter still.
If she’d wrenched her face away and said no, if she’d slapped him across the cheek, it would have jolted him back to his senses. And then he could have put at least one clear name to this anger.
He bit into Jei’s lips again, the way a man clenches his jaw. Rougher than before, grinding and grinding until her mouth was raw.
To the very end, Jei never refused him. The only thing that escaped from between her lips was a thin moan that slipped free as she swallowed her ragged breathing.
He’d wanted to be the one calling the shots, and instead he felt like he’d been jerked around all over again.
By Lee Jei. By that damn woman.
Iheon tore his mouth away. He put a step of distance between himself and Jei and raked his hair back with a jerky, irritated hand.
A faint, sweet warmth still clung to the lips where their breaths had been tangled together a moment ago.
Iheon scrubbed at his mouth with the back of his hand, hard, like something unclean had touched it.
The air went cold in an instant, as if someone had thrown ice water over it, and a heavy silence spread out underneath.
He fixed Jei with eyes sharp enough to cut.
There was no way she didn’t know what she had done. She’d come back knowing, and she had stood there greeting him without a flicker, knowing.
Jei met his stare for a while, then turned her back on him without warning. She reached over and shut off the burner, its ring still glowing red. The stew, left to boil away by itself all that time, had cooked down until the bottom of the pot showed through.
“What do we do? This stew’s not fit to eat.”
“That’s all you have to say to me?”
Iheon let out a short, cold scoff, past the point of disbelief. I’m done. I’m sick of this sat on the tip of his tongue, and it came naturally.
His face hardened into something stiff and unmoving as he spun away.
He couldn’t tell whether the thing boiling over in his hammering chest was hatred or the sting of betrayal.
Whether it was fury at a woman who had wrecked half a year of his life and then stood there as if nothing had happened, or disgust at himself for still being shaken by her.
Either way, he didn’t trust himself to keep standing in front of her.
“I missed you.”
He was one step from leaving the kitchen. The words that came out of Jei’s mouth were the last thing he expected, and they stopped him dead.
“I wasn’t toying with you.”
Iheon didn’t turn around. If he turned around, the self-control he’d barely managed to hold on to would snap all over again.
“It wasn’t fun, either.”
“...”
“I just needed time. That’s all it was.”
There was no rise or fall in her voice. None of the brazenness from before, none of the teasing. Just calm. Maybe that was why it sounded crueler than anything else she could have said.
Iheon’s head dropped toward the floor. He’d expected at least a hollow laugh to come out of him, but not even that would come.
She missed me.
“Don’t make me laugh.”
He ground his teeth and forced the words out low.
“Somebody who missed me doesn’t take a single call and then mail me divorce papers.”
“...”
“Tell me. How exactly was I supposed to take that?”
His head came up slowly. His eyes had gone cold. Once the heat of his rage had swept through and passed, what it left behind was barren and dry.
“Had you died? Been in an accident? Or had you found some other man while I wasn’t looking?”
If she’d died, or if there had been an accident, then at least he, her husband, would have been the first one they called.
He had gone as far as thinking that.
A dry, brittle laugh twisted his lips out of shape.
“And now you missed me? Now you weren’t toying with me?”
“I’m sorry. What I did was wrong.”
“Ha!”
For half a year, those were the words he’d wanted to hear more than anything. And now that he’d finally heard them, nothing was any better.
The anger didn’t vanish. The wound didn’t shrink. If anything, both came into sharper focus.
“What do I have to do to make this right with you?”
Jei had come to stand in front of him. She wrapped both hands around his fist, the veins standing up stark across the back of it, and asked.
