Page 152

I smiled at his well-used phrase and looked down at our joined hands, rubbing my thumb over the ring he’d taken to wearing again.

We were taxiing down the runway now.

“I was just thinking about how different things are. How different I am,” I confessed. Saying the words aloud was somehow both confronting and comforting.

I saw his head turn towards me, and for a while he didn’t say anything.

“You are different,” he said eventually. “You are you, but different.”

“Is that a good thing?” I laughed, but it came out a little weak.

“Jagiya,” he said in a tone that was almost chiding. “I have loved every version of you I have ever known.”

“That’s not an answer,” I pointed out.

“It’s the only one that matters to me.” He shrugged, but then he sighed, seeing my expression. He paused, biting his lip as he considered.

“You are different,” he said again, “but it’s more like you are now who you always were. Before, when we were together, you were not so confident. I noticed. I kept thinking that you would start to see yourself how I saw you, just because I saw you that way. I always believed you could do anything.”

I looked away for a moment, the words hitting me harder than I could have expected, because now that he’d said them, I realised how true it was. He had said it so often that it had become background noise. Like how someone says they believe in you. It doesn’t necessarily mean it’s true, it’s just something you say. But he had said it again and again in various ways. Cheering me on over every little Korean language win, celebrating my employment at ENT, when I was first published by The Loop. And even after we’d broken up, he’d followed the path of my career, cheering me on in the background.

A lump rose in my throat.

“Now you have become the person you were always meant to be, and…” His voice hitched, but he went on. “Maybe you couldn’t have done that with me. Maybe I held you back.”

I turned to look at him so swiftly my neck cracked.

“Is that what you think?” I asked, horrified.

He shrugged. “Sometimes, I do. When your life became so much bigger without me in it. I wondered if I’d made you smaller.”

I would have unbuckled my belt and thrown myself at him, had the plane still not been taxiing down the runway.

“Joon, I–I…” I paused, took a breath. “You made me feel loved. You gave me the freedom to wonder who I might become. Who I am now is the person I had to make myself into after we broke up, not because we broke up. I think in the beginning I let myself get lost in loving you. I think I let myself not reach for things because it was easier not to. But that was something I was doing to myself long before I met you.”

I held his hand tightly, trying to make him hear me.

“You didn’t hold me back. You held me up.”

He blinked furiously, looking down at our combined hands.

“I know our relationship was hard,” I said, but stopped when he gently interrupted me.

“Loving you is the easiest thing I’ve ever done. It was deserving you that was hard,” he said roughly, raising our hands to his mouth and pressing a kiss to my knuckles, and then my wrist.

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out, and then we were hurtling down the runway at a hundred miles per hour, engines roaring, and I leaned my head back against the headrest and squeezed my eyes shut, all while Jihoon twined his fingers tightly with mine.

Once we reached altitude, I relaxed, and Jihoon laid our hands on the thickly padded armrest between us. I looked down, seeing the little half-moon indents I’d left in his hand.

“I know you do not like takeoff and landing,” he said with a casual shrug.

I stared at him. “I never told you that.”

“You did,” he said with a small smile.

“When?” I asked, baffled.

He leaned his head back against the seat as he looked at me with an expression that was somehow soft, and a little embarrassed.