Archive of Our Own

Luke didn't quite know what he was doing.

Everything had been going so well—which was exactly the problem.

Yerin was his whole world.

Her smile warmed him like the sunlight that streamed through the curtains on mornings he'd rather stay in bed. She was the voice note waiting for him after a bad rehearsal, the laughter that lulled him to sleep during late-night phone calls.

She was brilliant and kind and funny in an effortless sort of way. There was something subtle about her that drew people in. She cared about others with her whole heart, even when they didn't deserve it.

In fact, especially when they didn't deserve it.

The thought of being without her made him feel physically sick.

Sometimes he would look at her and wonder how she'd ended up with him at all. She could have chosen anyone she wanted.

And somehow, for reasons Luke still couldn't understand, she'd chosen him.

She'd told him she loved him like it was the most obvious thing in the world, and he never quite knew what to do with that because he always had a talent for ruining good things.

And Yerin was the best thing that had ever happened to him.

But somewhere, in the twisted, fucked-up corner of his brain, Luke couldn't stop waiting for it to fall apart.

Maybe that was why he'd started the conversation in the first place.

Maybe some part of him thought he was getting ahead of the inevitable.

Maybe he thought this was what Yerin wanted.

Maybe he thought that if he gave her permission to leave first, it wouldn't hurt so much when she eventually did.

The truth was, Yerin leaving for Australia wasn't what scared him. They'd done long distance before. Their entire relationship had been built around it.

They'd started dating in October, when Yerin came to London for The Maids. Now it was March. Months of voice notes, FaceTimes, flights, and countdowns until the next visit. It wasn't easy, but they'd managed.

They'd even made plans for after the press tour—scheduled calls, future trips, little ways to make the distance hurt less.

They could do it.

Luke was just a coward.

Every good thing in his life had eventually come with a cost, and he couldn't shake the feeling that this would be no different. He felt trapped in a strange limbo, constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop.

He was always waiting for something to go wrong, for a reason he didn't deserve any of it.

Instead of trusting her, he'd done what he always did—he panicked.

So he'd said the stupidest thing imaginable.

"Look," he'd begun awkwardly, avoiding her eyes, "if you want to see other people while we're apart... that's okay."

"What?"

Luke swallowed.

"I'm just saying..." His voice trailed off. "We won't be seeing each other as much as we'd like, so if you need to, you know... satisfy certain needs, you can do so. It's fine."

The look on her face told him immediately that it was, in fact, not fine.

"If you want to find someone else while you're in Sydney—"

"Why the fuck would I want to do that?"

Luke opened his mouth.

"Luke, are you kidding me?" she continued. "Do you actually think I'd want anyone else?"

"I—"

"I'm not cheating on you. I could never do that to you."

The hurt in her voice cut straight through him.

"That's not what I'm saying."

"Then what are you saying?"

Luke scratched at the hair at the nape of his head.

"I'm saying I wouldn't be angry."

"Why would that matter?"

Because it would hurt less if he gave her permission first. If she met someone better in Sydney (and how could she not?) at least he could pretend he'd expected it. He could tell himself it wasn't really rejection if he'd been the one to suggest it

Some pathetic part of him was just trying prepare for a heartbreak that hadn't even happened yet.

But he couldn't say any of that.

Instead, he just shrugged.

"I don't really believe in cheating."

Yerin blinked blankly at him.

"You don't believe in cheating."

It wasn't a question.

Luke winced immediately. He heard how ridiculous it sounded the second it left his mouth.

"That's not—"

"You don't believe in cheating," she repeated, shaking her head as she slowly stood.

"Yerin—"

"So what? You think I'd just sleep with someone else the second I get on a plane?"

"No."

"Or is this your way of telling me you want to sleep with other people?"

"What? No. Jesus Christ, no."

"Then why are we even having this conversation?"

Because every good thing he'd ever had had eventually disappeared.

Because some stupid, terrified part of him couldn't stop waiting for her to realise she deserved better.

"I just..." He rubbed at the back of his neck again. "I don't know."

Yerin stared at him. He thought that might somehow be worse than if she'd shouted.

"You don't know."

"No, that's not what I meant—"

"Then what did you mean?"

Luke couldn't answer her, and that seemed to hurt her more than anything. He watched helplessly as her expression slowly crumpled.

For a long moment, neither of them spoke.

"I think I'm going to leave." she said, grabbing her bag.

"Yerin—"

"No."

Her voice cracked slightly.

"I'm leaving, Luke."

And for the first time since she'd walked into his life, she looked at him like she didn't understand him at all.

That had been two months ago. The press tour had ended in London, and, as they always did, they'd found themselves back at his flat—only this time, he'd managed to ruin it.

For the first time since they'd started dating, Yerin had changed her flight and gone back to Sydney early. She'd simply packed her bag, called a cab, and left. There was none of the usual clinging to every last second of precious time together.

She just went.

Luke could still remember standing in the doorway, watching her walk away.

He hadn't stopped her—he wasn't sure she would've let him.

They'd only spoken once since then.

Yerin had called him unexpectedly a few weeks later. He'd answered on the second ring, heart pounding when he saw her name on his screen.

It was only afterwards that he'd realised it had been the middle of the night in Sydney.

"Hi Yerin—"

"Would you really not care if I slept with someone else?"

Straight to it, then. He exhaled slowly and swallowed.

"If that's what you wanted, then no. I wouldn't care."

When Yerin finally spoke, her voice sounded small.

"You're being serious?"

"Yes."

"Are you expecting me to say the same thing?" she asked. "That I wouldn't care if you saw other people? That I'd just sit around wondering who you were with?"

"No, Yerin, that's not—"

"Then what?"

Luke's grip tightened around his phone. He didn't know how to explain it.

How was he supposed to tell her that the thought made him feel sick? That he couldn't imagine being with anyone else?

"Yerin—"

"If you wanted to see other people," she said quietly, "you could've just said so."

"That's not what I want."

But the words came too late, and the line went dead. Luke stared at the Call Ended screen for a long time.

He hadn't managed to sleep at all that night.

Instead, he'd spent hours staring at the ceiling, replaying every second of the conversation and wondering how he'd managed to get everything so wrong.

Because the truth was, he couldn't imagine being with anyone but Yerin. He couldn't imagine waking up beside someone else, or building a life that didn't have her in it.

So why had he kept asking her to imagine exactly that?

For two months, Luke prayed to anyone who might be listening that she'd come back. That he'd get one chance to explain. One chance to grovel on his knees before her if that was what it took.

Because losing Yerin had been the last thing he'd ever wanted.

And if she asked him to spend the rest of his life making it up to her, he'd probably agree to that too.

Luke didn't know why he'd done it, but he'd spent the evening drinking himself stupid at the pub.

It hadn't helped.

If anything, getting pissed had only made everything worse.

By the time he stumbled through the front door of his flat, it was almost three in the morning. His head spun unpleasantly, a warning of the brutal hangover waiting for him tomorrow.

He'd lost track of how many shots he'd taken. How many pints he'd ordered.

He didn't particularly care, and somehow, the silence that greeted him was worse.

With a groan, he plugged his dead phone into the charger and began throwing clothes into a suitcase. He was going to Southampton. A few days with his parents might do him some good (not that he could realistically get much worse).

Packing while drunk turned out to be a terrible idea. He kept forgetting what he'd already packed, standing in the middle of the room holding the same shirt for several minutes at a time.

Eventually though, he finished and collapsed backwards onto the bed, the mattress dipping beneath him. There was too much space beside him. Far too much.

Luke reached for his phone. It had managed to claw its way back to eleven percent. He tapped the screen awake and immediately was greeted by a photo of himself and Yerin from the Bridgerton premiere.

The picture had been taken from behind. He was leaning towards her, their arms wrapped tightly around each other.

Luke remembered that day.

It had been a good day. Then again, most days were good when they involved Yerin.

His chest tightened.

He wondered if she still had the matching lock screen. Maybe she'd changed it, unable to stand the sight of his face anymore. Maybe she'd cried when she changed it. Maybe she hadn't.

A lump formed in his throat. Had she deleted their photos together?

Did she still wear the hoodie she'd stolen from him because it smelled like him?

Did she ever reach for her phone to send him something funny before remembering she wasn't talking to him anymore?

Luke knew he did.

The thoughts were ridiculous. Pathetic, even, but he couldn't stop thinking them anyway.

A tear slipped down his cheek and Luke wiped it away immediately. It was his fault after all, that she wasn't here, that she no longer called his flat home, that they weren't curled up together on the mattress, watching the sunset spill though the windows.

It was his fault that there was nobody leaving half-finished cups of peppermint tea around the flat, and that there was nobody humming absentmindedly in the kitchen while she made breakfast.

It was his fault that the side of the bed beside him was cold (and his fault he still slept facing her side anyway, as though she might somehow be there when he woke up).

His fault. His fault. His fault.

Luke didn't know why he expected to see a head of black hair when he returned to the flat after his first rehearsal for The Lives of Others.

Oh. Right. Yerin was supposed to be here. Instead, the flat was empty.

It was late, but Yerin always struggled to sleep. If things had gone differently, she probably would have been curled up on the sofa with her knees tucked beneath her, surrounded by notebooks or loose sheets of paper as she annotated a script for an audition or scribbled furiously in her journal.

She would've looked up as soon as she heard the door open and smiled.

"You're late."

Luke would've crossed the room before she'd even finished speaking, leaning down to kiss her while she laughed and complained that he'd interrupted her train of thought.

And then, inevitably, she would've abandoned whatever she was working on and dragged him towards their bedroom.

The image came so easily that for a moment Luke forgot it wasn't real. But the silence settled around him again, and the flat remained stubbornly empty.

It was only a cruel figment of his imagination that would never happen, no matter how vivid the idea was in his mind.

Luke sighed heavily. He'd been doing that a lot recently. And crying too. There wasn't much else to do when half your heart was somewhere on the other side of the world.

Restless, he crossed to the window and pushed it open, the cool air rushing inside.

Maybe he needed a new hobby. Something destructive—smoking, maybe. Yerin would've hated that, and the thought made him smile despite himself.

It then made him feel worse.

There was no one around to wrinkle her nose and lecture him about it. No one to steal the cigarette from between his fingers before he'd even managed to light it. No one to tell him he was being an idiot.

Maybe he could drink more instead. Work himself into exhaustion. Take every shift, every rehearsal, every opportunity that came his way until he was too tired to think.

Thinking was the problem.

Thinking led to remembering, and remembering led to wondering what Yerin was doing, and wondering what Yerin was doing always led to him imagining a hundred different versions of her life that no longer seemed to have a place for him in it (and she was all the better for it).

Suddenly, his phone rang, the sound startling him so badly he nearly dropped it.

 Hannah Dodd

Luke frowned in surprise. Although he liked Hannah a lot, after everything, she had become more Yerin's friend than his. If anyone from the cast was going to call him, it would've been Newty, maybe even Claudia.

Certainly not Hannah.

"Hey, Hannah."

"Hey. How are you doing?"

Luke shut his eyes. He didn't understand why she was still calling, let alone, being nice to him. There was something about genuine kindness that felt almost unbearable when you were miserable.

"I'm fine," he lied. "Just got back from rehearsal."

"How was it?"

"Tiring."

"I can imagine."

He suddenly wondered if Yerin had told her. She must have. They were friends after all, and friends talked, and they would have talked about what had happened, wouldn't they?

"Is everything okay?" he asked, before he could stop himself.

"Of course. Why wouldn't it be? she answered, sounding genuinely confused.

“No reason,” Luke backtracked quickly. Another lie. “How are you? How’s shooting?”

"Good. Me and Masali are having fun. Though you've somehow managed to message the Bridgerton group chat even less than usual."

Luke let out a quiet huff of laughter.

"Oh. Sorry."

"Nothing to apologise for. Everyone knows you're busy."

Busy.

That was one word for it.

"Congrats on the play, by the way. I saw the announcement."

"Thanks."

A pause settled between them, and Luke couldn't quite tell if it was the silence was comfortable or not.

"Anyway," Hannah continued gently, "I just wanted to let you know I'm thinking about you."

Luke stared out the window, his throat tightening.

"Thank you."

"Get some rest, alright?"

"Yeah."

"Talk soon."

"Bye, Hannah."

The call ended, but Luke continued to stare at the dark screen.

Why did she call?

Had Yerin not told her? Or worse—had she told her everything? Had Hannah heard what had happened and decided that Luke was pitiful enough to require checking up on?

The thought made his stomach twist. Not because it was unfair, but because it was probably true.

And what would he even say if she called and he picked up again? That he was miserable and falling apart? That he couldn't stand the silence in his own home?

That he would do anything to hold Yerin in his arms one more time, even if it only lasted a few seconds, even if she pulled away immediately afterwards, even if all it did was remind him of what he'd lost and exactly whose fault it was.

Because that was the worst part—knowing that he had been the one to push her away.

Knowing that if he'd just kept his mouth shut, if he'd trusted her a little more and himself a little less, she probably would've been here right now, hogging all the duvet to herself, or fitting into his arms in that perfect way that made it feel as though she'd always belonged there.

Instead, he'd somehow managed to turn the best thing that had ever happened to him into the greatest mistake of his life.

He was the reason she wouldn't come home.

Worse, he was beginning to suspect she didn't even think of it as home anymore.

The thought hurt more than he cared to admit because truthfully, he didn't either. A home was supposed to be where the person you loved was waiting for you.

These days, it was just a flat.

Perhaps everyone else would eventually forget what had happened. Luke suspected he'd spend the rest of his life remembering.

Right.

Fat chance.

He would say he was fine. He always did. He would make polite, empty conversation until Hannah ran out of things to ask, and eventually, so would everyone else. The calls would stop. They always did.

Bridgerton was just a job at the end of the day. The fact they'd all become friends was probably the unusual part. With a little more effort, he could pull away until they were nothing more than colleagues. He didn't want to interfere with Yerin's career—he knew how much playing Sophie Baek meant to her.

He could manage pretending everything was normal if it made her happy, though the thought of standing opposite her and acting as though nothing had ever happened between them made something twist painfully inside of him.

 It would be okay, though. He would do anything for her.

Luke headed towards the guest bedroom, where he slept these days.

He'd given up on trying to sleep in their room after she'd left. It still smelled too much like her. Her shampoo lingered faintly on the pillows, and one of her hair ties was still sitting on the bedside table exactly where she'd forgotten it.

Luke had found it at two in the morning a few weeks earlier and ended up sitting on the edge of the bed with it clutched in his hand, crying so hard he'd struggled to breathe.

After that, he'd moved into the guest room.

It was easier.

Not because he missed her any less (nothing could fill the hollow ache her absence had left behind, the strange empty space she seemed to occupy even when she wasn't there), but because there was nothing in the room that could trick him into believing she'd only stepped out for a moment and would be back any second.

The guest room was impersonal, stripped of memories and familiar scents, and Luke preferred it that way.

At least it couldn't lie to him.

Luke was well aware that Yerin was it for him.

He knew in his heart there would never be anyone else, so he didn't even bother resisting the way he thought of her as his, even though he knew he hadn't earned the right to call her that anymore.

Every future he had ever pictured for himself contained Yerin, and now he spent most of his time trying not to think about what was left after she'd been removed from it.

The answer, unfortunately, was not very much.

He changed quickly and slipped beneath the cool sheets.

As always, his last thoughts before sleep were of black silk hair, dark eyes, and a soft smile that had ruined him from the very beginning.

Even now, months later, his heart still reacted to the thought of her. Some pathetic part of him suspected it always would.

Yerin continued to haunt his dreams every night.

Though, given that he always woke up and found her gone again, it might've been more accurate to call them nightmares.

Luke wasn't entirely sure how he'd ended up outside her hotel room.

He knew she was back in the country. He'd known for weeks, ever since filming schedules had started circulating. No matter what happened, he would've seen her eventually.

Sooner or later, they'd have been forced into the same room, and he would've had to look at her like he wasn't still hopelessly in love with her.

Not that pretending would have been particularly convincing.

His plan had been to wait. To be normal and only see her when absolutely necessary and keep every interaction strictly professional, because that was what they were now.

Colleagues.

Co-stars.

Two people who had once loved each other and now had to pretend they didn't.

Luke hated every part of it.

Still, he had intended to try, if only for her sake.

Instead, he'd somehow found himself standing in a hotel corridor staring at her door like a man on his way to his own execution.

The knowledge alone that she was only a few feet away made his chest ache.

Yerin was here. Close enough that if she opened the door, he could reach out and touch her.

Luke swallowed hard.

It suddenly sunk in. He'd spent months imagining this moment, but now that it was actually happening, he realised none of those fantasies had prepared him for the reality of it.

In most versions, she slammed the door in his face and told him to go fuck himself.

(Honestly, he would've deserved it.)

In others, she listened while he apologised. Sometimes she forgave him. Sometimes she didn't.

Occasionally, in the sort of humiliating, sleep-deprived fantasies that only arrived around three in the morning, she kissed him before he could get a single apology out.

Those were always the hardest ones to wake up from.

Luke had rehearsed entire conversations in his head, but now, standing outside her door, he couldn't remember a single word.

He briefly considered leaving. He could turn around, get back in the lift, go home and continue being miserable from a safe distance.

That had been working wonderfully so far.

Besides, what exactly was he expecting to happen here?

That Yerin would open the door, see him standing there like a complete idiot, and somehow decide that everything was forgiven?

Luke stared at the hotel room number for another few seconds, before he exhaled.

Well.

He was here now, wasn't he?

Before he could talk himself out of it, he knocked.

For a horrible moment, nothing happened.

Then the door opened, and there she was, somehow, impossibly more beautiful than he remembered.

"Fuck. Shit—Yerin, sorry. I don't know what I was thinking."

Her eyes widened slightly.

"Luke."

"No, no, no." He shook his head rapidly, already backing away. "I shouldn't have come here. I'm sorry. I'll go. I'm leaving."

He turned towards the lift. Well, he tried to.

A hand closed around his wrist—not completely, her fingers too small to wrap all the way around it, but enough to stop him anyway.

The touch sent a jolt through him, and for one awful second his mind betrayed him completely, slipping straight back to the moments he’d never quite learned how to stop thinking about; nights tangled up in her, her fingers tugging his hair, her hands gripping his shirt. Those same hands used to cling to him like she couldn’t quite decide where he ended and she began

Heat flashed through him so fast it almost made him dizzy. Luke quickly shoved the thought away before it could do any more damage.

“Come back please.” Yerin said, and Luke slowly turned around to face her.

And froze.

God, she was gorgeous.

Not because of the way the soft hotel lighting caught the dark waves of her hair, or because she somehow still looked beautiful after a long flight., but because it was her—because it had always been her, and his brain had never learned how to look at her without falling into the same familiar ruin.

His Yerin.

Or at least she had been once.

Because somehow, after months of misery and regret and convincing himself he could survive without her, one look at her was enough to make every lonely night he'd spent missing her feel fresh all over again.

Who was he to deny her anything?

If she asked him for every stupid, impossible thing in the world, he'd probably find himself trying anyway.

Luke suspected that if she asked for the moon, he would spend the rest of his life trying to reach it with his bare hands.

She deserved everything, and more.

Far more than he'd ever been able to give her.

The same face he'd spent months trying and failing to forget. The same eyes he'd searched for in crowds without meaning to. The same woman he'd somehow convinced himself he could live without.

Who was he kidding?

He'd missed her so badly it felt like he'd been walking around with something vital missing from him.

It was as though she'd taken half of his heart with her when she left.

Okay," he whispered.

Yerin stepped aside, allowing him into the room.

"Why are you here?" she asked softly once the door clicked shut.

Luke opened his mouth.

Nothing came out.

It was like being back in his flat all over again, standing there while she looked at him and waited for an explanation he couldn't seem to give. The words were there somewhere, trapped behind his ribs, tangled up with sleepless nights.

His face crumpled before he could stop it.

"I..." His voice broke. "I don't know."

Tears burned behind his eyes.

"I'm sorry."

Yerin stared at him for a long moment before reaching towards him.

"Come here."

"Yerin..."

"Luke."

Her own voice cracked slightly.

"Come here."

Luke obeyed immediately—of course he did, as if there had ever been a version of him capable of doing anything else when she asked.

He was hers. He always would be.

A hopeless, embarrassing part of him suspected that would remain true for the rest of his life, regardless of whether she forgave him, hated him, or decided she never wanted to see him again. He could spend the next fifty years trying to move on and still find himself turning his head whenever someone laughed like her in a crowded room.

If she'd asked him to leave, he would leave. If she'd asked him to stay away forever, he would do that too, no matter what it cost him (which, realistically, would've been everything and then some).

As he crossed the room towards her, another horrible thought struck him with enough force to make his stomach turn.

What if she'd only let him in so she could break his heart properly this time?

What if she'd listened to his apology and told him it didn't matter?

What if she'd already moved on?

The thought alone felt like being winded.

What if there was already somebody else?

Someone who would've trusted her.

Luke hated him immediately, despite the fact that he didn't exist.

Or maybe he did.

Maybe there was already some handsome actor or producer or director making her laugh between takes. Maybe somebody else was bringing her coffee in the mornings. Maybe somebody else knew all those tiny things Luke loved most about her: the way her nose scrunched when she was trying not to laugh, the way she stole his hoodies and insisted they belonged to her now, the way she always complained about being cold before immediately stealing all of his body heat.

Maybe somebody else was holding her now, making new memories while Luke was still mourning old ones.

The thought made something ugly and desperate claw up his throat.

Luke genuinely wasn't sure there was enough left of his heart to survive hearing that.

Still, he came and sat beside her on the bed.

Because Yerin had asked him to. If she was going to break his heart, she had every right.

And because if this was the last time he ever got to see her, he would rather have his heart broken properly than spend the rest of his life wondering.

"Yerin. I—God, I'm so sorry."

The words came out cracked and broken, barely recognisable as speech, and Luke hated it. He hated that this was the first thing she had seen of him after months apart: red-eyed, trembling, crying so hard he could barely string a sentence together.

"I know."

"No, you don't."

A small, miserable sound escaped him as he tried and failed to pull himself together.

God, this was humiliating.

He was standing in a hotel room crying so hard he could barely breathe, and somehow, he still couldn't seem to say what he wanted so desperately to.

"I don't know how to explain it."

His chest was tight.

"I don't know what to say."

His voice broke again.

"There aren't enough words in English or French or any other language to explain how fucking sorry I am."

He had to stop speaking altogether then, pressing the heel of his hand against his eyes.

"I've replayed that conversation every day," he admitted quietly. "Every single day." A shaky breath escaped him. "I keep thinking if I'd just shut up for five minutes. If I'd just trusted you. If I'd stopped trying to ruin the best thing that's ever happened to me..."

His voice disappeared completely, and when he looked back up at her, he looked devastated.

"I never wanted anyone else, Yerin. I couldn't want anyone else. Not now. Not ever. I just want you."

“I know,” Yerin said, reaching up to cradle his jaw.

Luke nearly broke completely at the touch.

Her hand was impossibly soft against his skin, cupping his face as though he was something delicate instead of a man who had spent months systematically ruining his own life. It burned him alive, and Luke found that he would've happily stood in the flames and let the fire consume him completely if it meant she never pulled away.

He nearly closed his eyes. After months without her, the simple kindness of being touched again felt almost too much to bear.

"I'm sorry too," she whispered.

Luke's eyes widened immediately.

"There is nothing for you to be sorry for."

"Yes, there is."

Her thumb brushed beneath his eye, catching another tear before it could fall, and Luke hated himself for how his entire body seemed to lean instinctively into the contact.

"I overreacted. I didn't listen. I made assumptions."

"No." Luke shook his head hard enough that it almost hurt. "No, Yerin. You didn't."

His voice cracked again.

"I said something awful. I said something so unbelievably stupid that I've spent the last few months wishing I could travel backwards in time just so I could punch myself in the face before I opened my mouth."

A watery laugh escaped her though Luke couldn't find anything funny about it.

"You didn't mean it."

"I still made you think that I wanted somebody else. I still made you think that I didn't love you enough."

His breathing hitched.

"I didn't mean it. God, Yerin, I didn't mean any of it."

He swallowed hard against the lump in his throat.

"I never want to see you with anyone else. I can't even think about it, and certainly couldn't bear it. It would kill me."

His eyes were squeezed shut but he could still hear how Yerin had started crying properly then.

"So why did you say it?"

Luke let out a miserable laugh and dropped his gaze to the carpet.

Because that was the question, wasn't it?

The question he'd been asking himself for months.

Why?

Why would he risk losing the person he loved more than anything?

Why would he hand her the knife and then act surprised when it cut him?

"Because I'm an idiot."

The smallest smile tugged at her mouth. It was the first smile he'd seen from her in months and the sight of it nearly undid him.

Because he'd missed that smile so, so much.

I was scared," he admitted quietly, staring down at the floor because he couldn't bear to watch her face while he said it. "So I tried to get ahead of it.I kept waiting for you to realise I wasn't worth all the effort."

The words slipped out before he could stop them and he wished immediately that he could take them back.

"I kept waiting for you to wake up one morning and realise that you'd somehow ended up with the wrong person. That eventually you'd look at me properly and wonder why you'd settled for this when you could've had anyone."

He let out a hollow laugh.

"You're brilliant, Yerin. You're talented and kind and beautiful and somehow you manage to make every room better just by walking into it, and I spent months waiting for you to notice that I was just..."

He gestured vaguely at himself.

"...me."

Yerin made a strangled noise that sounded suspiciously like a sob.

"So I decided to break my own heart first."

"Oh, Luke."

"I know."

His voice was barely audible.

Then, before he could embarrass himself any further, Yerin moved. One second she was sitting beside him, and the next she was in his arms.

Luke genuinely thought his heart stopped.

For one terrible, wonderful second, he couldn't move, couldn't breathe, couldn't even process what was happening because he'd spent so long convincing himself that this would never happen again, that whatever they had once been belonged firmly in the past, something he had ruined beyond repair through his own stupidity.

He had imagined holding her a thousand times, but nothing had prepared him for the reality of her.

She fit against him with a familiarity that felt almost painful.

Like finding his way home.

His arms wrapped around her automatically, pulling her closer before he even realised what he was doing. Too tight, probably, but after months without her, Luke found he couldn't quite make himself care.

How had he spent months trying to convince himself that losing her was survivable?

How had he looked at the best thing that had ever happened to him and somehow decided the solution was to push her away before she could leave first?

A broken sound escaped him, somewhere between a laugh and a sob, and he buried his face in her hair, breathing her in before he could stop himself.

God.

He'd missed that too.

For months, he'd convinced himself this was gone. That if he ever held her again, it would be as Benedict, beneath studio lights with cameras and a whole crew watching, pretending to be in love instead of actually being allowed to feel it.

But this was real.

He was just Luke—an idiot who loved her so much it ruined him.

"I love you," he whispered into her hair, his voice shaking so badly the words barely sounded like him at all. He tightened his hold on her, as though he needed to reassure himself that she was actually there. "I love you so much."

"I love you too."

Luke buried his face against her shoulder and nearly started crying all over again.

"Yerin, I—"

"Don't."

Her arms tightened around him.

"Not right now."

He swallowed.

"Okay."

"Just hold me."

And God, if that wasn't the easiest thing she'd ever asked him to do.

Luke closed his eyes and pulled her closer, pressing his face into the curve of her neck as though he could somehow make up for months of missing her through proximity alone.

He could hold her for ten minutes. Ten hours. Ten years.

The rest of his life if she let him.

And as his arms tightened around her, Luke found himself thinking that if she asked him to stay exactly like this forever, standing in the middle of a hotel room with her heartbeat beneath his ear and her arms wrapped around him, he would do it without hesitation.

After all, he'd already spent months learning that there was very little he wouldn't do for Yerin.

The only thing harder than loving her, it turned out, had been trying not to.