29-08-2026, 03:22 AM
Chapter 145: Carry me to bed
# Scene 1
The Genesis stopped. Engine idling. The driver’s face in the rearview, waiting for instruction.
Selvam paid with the cash Summer had handed him at the door. The driver nodded. The door unlocked.
Night air. Cool. Seoul at two in the morning smelled of exhaust and something green from the trees lining the narrow lane. The Han River lay below the hill like a dark ribbon, city lights breaking across its surface in slow, reflective pulses. UN Village held its silence. Wealthy hills. Private lives behind high walls.
The building was unmarked. No name on the exterior. No logo. Just a low concrete structure with recessed lighting and a single glass door. The kind of place designed to be invisible from the street.
Selvam crossed the small courtyard. His shoes on stone. The door opened to a lobby the size of a hotel room. Warm light. Polished floor. A single security desk occupied by a man in a dark jacket, reading something on a tablet.
The man looked up. Said nothing.
“Jennie Kim,” Selvam said. “I’m expected.”
The security man’s eyes moved across Selvam’s face once. He picked up a clipboard. Scanned a list. Found a name. Nodded once.
“Sixth floor.”
The elevator was glass on three sides. Selvam watched himself as the doors closed. Dark suit. White shirt, open at the collar. The silver at his temples caught the interior lighting. His reflection held steady against the ascent, Seoul dropping away beneath him, the river growing smaller, the lights of the city rearranging themselves into patterns he could not read.
His right palm was warm. The ink had smudged further. Hannam-dong. The street name. The numbers. Jennie’s handwriting, small and precise, now blurred by sweat and the pressure of his fingers. He closed his hand. Opened it. Looked at the address one last time before the doors opened.
The hallway was wide. Low light. One door at the end.
Selvam walked. His footsteps made no sound on the carpet. The white shirt felt clean against his skin. The shower at the Grand Hyatt had been quick. Summer’s towel. Summer’s practicality. The particular efficiency of a woman who had already ordered room service and turned on the television by the time the elevator doors closed behind him.
He reached the door. Stopped.
His hand raised to knock. The pause stretched. Three seconds. Four. The particular weight of a decision that was no longer theoretical.
He knocked. Once. Firm.
Movement inside. Soft. Then the deadbolt turning. The door opened.
Jennie stood in the frame. Loose grey knit sweater that fell past her hips. Wide-leg trousers in a soft fabric that whispered when she moved. Her hair was down, dark and straight, falling around her shoulders with none of the structured intention it carried on stage. No makeup that he could see. Her face was clean. Her eyes were the same... dark, steady, the particular focus that had held his across a red-lit stage six hours earlier.
She looked at his palm first. Her eyes found the smudged ink. She studied it. The address. Her handwriting. Confirming it was still there. That he had come with the evidence of her invitation intact.
Then she looked at his face.
“I almost did not come,” Selvam said.
Her mouth curved. Not the performance smile. Something smaller. Private.
“I know,” she said.
She stepped back. The door opened wider.
The apartment was not what he had expected.
No stylist’s showroom. No curated brand presence. No evidence of the woman who existed in music videos and global campaigns. Just a wide, low-lit space with floor-to-ceiling glass facing the river. The city sprawled beyond the glass, a field of light and shadow, the Han cutting through the center like a seam of darkness.
A cream linen sofa sat against the far wall. Low. Unpretentious. The kind of furniture chosen for comfort rather than photography. A small upright piano occupied the corner nearest the windows, sheet music still open on the stand, the pages catching the faint breeze from the climate control.
The kitchen was visible through an open doorway. Small. Clean. A teapot sat on the stove, steam rising from its spout in a thin, constant thread. The smell reached him... something herbal, faintly sweet, the particular warmth of tea made recently and left waiting.
Jennie moved past him. Her body carried none of the choreographed precision it had on stage. Just the natural grace of someone walking through their own home at two in the morning, comfortable in loose clothes, comfortable in silence.
She crossed to the kitchen. Picked up two mugs from a shelf. Poured. The steam rose between them.
“Mint,” she said. “From the garden downstairs. The building has a shared plot.”
Selvam stood in the center of the room. His suit jacket felt suddenly formal against the apartment’s ease. He took it off. Folded it over one arm.
Jennie carried the mugs to the low table beside the sofa. Set them down. The tea was pale green. Fragrant.
“Summer texted me,” she said. “Ten minutes ago. ‘He’s on his way. Don’t worry.’”
Selvam’s eyebrows lifted.
“She has my number,” Jennie said. “From the launch. I gave it to her when we were talking about the autonomy stack. She’s very... efficient.”
“She is.”
“The text included a winking emoji.”
Selvam smiled. The left corner of his mouth lifting. “That sounds like Summer.”
Jennie sat on the sofa. Not at one end. The center. Her body angled toward the empty space beside her. An invitation without words.
Selvam set his jacket on the arm of the sofa. Sat. The cushion gave beneath his weight. The tea steamed between them on the low table. The city lights moved beyond the glass.
The door was closed. The security desk was six floors down. Summer was at the Grand Hyatt with room service and a television remote. Vanitha was in Los Gatos, twelve time zones away.
He was here. In Hannam-dong. With Jennie Kim’s handwriting on his palm and her mint tea going cold on the table between them.
She looked at him. Really looked. The same focused attention she had given him across the dinner table, across the red-lit stage, across every room they had shared since Texas.
“Your shirt is still damp at the collar,” she said.
“I showered before I came.”
She reached for her tea. The mug was warm between her hands. She didn’t drink. Just held it. Feeling the heat.
Selvam did the same. The mint filled his lungs. Sweet. Clean.
This was quieter. Slower. The particular weight of a beginning that had no script attached to it.
Jennie set her mug down. Untouched.
“Tell me why you almost didn’t come,” she said.
# Scene 2
Selvam held the mug between his hands. The tea had cooled enough to drink, but he hadn’t taken a sip.
“I don’t know how to be in a room with someone like you,” he said. “Not as a fan. Not as a man who’s watched your videos. As a person who showed up because you wrote an address on his hand.”
Jennie’s fingers rested on her own mug. She hadn’t drunk either.
“What does ‘someone like me’ mean?”
“Someone the world treats as a product. Someone who walks into rooms where every person wants something extractable from her visibility.” He paused. “Summer’s phrase. But she’s right.”
Jennie was quiet. Her eyes stayed on his face. The particular attention that made the room feel smaller than it was.
“That’s why you almost didn’t come,” she said. Not a question.
“Yes.”
She nodded once. Set her mug down on the low table. The tea was pale green and perfectly still.
“I’ve been a product since I was fifteen,” she said. Her voice was flat. Matter-of-fact. The particular register of someone stating a fact they have carried for so long it no longer requires emotion to deliver. “Not sixteen. Fifteen. The company signed me, trained me, packaged me, and put me in rooms where men twice my age discussed my market value while I sat in the corner drinking juice because I wasn’t old enough for the champagne.”
Selvam listened. He didn’t fill the pause. Didn’t perform sympathy. Didn’t offer the particular noises people make when they want you to know they’re feeling something about your pain. He just sat. His hands around the mug. His eyes on her face. Present.
Jennie noticed. He could see it register... the absence of performance. Her mouth moved. Almost a smile. Not quite.
“The exhaustion is specific,” she continued. “It lives in your jaw. In the muscles behind your eyes. In the particular way your body learns to smile on command while the rest of you goes somewhere else to wait it out.” She touched her own cheekbone. Light. Brief. “I have muscles that only exist for smiling when I don’t mean it. The doctors can probably see them on scans.”
The city lights moved beyond the glass. The Han River held its dark ribbon below the hill. The piano in the corner kept its sheet music open, pages untouched.
“You don’t do that,” she said. “The performance sympathy. Most men do. They hear something difficult and their faces rearrange into this... careful arrangement. Like they’re holding something fragile. It’s not real. It’s just another extraction. They want credit for caring.”
Selvam set his mug down. The tea was cold now. He hadn’t taken a single sip.
“I’ve never been good at performances,” he said. “It requires energy I’d rather spend elsewhere.”
“That’s why I’m talking to you at two in the morning in my apartment wearing clothes I sleep in.” She pulled the grey knit sleeve over her wrist. A small, unconscious gesture. “The Jennie Kim who exists on screens is downstairs in a garment bag. She doesn’t come up here.”
Silence settled between them. Warm. Unhurried. The particular comfort of two people who had decided the pauses were allowed to exist.
“Tell me about Chennai,” she said.
Selvam’s hands rested on his thighs. The white shirt was dry now. The shower at the Grand Hyatt felt like it had happened in another lifetime.
“I started with a set of weights in a public park,” he said. “Five in the morning. Every day. Rain or heat. The same bench, the same routine. People thought I was crazy. Then they joined. Then there were thirty of us. Then fifty.”
“Just like that?”
“Discipline is contagious if you don’t announce it.” His thumb traced the line of his thigh. A small, absent motion. “People watch. They see something that works. They want it for themselves.”
“And Ashok?”
“Raised him alone. His mother died when he was young. I had the gym by then. The routine. He grew up watching me lift before sunrise and come home after dark. He learned that a man builds his body the same way he builds anything... one repetition at a time, without complaining, without stopping.”
Jennie listened the way he had listened. No performance. No careful arrangement of her features. Just the focused attention of someone collecting another person piece by piece, building a composite from fragments offered plainly.
“That’s why the rocket landed,” she said. Quiet. “Or almost landed. One repetition at a time.”
“Yes.”
“And the next one will land.”
“Yes.”
She reached for her tea. Drank. The mug was cold against her lips. She didn’t seem to care.
“The reason I crossed the room a second time at the dinner,” she said, setting the mug down, “wasn’t your success. Wasn’t the rocket program. Wasn’t the Tony Stark comparisons those men kept making while they filmed us on their phones.”
She looked at him directly. Her eyes held his with the same steady focus they had carried across every room since Texas.
“It was that you spoke to me like a person in a room. Not a product. Not a brand. Not an achievement to be collected.” Her voice dropped half a register. “I had forgotten what that felt like.”
Selvam was quiet. The words landed. He felt them settle.
“I hadn’t thought about it as a choice,” he said.
Jennie’s mouth curved. The private smile. The one that lived nowhere near a camera.
“That,” she said, “is exactly why it worked.”
The silence that followed was different from the ones before. Heavier. Charged with something that had been building since Texas, since the private suite, since the moment her silver ring stopped turning on her finger and she looked at him with the particular intensity of a woman who had made a decision without needing to announce it.
Beyond the glass, Seoul held its lights. The Han River moved black and silent below the hill. The piano kept its sheet music open, pages waiting.
Jennie’s hand found his on the sofa cushion. Warm. Her fingers brushed his. Once. Light. Then settled.
“Your tea is cold,” she said.
“So is yours.”
“We should make more.”
“Probably.”
Neither of them moved.
# Scene 3
# Scene 3
The conversation shifted. Something in Jennie’s posture loosened. She set her glass on the table and stood.
“I want to show you something,” she said.
Selvam followed.
The hallway opened to a wider space. One wall was covered floor to ceiling with framed photos. Behind glass. Professional. Some in costume. Some in rehearsal clothes. Some on stages he recognized from YouTube.
Jennie walked along the wall. Her bare feet made no sound on the hardwood.
“This was Bangkok.” She pointed to a black and white shot. Four silhouettes against stadium lights. “Sixteen shows in a row. My voice gave out on day twelve.”
Selvam studied the image. The scale was massive. Tens of thousands of bodies. Four women at the center holding it together.
“Coachella.” Another frame. Red lights. Dust. Jennie’s face tilted back, mouth open, the particular expression of someone pouring everything out and knowing it was landing.
He nodded. Said nothing. The photos continued.
Then his eyes caught. Stopped.
White ruffle mini skirt. Crop top. Bare midriff. The photo was large. Center of the wall. Jennie standing in full performance lighting, one hand on her hip, the other holding a microphone. Her legs were bare from mid-thigh down. The crop top ended above her navel. The shot was deliberate. Professional. And it had been taken with the specific understanding that it would be looked at.
He looked.
Jennie noticed. She stepped back. Her mouth curved.
“You like that one.”
It wasn’t a question.
Selvam’s eyes stayed on the photo for one beat longer than necessary.
“It’s a good shot,” he said.
“Just the shot?”
“The lighting is effective.”
“The lighting.” She laughed. Soft. Warm. “The lighting makes my ass look good, you mean.”
He turned to her. Her eyes were bright. Challenging. The particular look of a woman who had spent years being photographed and knew exactly what worked.
“Your ass looks good regardless of the lighting,” he said.
She blinked. Once. Her composure held, but something shifted behind it... surprise, then pleasure, then the particular satisfaction of a woman who had pushed a button and gotten exactly the response she wanted.
“Thank you.” She stepped closer. Her shoulder brushed his arm. “That’s the first honest thing you’ve said all night.”
The distance between them was twelve inches. Her perfume reached him. Floral. Expensive. Applied with the same restraint she brought to everything.
Selvam looked at her. Really looked. The dark eyes. The full lower lip. The particular stillness she carried when she wasn’t performing.
It hit him then. Clean. Undeniable.
“You’re actually her,” he said.
Jennie’s head tilted. “Who?”
“The Jennie. From the videos. The one millions of people watch. The one they write songs about.”
She laughed. The sound filled the hallway. Real. Unrehearsed.
“You’re just realizing this now?”
“It’s sinking in… knowing and…” He gestured at the wall. At her. At the particular reality of standing in her home with her handwriting still faint on his palm. “Feeling it are different things.”
She stepped closer. Eight inches now.
“Selvam.” Her voice dropped. Playful. “Do you have any idea how many people were chanting your name at that fireside chat?”
He didn’t answer.
“More than chant mine at most shows. By a factor.” Her finger tapped his chest once. Light. Deliberate. “You’re a hundred times more famous than I am in the rooms that actually matter.”
“That’s not... ”
“It is.” She cut him off. Her hand stayed against his chest. Warm through the fabric. “And yet here you are. Standing in my hallway at two in the morning. Being shy about a photo.”
His jaw tightened. Once. Then released.
“I’m not being shy.”
“Then what are you being?”
“Cautious.”
She studied his face. Her eyes moved across his features with the particular attention of someone who had spent her career reading rooms and people and the spaces between words.
“Are you looking at me,” she said, “because I’m Jennie from Blackpink? The one you watch on YouTube?”
The question landed. Direct. Unflinching. The particular courage of a woman who had decided that pretense was a currency she wouldn’t spend.
Selvam held her gaze.
“No.”
“Then why?”
“Because you wrote your address on my hand. In a room full of people who wanted something from you. And you gave it to the one person who didn’t ask.”
Something moved behind her eyes. Brief. Private. Gone before it fully formed.
She stepped back. Her hand left his chest.
“Hold that thought,” she said.
She turned. Walked down the hallway. A door opened. Closed.
Selvam stood alone in the hallway. The photos watched him. The white ruffle skirt. The crop top. The particular image that had caught his eye and wouldn’t let go.
He heard a drawer open. Fabric. Movement. The soft sound of someone changing clothes in a hurry.
The door opened.
Jennie stepped into the hallway.
White ruffle mini skirt. Crop top. Bare midriff. The exact outfit from the photo. Every detail matched. The ruffles caught the hallway light. The crop top ended above her navel. Her legs were bare from mid-thigh down.
She walked toward him. Slow. Deliberate. Her hips moved with the particular confidence of someone who had spent a career understanding what her body could do to a room.
She stopped two feet away.
“Better?” she asked.
Selvam didn’t answer. Couldn’t. His mouth had gone dry. His pulse had relocated to his throat.
She smiled. The left corner of her mouth lifted higher than the right.
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
“You know what I built rockets for,” he said. His voice came out lower than he intended. “Precision. Numbers. Things that behave the way the math says they should.”
“And?”
“You are not any of those things right now.”
Her chin lifted a fraction. “Is that a complaint?”
“It’s a report.” He looked at her. All of her. The ruffles. The bare stretch of skin above the waistband. The small, neat navel he had glanced at once in the private suite in Texas and pretended not to. “I have looked at that photograph for ten seconds and I have looked at you for thirty and I cannot make myself stop.”
“Then don’t.”
He reached out. Both hands. Found her waist.
His palms closed around her and his fingers nearly met at her spine. The skin was warm. Bare. The waistband of the skirt sat low under his thumbs. There was almost nothing to her through the middle... muscle and bone and a span he could have measured with his hands alone.
“You’re so thin here,” he said. Quiet. Barely above breath. His thumbs pressed once against the soft place above her hip. “I could... ”
“Could what?”
“Break something.”
“You won’t.”
“How do you know?”
“Because you’ve been careful with me since Texas.” Her hands came up and rested on his forearms. Light. Not pushing. “It’s been very annoying.”
He didn’t laugh. Her waist moved under his hands when she breathed. That was the only thing he could pay attention to.
“Say the measurement,” she said.
“What?”
“You’re a man who likes numbers. Guess.”
“Twenty-three inches.”
“Twenty-four.” Her mouth curved. “Close enough that I’m going to let it count.”
“I’ll take partial credit.”
“You’ll take nothing. That’s not how scoring works.”
His hands stayed where they were. She hadn’t moved back. Two feet had become six inches somewhere in the last thirty seconds and he couldn’t identify the moment it happened.
“Selvam.”
“Yes.”
“You’re still holding my waist.”
“I’m aware.”
“Are you planning to do anything about it?”
The hallway light caught the edge of her jaw. Her hair had fallen forward on one side. Her lower lip was heavier than the upper, and he had known that from the moment she sat down at the ministry dinner and he had spent the entire performance pretending otherwise.
“I’m considering it,” he said.
“Considering.”
“It’s a large decision.”
“It’s a kiss.”
“It’s the first one.” His thumb moved once against her hip. “Those set the trajectory. Everything after follows from the initial burn.”
She made a sound in her throat. Half laugh, half something else. “Did you just describe kissing me as a boost-back burn?”
“I described it accurately.”
“You described it like a man stalling.”
“I’m not stalling.”
“You are.” Her fingers tightened on his forearms. “You’ve had your hands on my waist for a full minute. That’s stalling with contact, which is worse.”
“Worse for who?”
“Me.” Her chin lifted. “Obviously me.”
He looked at her mouth. Then at her eyes. Then at her mouth again, because his attention had stopped taking instructions.
“Then stop me,” he said.
“I’ve been trying not to since Texas.”
He leaned down.
She came up to meet him at the same time and their mouths landed slightly off-center, her upper lip catching his lower, and he adjusted, and she adjusted, and then it was right.
Her mouth was warm. Softer than he’d let himself imagine. She tasted faintly of the mint tea neither of them had drunk. Her hands slid up his forearms to his biceps and gripped there, holding, and he felt her breath break against his cheek on the first turn of her head.
He kept it slow. That was the only discipline he had left. His hands stayed at her waist and he did not move them, and he took her mouth the way he did everything... unhurried, complete, one thing at a time. Her lower lip between his. Then her upper. Then the soft press of her tongue against his and the small sound she made when he answered it.
It went on. The hallway light hummed somewhere above them. Her bare stomach was warm against the backs of his fingers. She rose slightly onto the balls of her feet and the ruffled hem brushed his thigh and he felt every inch of that too.
When they separated, her eyes stayed closed for a beat longer than his.
Then she opened them.
“Okay,” she said. Her voice had gone rough at the edges.
“Okay.”
“I need to say something and it’s going to sound stupid.”
“Say it.”
“I kissed you to check if this was real.” She was still gripping his arms. “I’ve been sitting on that sofa for two hours thinking I fell asleep in the car after the dinner and this is what my brain does when it’s tired.”
He exhaled. Something loosened in his chest.
“That’s exactly why I kissed you.”
Her eyebrows went up. “No.”
“I have had this dream,” he said. “Not this apartment. But close enough that I wanted evidence.”
“So we both... ”
“Yes.”
“That’s humiliating for both of us.”
“It’s efficient. We resolved it in one attempt.”
She laughed. Her forehead dropped against his sternum for a second and he felt the laugh travel through her ribs and into his hands.
“God, you’re annoying,” she said into his shirt.
“I’ve been told.”
She lifted her head. “No. Listen. You are *annoying*. Do you know how annoying you’ve been?”
“Explain the metric.”
“Texas.” She stepped back half an inch, just enough to look at him properly, and his hands stayed on her. “You asked me to come see rocket videos.”
“I did.”
“And then you showed me rocket videos.”
“That was the stated deliverable.”
“Selvam.” She slapped his chest. Flat palm. Not hard. “Fifty-three minutes of telemetry. Plasma. You explained the port engine throttle response *twice*.”
“You asked a follow-up question.”
“I was being polite!” Her voice cracked upward and she pulled it back down immediately, the way people do at two in the morning in buildings with neighbors. “I sat twelve inches away from you with my legs crossed for ninety minutes and you slowed down the footage.”
“You seemed engaged.”
“I was *dying*.”
“What did you think I meant?”
She stared at him.
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“That.” She slapped his chest again. Harder. “The face. You know what I thought you meant.”
“I’d like to hear you say it.”
“You’re a bastard.”
“Say it.”
“You said, come see my rocket videos.” She jabbed a finger into his sternum on the word rocket. “At a launch party. At midnight. After you spent the whole evening standing next to me at the rail. What was I supposed to think?”
“I don’t know. Tell me.”
Her hand came up again and this time she hit him properly... a flat crack of palm against his chest that he felt through the shirt.
“What were you planning?” she said. “Actually. Tell me the truth.”
He held her waist and looked at her.
“I was planning exactly what you thought.”
Her mouth opened slightly.
“I felt it,” he said. “On the deck. The whole evening. You kept finding reasons to be three meters away instead of eight. When you brushed my arm going through that door I lost about four seconds of the corridor.”
“Then why... ”
“Because you walked in and sat down twelve inches away with your hands folded in your lap and your back straight and I could not read a single thing on your face.” His thumb pressed once at her hip. “You looked untouchable. Like something behind glass. Larger than the room. And I decided I would rather show you fifty-three minutes of telemetry than find out I had misread you and watch that face close.”
She was quiet. Her fingers stayed curled in his shirt.
“So you fucked me with rocket footage,” she said.
“I showed you rocket footage.”
“Same thing. Worse.”
“You asked follow-up questions.”
“Because I was terrified.” She laughed, then stopped laughing. “I was being coy. I was being... God. So conservative. Hands folded. Legs crossed. I took off my outer layer and my top rode up and you looked at my stomach for half a second and then you looked at a tablet for an hour and I sat there thinking, fine, he doesn’t want me, I’ll be polite about it.”
“I wanted you.”
“I know that now.”
“You could have said something.”
“I’m Korean and I’ve been media-trained since I was fifteen, Selvam, I don’t say something.” She shook her head. “I write addresses on hands. That’s already reckless for me.”
He almost smiled. “So what changed?”
She looked up at him.
“You did,” she said. “You didn’t touch me. In an hour and a half alone in a locked room with the lights down, you didn’t touch me once. You said sorry when your knee bumped mine.” Her voice dropped. “Do you know what that does to a woman who has spent ten years assuming every man in the room is calculating something?”
“Tell me.”
“It was the most annoying thing anyone has ever done to me.” She flattened her palm against his chest, over his heart, and left it there. “And I have not stopped thinking about it since.”
He felt his own pulse under her hand and knew she could feel it too.
“So no more telemetry,” she said.
“No.”
“Say it properly.”
“No telemetry.”
She came up onto her toes and kissed him.
There was nothing careful in it this time. Her mouth opened against his immediately and her hand slid up the back of his neck into his hair and gripped, and he felt the small hard edge of her teeth catch his lower lip before her tongue found his. He pulled her in. His hands moved from her waist and spread across the bare skin of her lower back and he lifted... not much, an inch... and she made a sound against his mouth that went straight down through him.
The ruffled hem shifted against his thigh. Her stomach was warm and flat against his shirt. He could feel the whole narrow architecture of her under his hands, ribs and spine and the shallow dip above the waistband, and the awareness that he was holding her hard enough to leave marks arrived and did not slow him down.
She broke off. Her breath came fast against his jaw. Her forehead pressed to his cheek.
“Take me to bed,” she whispered.
He stood very still for one second. The hallway light hummed. The photographs watched from the wall... the stadiums, the dust, the white ruffled skirt she was currently wearing six inches from his hands.
“Say it again,” he said.
“Take me to bed.” She pulled back enough that he could see her eyes. Dark. Steady. No perform ance in her voice at all. “Now.”
He picked her up.
One arm under her thighs, one across her back, and she weighed nothing. Her arms locked around his neck. The ruffled hem fell back across his forearm.
“Which door,” he said.
“End of the hall. Left.”
He walked. She kissed his throat on the way... open mouth, once, just under his jaw... and he felt his grip tighten on her thigh.
“Don’t do that yet,” he said.
“Why.”
“Because I’m carrying you past a piano and I’d like to arrive.”
She laughed against his neck.
The bedroom was dark. One low lamp on a side table. A wide low bed with white sheets pulled loose on one side, as if she’d been lying on it earlier and hadn’t bothered to fix it.
# Scene 1
The Genesis stopped. Engine idling. The driver’s face in the rearview, waiting for instruction.
Selvam paid with the cash Summer had handed him at the door. The driver nodded. The door unlocked.
Night air. Cool. Seoul at two in the morning smelled of exhaust and something green from the trees lining the narrow lane. The Han River lay below the hill like a dark ribbon, city lights breaking across its surface in slow, reflective pulses. UN Village held its silence. Wealthy hills. Private lives behind high walls.
The building was unmarked. No name on the exterior. No logo. Just a low concrete structure with recessed lighting and a single glass door. The kind of place designed to be invisible from the street.
Selvam crossed the small courtyard. His shoes on stone. The door opened to a lobby the size of a hotel room. Warm light. Polished floor. A single security desk occupied by a man in a dark jacket, reading something on a tablet.
The man looked up. Said nothing.
“Jennie Kim,” Selvam said. “I’m expected.”
The security man’s eyes moved across Selvam’s face once. He picked up a clipboard. Scanned a list. Found a name. Nodded once.
“Sixth floor.”
The elevator was glass on three sides. Selvam watched himself as the doors closed. Dark suit. White shirt, open at the collar. The silver at his temples caught the interior lighting. His reflection held steady against the ascent, Seoul dropping away beneath him, the river growing smaller, the lights of the city rearranging themselves into patterns he could not read.
His right palm was warm. The ink had smudged further. Hannam-dong. The street name. The numbers. Jennie’s handwriting, small and precise, now blurred by sweat and the pressure of his fingers. He closed his hand. Opened it. Looked at the address one last time before the doors opened.
The hallway was wide. Low light. One door at the end.
Selvam walked. His footsteps made no sound on the carpet. The white shirt felt clean against his skin. The shower at the Grand Hyatt had been quick. Summer’s towel. Summer’s practicality. The particular efficiency of a woman who had already ordered room service and turned on the television by the time the elevator doors closed behind him.
He reached the door. Stopped.
His hand raised to knock. The pause stretched. Three seconds. Four. The particular weight of a decision that was no longer theoretical.
He knocked. Once. Firm.
Movement inside. Soft. Then the deadbolt turning. The door opened.
Jennie stood in the frame. Loose grey knit sweater that fell past her hips. Wide-leg trousers in a soft fabric that whispered when she moved. Her hair was down, dark and straight, falling around her shoulders with none of the structured intention it carried on stage. No makeup that he could see. Her face was clean. Her eyes were the same... dark, steady, the particular focus that had held his across a red-lit stage six hours earlier.
She looked at his palm first. Her eyes found the smudged ink. She studied it. The address. Her handwriting. Confirming it was still there. That he had come with the evidence of her invitation intact.
Then she looked at his face.
“I almost did not come,” Selvam said.
Her mouth curved. Not the performance smile. Something smaller. Private.
“I know,” she said.
She stepped back. The door opened wider.
The apartment was not what he had expected.
No stylist’s showroom. No curated brand presence. No evidence of the woman who existed in music videos and global campaigns. Just a wide, low-lit space with floor-to-ceiling glass facing the river. The city sprawled beyond the glass, a field of light and shadow, the Han cutting through the center like a seam of darkness.
A cream linen sofa sat against the far wall. Low. Unpretentious. The kind of furniture chosen for comfort rather than photography. A small upright piano occupied the corner nearest the windows, sheet music still open on the stand, the pages catching the faint breeze from the climate control.
The kitchen was visible through an open doorway. Small. Clean. A teapot sat on the stove, steam rising from its spout in a thin, constant thread. The smell reached him... something herbal, faintly sweet, the particular warmth of tea made recently and left waiting.
Jennie moved past him. Her body carried none of the choreographed precision it had on stage. Just the natural grace of someone walking through their own home at two in the morning, comfortable in loose clothes, comfortable in silence.
She crossed to the kitchen. Picked up two mugs from a shelf. Poured. The steam rose between them.
“Mint,” she said. “From the garden downstairs. The building has a shared plot.”
Selvam stood in the center of the room. His suit jacket felt suddenly formal against the apartment’s ease. He took it off. Folded it over one arm.
Jennie carried the mugs to the low table beside the sofa. Set them down. The tea was pale green. Fragrant.
“Summer texted me,” she said. “Ten minutes ago. ‘He’s on his way. Don’t worry.’”
Selvam’s eyebrows lifted.
“She has my number,” Jennie said. “From the launch. I gave it to her when we were talking about the autonomy stack. She’s very... efficient.”
“She is.”
“The text included a winking emoji.”
Selvam smiled. The left corner of his mouth lifting. “That sounds like Summer.”
Jennie sat on the sofa. Not at one end. The center. Her body angled toward the empty space beside her. An invitation without words.
Selvam set his jacket on the arm of the sofa. Sat. The cushion gave beneath his weight. The tea steamed between them on the low table. The city lights moved beyond the glass.
The door was closed. The security desk was six floors down. Summer was at the Grand Hyatt with room service and a television remote. Vanitha was in Los Gatos, twelve time zones away.
He was here. In Hannam-dong. With Jennie Kim’s handwriting on his palm and her mint tea going cold on the table between them.
She looked at him. Really looked. The same focused attention she had given him across the dinner table, across the red-lit stage, across every room they had shared since Texas.
“Your shirt is still damp at the collar,” she said.
“I showered before I came.”
She reached for her tea. The mug was warm between her hands. She didn’t drink. Just held it. Feeling the heat.
Selvam did the same. The mint filled his lungs. Sweet. Clean.
This was quieter. Slower. The particular weight of a beginning that had no script attached to it.
Jennie set her mug down. Untouched.
“Tell me why you almost didn’t come,” she said.
# Scene 2
Selvam held the mug between his hands. The tea had cooled enough to drink, but he hadn’t taken a sip.
“I don’t know how to be in a room with someone like you,” he said. “Not as a fan. Not as a man who’s watched your videos. As a person who showed up because you wrote an address on his hand.”
Jennie’s fingers rested on her own mug. She hadn’t drunk either.
“What does ‘someone like me’ mean?”
“Someone the world treats as a product. Someone who walks into rooms where every person wants something extractable from her visibility.” He paused. “Summer’s phrase. But she’s right.”
Jennie was quiet. Her eyes stayed on his face. The particular attention that made the room feel smaller than it was.
“That’s why you almost didn’t come,” she said. Not a question.
“Yes.”
She nodded once. Set her mug down on the low table. The tea was pale green and perfectly still.
“I’ve been a product since I was fifteen,” she said. Her voice was flat. Matter-of-fact. The particular register of someone stating a fact they have carried for so long it no longer requires emotion to deliver. “Not sixteen. Fifteen. The company signed me, trained me, packaged me, and put me in rooms where men twice my age discussed my market value while I sat in the corner drinking juice because I wasn’t old enough for the champagne.”
Selvam listened. He didn’t fill the pause. Didn’t perform sympathy. Didn’t offer the particular noises people make when they want you to know they’re feeling something about your pain. He just sat. His hands around the mug. His eyes on her face. Present.
Jennie noticed. He could see it register... the absence of performance. Her mouth moved. Almost a smile. Not quite.
“The exhaustion is specific,” she continued. “It lives in your jaw. In the muscles behind your eyes. In the particular way your body learns to smile on command while the rest of you goes somewhere else to wait it out.” She touched her own cheekbone. Light. Brief. “I have muscles that only exist for smiling when I don’t mean it. The doctors can probably see them on scans.”
The city lights moved beyond the glass. The Han River held its dark ribbon below the hill. The piano in the corner kept its sheet music open, pages untouched.
“You don’t do that,” she said. “The performance sympathy. Most men do. They hear something difficult and their faces rearrange into this... careful arrangement. Like they’re holding something fragile. It’s not real. It’s just another extraction. They want credit for caring.”
Selvam set his mug down. The tea was cold now. He hadn’t taken a single sip.
“I’ve never been good at performances,” he said. “It requires energy I’d rather spend elsewhere.”
“That’s why I’m talking to you at two in the morning in my apartment wearing clothes I sleep in.” She pulled the grey knit sleeve over her wrist. A small, unconscious gesture. “The Jennie Kim who exists on screens is downstairs in a garment bag. She doesn’t come up here.”
Silence settled between them. Warm. Unhurried. The particular comfort of two people who had decided the pauses were allowed to exist.
“Tell me about Chennai,” she said.
Selvam’s hands rested on his thighs. The white shirt was dry now. The shower at the Grand Hyatt felt like it had happened in another lifetime.
“I started with a set of weights in a public park,” he said. “Five in the morning. Every day. Rain or heat. The same bench, the same routine. People thought I was crazy. Then they joined. Then there were thirty of us. Then fifty.”
“Just like that?”
“Discipline is contagious if you don’t announce it.” His thumb traced the line of his thigh. A small, absent motion. “People watch. They see something that works. They want it for themselves.”
“And Ashok?”
“Raised him alone. His mother died when he was young. I had the gym by then. The routine. He grew up watching me lift before sunrise and come home after dark. He learned that a man builds his body the same way he builds anything... one repetition at a time, without complaining, without stopping.”
Jennie listened the way he had listened. No performance. No careful arrangement of her features. Just the focused attention of someone collecting another person piece by piece, building a composite from fragments offered plainly.
“That’s why the rocket landed,” she said. Quiet. “Or almost landed. One repetition at a time.”
“Yes.”
“And the next one will land.”
“Yes.”
She reached for her tea. Drank. The mug was cold against her lips. She didn’t seem to care.
“The reason I crossed the room a second time at the dinner,” she said, setting the mug down, “wasn’t your success. Wasn’t the rocket program. Wasn’t the Tony Stark comparisons those men kept making while they filmed us on their phones.”
She looked at him directly. Her eyes held his with the same steady focus they had carried across every room since Texas.
“It was that you spoke to me like a person in a room. Not a product. Not a brand. Not an achievement to be collected.” Her voice dropped half a register. “I had forgotten what that felt like.”
Selvam was quiet. The words landed. He felt them settle.
“I hadn’t thought about it as a choice,” he said.
Jennie’s mouth curved. The private smile. The one that lived nowhere near a camera.
“That,” she said, “is exactly why it worked.”
The silence that followed was different from the ones before. Heavier. Charged with something that had been building since Texas, since the private suite, since the moment her silver ring stopped turning on her finger and she looked at him with the particular intensity of a woman who had made a decision without needing to announce it.
Beyond the glass, Seoul held its lights. The Han River moved black and silent below the hill. The piano kept its sheet music open, pages waiting.
Jennie’s hand found his on the sofa cushion. Warm. Her fingers brushed his. Once. Light. Then settled.
“Your tea is cold,” she said.
“So is yours.”
“We should make more.”
“Probably.”
Neither of them moved.
# Scene 3
# Scene 3
The conversation shifted. Something in Jennie’s posture loosened. She set her glass on the table and stood.
“I want to show you something,” she said.
Selvam followed.
The hallway opened to a wider space. One wall was covered floor to ceiling with framed photos. Behind glass. Professional. Some in costume. Some in rehearsal clothes. Some on stages he recognized from YouTube.
Jennie walked along the wall. Her bare feet made no sound on the hardwood.
“This was Bangkok.” She pointed to a black and white shot. Four silhouettes against stadium lights. “Sixteen shows in a row. My voice gave out on day twelve.”
Selvam studied the image. The scale was massive. Tens of thousands of bodies. Four women at the center holding it together.
“Coachella.” Another frame. Red lights. Dust. Jennie’s face tilted back, mouth open, the particular expression of someone pouring everything out and knowing it was landing.
He nodded. Said nothing. The photos continued.
Then his eyes caught. Stopped.
White ruffle mini skirt. Crop top. Bare midriff. The photo was large. Center of the wall. Jennie standing in full performance lighting, one hand on her hip, the other holding a microphone. Her legs were bare from mid-thigh down. The crop top ended above her navel. The shot was deliberate. Professional. And it had been taken with the specific understanding that it would be looked at.
He looked.
Jennie noticed. She stepped back. Her mouth curved.
“You like that one.”
It wasn’t a question.
Selvam’s eyes stayed on the photo for one beat longer than necessary.
“It’s a good shot,” he said.
“Just the shot?”
“The lighting is effective.”
“The lighting.” She laughed. Soft. Warm. “The lighting makes my ass look good, you mean.”
He turned to her. Her eyes were bright. Challenging. The particular look of a woman who had spent years being photographed and knew exactly what worked.
“Your ass looks good regardless of the lighting,” he said.
She blinked. Once. Her composure held, but something shifted behind it... surprise, then pleasure, then the particular satisfaction of a woman who had pushed a button and gotten exactly the response she wanted.
“Thank you.” She stepped closer. Her shoulder brushed his arm. “That’s the first honest thing you’ve said all night.”
The distance between them was twelve inches. Her perfume reached him. Floral. Expensive. Applied with the same restraint she brought to everything.
Selvam looked at her. Really looked. The dark eyes. The full lower lip. The particular stillness she carried when she wasn’t performing.
It hit him then. Clean. Undeniable.
“You’re actually her,” he said.
Jennie’s head tilted. “Who?”
“The Jennie. From the videos. The one millions of people watch. The one they write songs about.”
She laughed. The sound filled the hallway. Real. Unrehearsed.
“You’re just realizing this now?”
“It’s sinking in… knowing and…” He gestured at the wall. At her. At the particular reality of standing in her home with her handwriting still faint on his palm. “Feeling it are different things.”
She stepped closer. Eight inches now.
“Selvam.” Her voice dropped. Playful. “Do you have any idea how many people were chanting your name at that fireside chat?”
He didn’t answer.
“More than chant mine at most shows. By a factor.” Her finger tapped his chest once. Light. Deliberate. “You’re a hundred times more famous than I am in the rooms that actually matter.”
“That’s not... ”
“It is.” She cut him off. Her hand stayed against his chest. Warm through the fabric. “And yet here you are. Standing in my hallway at two in the morning. Being shy about a photo.”
His jaw tightened. Once. Then released.
“I’m not being shy.”
“Then what are you being?”
“Cautious.”
She studied his face. Her eyes moved across his features with the particular attention of someone who had spent her career reading rooms and people and the spaces between words.
“Are you looking at me,” she said, “because I’m Jennie from Blackpink? The one you watch on YouTube?”
The question landed. Direct. Unflinching. The particular courage of a woman who had decided that pretense was a currency she wouldn’t spend.
Selvam held her gaze.
“No.”
“Then why?”
“Because you wrote your address on my hand. In a room full of people who wanted something from you. And you gave it to the one person who didn’t ask.”
Something moved behind her eyes. Brief. Private. Gone before it fully formed.
She stepped back. Her hand left his chest.
“Hold that thought,” she said.
She turned. Walked down the hallway. A door opened. Closed.
Selvam stood alone in the hallway. The photos watched him. The white ruffle skirt. The crop top. The particular image that had caught his eye and wouldn’t let go.
He heard a drawer open. Fabric. Movement. The soft sound of someone changing clothes in a hurry.
The door opened.
Jennie stepped into the hallway.
White ruffle mini skirt. Crop top. Bare midriff. The exact outfit from the photo. Every detail matched. The ruffles caught the hallway light. The crop top ended above her navel. Her legs were bare from mid-thigh down.
She walked toward him. Slow. Deliberate. Her hips moved with the particular confidence of someone who had spent a career understanding what her body could do to a room.
She stopped two feet away.
“Better?” she asked.
Selvam didn’t answer. Couldn’t. His mouth had gone dry. His pulse had relocated to his throat.
She smiled. The left corner of her mouth lifted higher than the right.
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
“You know what I built rockets for,” he said. His voice came out lower than he intended. “Precision. Numbers. Things that behave the way the math says they should.”
“And?”
“You are not any of those things right now.”
Her chin lifted a fraction. “Is that a complaint?”
“It’s a report.” He looked at her. All of her. The ruffles. The bare stretch of skin above the waistband. The small, neat navel he had glanced at once in the private suite in Texas and pretended not to. “I have looked at that photograph for ten seconds and I have looked at you for thirty and I cannot make myself stop.”
“Then don’t.”
He reached out. Both hands. Found her waist.
His palms closed around her and his fingers nearly met at her spine. The skin was warm. Bare. The waistband of the skirt sat low under his thumbs. There was almost nothing to her through the middle... muscle and bone and a span he could have measured with his hands alone.
“You’re so thin here,” he said. Quiet. Barely above breath. His thumbs pressed once against the soft place above her hip. “I could... ”
“Could what?”
“Break something.”
“You won’t.”
“How do you know?”
“Because you’ve been careful with me since Texas.” Her hands came up and rested on his forearms. Light. Not pushing. “It’s been very annoying.”
He didn’t laugh. Her waist moved under his hands when she breathed. That was the only thing he could pay attention to.
“Say the measurement,” she said.
“What?”
“You’re a man who likes numbers. Guess.”
“Twenty-three inches.”
“Twenty-four.” Her mouth curved. “Close enough that I’m going to let it count.”
“I’ll take partial credit.”
“You’ll take nothing. That’s not how scoring works.”
His hands stayed where they were. She hadn’t moved back. Two feet had become six inches somewhere in the last thirty seconds and he couldn’t identify the moment it happened.
“Selvam.”
“Yes.”
“You’re still holding my waist.”
“I’m aware.”
“Are you planning to do anything about it?”
The hallway light caught the edge of her jaw. Her hair had fallen forward on one side. Her lower lip was heavier than the upper, and he had known that from the moment she sat down at the ministry dinner and he had spent the entire performance pretending otherwise.
“I’m considering it,” he said.
“Considering.”
“It’s a large decision.”
“It’s a kiss.”
“It’s the first one.” His thumb moved once against her hip. “Those set the trajectory. Everything after follows from the initial burn.”
She made a sound in her throat. Half laugh, half something else. “Did you just describe kissing me as a boost-back burn?”
“I described it accurately.”
“You described it like a man stalling.”
“I’m not stalling.”
“You are.” Her fingers tightened on his forearms. “You’ve had your hands on my waist for a full minute. That’s stalling with contact, which is worse.”
“Worse for who?”
“Me.” Her chin lifted. “Obviously me.”
He looked at her mouth. Then at her eyes. Then at her mouth again, because his attention had stopped taking instructions.
“Then stop me,” he said.
“I’ve been trying not to since Texas.”
He leaned down.
She came up to meet him at the same time and their mouths landed slightly off-center, her upper lip catching his lower, and he adjusted, and she adjusted, and then it was right.
Her mouth was warm. Softer than he’d let himself imagine. She tasted faintly of the mint tea neither of them had drunk. Her hands slid up his forearms to his biceps and gripped there, holding, and he felt her breath break against his cheek on the first turn of her head.
He kept it slow. That was the only discipline he had left. His hands stayed at her waist and he did not move them, and he took her mouth the way he did everything... unhurried, complete, one thing at a time. Her lower lip between his. Then her upper. Then the soft press of her tongue against his and the small sound she made when he answered it.
It went on. The hallway light hummed somewhere above them. Her bare stomach was warm against the backs of his fingers. She rose slightly onto the balls of her feet and the ruffled hem brushed his thigh and he felt every inch of that too.
When they separated, her eyes stayed closed for a beat longer than his.
Then she opened them.
“Okay,” she said. Her voice had gone rough at the edges.
“Okay.”
“I need to say something and it’s going to sound stupid.”
“Say it.”
“I kissed you to check if this was real.” She was still gripping his arms. “I’ve been sitting on that sofa for two hours thinking I fell asleep in the car after the dinner and this is what my brain does when it’s tired.”
He exhaled. Something loosened in his chest.
“That’s exactly why I kissed you.”
Her eyebrows went up. “No.”
“I have had this dream,” he said. “Not this apartment. But close enough that I wanted evidence.”
“So we both... ”
“Yes.”
“That’s humiliating for both of us.”
“It’s efficient. We resolved it in one attempt.”
She laughed. Her forehead dropped against his sternum for a second and he felt the laugh travel through her ribs and into his hands.
“God, you’re annoying,” she said into his shirt.
“I’ve been told.”
She lifted her head. “No. Listen. You are *annoying*. Do you know how annoying you’ve been?”
“Explain the metric.”
“Texas.” She stepped back half an inch, just enough to look at him properly, and his hands stayed on her. “You asked me to come see rocket videos.”
“I did.”
“And then you showed me rocket videos.”
“That was the stated deliverable.”
“Selvam.” She slapped his chest. Flat palm. Not hard. “Fifty-three minutes of telemetry. Plasma. You explained the port engine throttle response *twice*.”
“You asked a follow-up question.”
“I was being polite!” Her voice cracked upward and she pulled it back down immediately, the way people do at two in the morning in buildings with neighbors. “I sat twelve inches away from you with my legs crossed for ninety minutes and you slowed down the footage.”
“You seemed engaged.”
“I was *dying*.”
“What did you think I meant?”
She stared at him.
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“That.” She slapped his chest again. Harder. “The face. You know what I thought you meant.”
“I’d like to hear you say it.”
“You’re a bastard.”
“Say it.”
“You said, come see my rocket videos.” She jabbed a finger into his sternum on the word rocket. “At a launch party. At midnight. After you spent the whole evening standing next to me at the rail. What was I supposed to think?”
“I don’t know. Tell me.”
Her hand came up again and this time she hit him properly... a flat crack of palm against his chest that he felt through the shirt.
“What were you planning?” she said. “Actually. Tell me the truth.”
He held her waist and looked at her.
“I was planning exactly what you thought.”
Her mouth opened slightly.
“I felt it,” he said. “On the deck. The whole evening. You kept finding reasons to be three meters away instead of eight. When you brushed my arm going through that door I lost about four seconds of the corridor.”
“Then why... ”
“Because you walked in and sat down twelve inches away with your hands folded in your lap and your back straight and I could not read a single thing on your face.” His thumb pressed once at her hip. “You looked untouchable. Like something behind glass. Larger than the room. And I decided I would rather show you fifty-three minutes of telemetry than find out I had misread you and watch that face close.”
She was quiet. Her fingers stayed curled in his shirt.
“So you fucked me with rocket footage,” she said.
“I showed you rocket footage.”
“Same thing. Worse.”
“You asked follow-up questions.”
“Because I was terrified.” She laughed, then stopped laughing. “I was being coy. I was being... God. So conservative. Hands folded. Legs crossed. I took off my outer layer and my top rode up and you looked at my stomach for half a second and then you looked at a tablet for an hour and I sat there thinking, fine, he doesn’t want me, I’ll be polite about it.”
“I wanted you.”
“I know that now.”
“You could have said something.”
“I’m Korean and I’ve been media-trained since I was fifteen, Selvam, I don’t say something.” She shook her head. “I write addresses on hands. That’s already reckless for me.”
He almost smiled. “So what changed?”
She looked up at him.
“You did,” she said. “You didn’t touch me. In an hour and a half alone in a locked room with the lights down, you didn’t touch me once. You said sorry when your knee bumped mine.” Her voice dropped. “Do you know what that does to a woman who has spent ten years assuming every man in the room is calculating something?”
“Tell me.”
“It was the most annoying thing anyone has ever done to me.” She flattened her palm against his chest, over his heart, and left it there. “And I have not stopped thinking about it since.”
He felt his own pulse under her hand and knew she could feel it too.
“So no more telemetry,” she said.
“No.”
“Say it properly.”
“No telemetry.”
She came up onto her toes and kissed him.
There was nothing careful in it this time. Her mouth opened against his immediately and her hand slid up the back of his neck into his hair and gripped, and he felt the small hard edge of her teeth catch his lower lip before her tongue found his. He pulled her in. His hands moved from her waist and spread across the bare skin of her lower back and he lifted... not much, an inch... and she made a sound against his mouth that went straight down through him.
The ruffled hem shifted against his thigh. Her stomach was warm and flat against his shirt. He could feel the whole narrow architecture of her under his hands, ribs and spine and the shallow dip above the waistband, and the awareness that he was holding her hard enough to leave marks arrived and did not slow him down.
She broke off. Her breath came fast against his jaw. Her forehead pressed to his cheek.
“Take me to bed,” she whispered.
He stood very still for one second. The hallway light hummed. The photographs watched from the wall... the stadiums, the dust, the white ruffled skirt she was currently wearing six inches from his hands.
“Say it again,” he said.
“Take me to bed.” She pulled back enough that he could see her eyes. Dark. Steady. No perform ance in her voice at all. “Now.”
He picked her up.
One arm under her thighs, one across her back, and she weighed nothing. Her arms locked around his neck. The ruffled hem fell back across his forearm.
“Which door,” he said.
“End of the hall. Left.”
He walked. She kissed his throat on the way... open mouth, once, just under his jaw... and he felt his grip tighten on her thigh.
“Don’t do that yet,” he said.
“Why.”
“Because I’m carrying you past a piano and I’d like to arrive.”
She laughed against his neck.
The bedroom was dark. One low lamp on a side table. A wide low bed with white sheets pulled loose on one side, as if she’d been lying on it earlier and hadn’t bothered to fix it.
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