HER ONLY HOPE (LK Adaptation)

Part 23

'You grew up in a war zone,' she murmured intuitively, so his eyes locked to hers, his expression grim, and then he nodded.

She shook her head wistfully for the boy he'd been. 'A lot of marriages are happy, though. Look at my parents'.'

'Your parents are very lucky to have found each other, but what they have is rare. Divorce is far more common. Present company included.'

'Ouch.'

'That wasn't meant to be an insult, so much as an observation. I would have thought you, of all people, would understand my perspective.'

She considered that thoughtfully. 'We didn't really fight like that.' Her finger went to the champagne flute and she curled her hand around it, distracted by the popping bubbles.

'What was it like between the two of you?'

She hadn't spoken to another soul about her marriage, but for some reason it didn't hurt to imagine opening up to Jungkook the way she thought it might have. 'We married very quickly,' she admitted, rushing the words rather than giving him any hint of why she'd been so eager to accept Mingyu 's proposal, how desperate she'd been to overcome the hurt and embarrassment Jungkook had inflicted when he'd callously rejected her, but unconsciously she pulled away from him, putting distance between them as she remembered the pain he'd caused her. 'I'd known him a little over a month, and so I wound up married to a man who was, in many ways, a stranger to me.' She gnawed on her lip, hating to remember that time.

'Why get married so fast?'

Trust Jungkook to pinpoint the one area she wasn't comfortable discussing.

'I thought I was in love,' she lied, shooting him a cynical look. 'Why wait?'

'It's prudent to get to know someone, I would have thought.'

'Hindsight is a wonderful thing,' she muttered, then sighed. 'The truth is, there was a part of me that wanted to escape.'

'Escape what?'

You, she wanted to shout, and the grip you had on my every waking thought.

'Oh, a lot of things,' she mumbled. 'After Minho , my world felt tipped off balance.' She couldn't meet his eyes. 'I lost my brother, and essentially my parents, who were so fogged by their own grief that they refused to let me leave the house, lest something happen to me, at the same time as they barely acknowledged my existence because they were in such a daze. They've always been very protective of me, and that got a thousand times worse afterwards. Mingyu offered a way out—from all of it.'

He was quiet, considering that, but if he wondered, in the back of his mind, if any part of her decision was a reflection on him, he didn't ask the question.

'And yet you stayed married to him?'

'I wasn't miserable at first. All marriages have challenges and I thought we had to overcome ours. But some problems were too big to solve. We officially separated after two years, though we had been living basically separate lives for some time already. And then a year after that, we divorced. It was a...difficult time.'

Jungkook was quiet for so long she presumed the conversation had moved on, and she listened to the gentle, rhythmic lapping of the water against the boat's pearlescent sides. 'Do you still love him?'

The question zapped her, coming as it did almost out of nowhere. 'No.' A harsh rebuttal. Too harsh? 'Definitely not,' she added for good measure.

But when she turned to face Jungkook , there was cynicism in his eyes, as though he didn't, for a second, believe her. And maybe that was a good thing? If he believed she still partly loved her ex-husband, he'd never have reason to suspect he'd hurt her so much four years earlier, that she was still hurting from his words.

'In my experience, only deep love can cause such lasting hurt.'

She flinched, because he was right, but it hadn't been Mingyu she'd loved and been hurt by.

Eager to change the subject before he could ask anything more insightful, she said, 'I suppose we should be getting back to the marina.'

'Actually, I want to take you to Epíneio.'

'Where's that?' She immediately liked the musical name.

'My island.'

'Your island?' She arched a brow. 'Seriously?'

He nodded once, eyes returning to the sea. 'Is your ex-husband the reason you didn't have children?'