TOUGH ROMANCE || scoups || BOOK ONE

38

Seungcheol

"Nice place." Hani observed as I locked my front door behind ua and flipped on the lights.

"Thanks. My grandfather built it." I said on a yawn. It had been a long day followed by a long night at Lock's Glass and I needed sleep.

"Really?" She asked, her gaze lifting to the loft above the living room.

The house was small and leaned toward modern. Two bedrooms, one bath. The floors were tile. The stone fireplace. It was home.

"Are these..your parents?" She asked, picking up a framed photo on one of the end tables. I didn't know why I bothered keeping it. My parents were line dancing at a picnic in a garden. Smiles on their faces, feet in sync. Happier times that, in the moment, seemed like they'd go on forever.

It was, of course, a lie.

Happier times always came to an end.

"Listen, Rose. I'm dead."

Between my brother getting shot, the sudden onslaught of sex, and work, I needed a solid eight hours of sleep before I'd be worth anything.

"Oh. Yeah. Sure." She said, carefully putting the photo back on the table. Though I noticed she'd angled it toward the couch, not away from it like I'd done. "I'll head home. Thanks for the backup today with Mi's teacher..and my parents. And then all the sex and stuff."

"Baby, you're not going home. I'm just telling you why I'm not making any moves when we go upstairs."

"I should just go home, Cheol. I have to be up early to get Mi at Jennie's." She looked as exhausted as I felt.

I hadn't given it more than a passing thought in the past, but my employees at Lock's Glass dragged their asses home at two or three a.m and on weekdays had to be up again by six or seven depending on the usefulness of their significant others.

I remembered a solid year stretch when Kwan would fall asleep sitting up every day at his desk before his kids were shit sleepers. It got to the point where I had to do the thing I hated. I got involved.

I'd unleashed Jennie on him and, in less than a week, my foster mother had both kids on a schedule sleeping ten hours a night.

"You have off tomorrow, right?" I asked.

She nodded, then yawned.

"So we'll get up in," I glanced down at my watch, then swore, "three hours and go have breakfast at Jennie's."

It was the gentlemanly thing to do. Which usually wasn't a huge concern to me. But I felt the tiniest splinter of guilt thinking about staying in bed while Hani dragged herself off to family fucking breakfast and then tried to keep Mimi from breaking the law for the rest of the day.

Besides, I could just come home after breakfast and sleep until whenever the fuck I wanted.

I liked the way her eyes went soft and dreamy for a second. Then practical, people pleasing Hani was back. "You don't have to get up with me. You need sleep. I'll go home tonight, and maybe we can..." Her gaze slid down my body, and her cheeks turned a delicate shade of pink. "Catch up some other time." She finished.

"Yeah. Haha, nice try. Want some water?" I asked, towing her toward the kitchen.

"Water?" She repeated.

"Yeah, baby. Do you want a drink of water before we go to bed?"

"Cheol, I'm confused. This is just..sex. We both agreed. Unless my parents are around, and then it's a relationship. But my parents aren't here, and I'm so tired I don't think even you could keep me awake. So what the hell are we doing??"