Did We Love Each Other ✔️

Chapter 20

Jungkook stepped into the private space his father had told him about, the muted light and hushed voices wrapping around him like a veil. As his shoes clicked softly against the polished floor, his eyes swept the room—searching, almost unconsciously—for the one person he hadn’t seen in two years.

Yes… he had seen Jeon once before. That was at an important business party, the night Taehyung had first taken him there. It was the first and last time they’d stood in the same place after his father had thrown him out of their home.

Now, scattered across the room, people sat in quiet clusters, engaged in private conversations and hushed business dealings. Jungkook continued forward, his gaze flickering cautiously until it caught on a figure seated at the very center of the hallway. The man leaned back in his chair, casually sipping his drink, a faint, almost mocking smirk playing on his lips. Their eyes met—dark and piercing—and in that instant, Jungkook’s breath faltered. His heart thudded, a sudden wave of fear tightening in his chest, and he quickly lowered his gaze, unable to hold that stare.

With an unfamiliar, trembling sensation coursing through him, Jungkook’s heated body shivered without any clear reason, as if it were reacting to something his mind had yet to understand. His unsteady steps carried him forward—until he found himself standing before the man who had just risen from his seat and now stood directly in front of him.

Before his thoughts could catch up, he was pulled into a pair of strong arms. The embrace was sudden, firm, and almost crushing—a shock that stole the breath from his lungs. In all his life, never once had his father held him like this, so tightly… so warmly. His body, still stiff from the surprise, slowly sank into a strange trance. The moment deepened when he heard his father’s voice—deep yet unexpectedly soft—wrap around him. The sound alone was enough to leave him reeling, caught between disbelief and a fragile, unsteady weakness that spread through every inch of him.

“Forgive me, baby… forgive your appa,” Mr. Jeon’s voice trembled, each word heavy with regret. “I made the biggest mistake of my life… letting my little one be go so far away from me.”

The deep, aching sincerity in his tone made Jungkook’s eyes sting with unshed tears. It's the day he had been waiting for his whole life—the day his appa would come back, hold him close, and call him “baby” again. His chest tightened, and he could barely breathe under the weight of it. The memories of the hell he had endured as a child blurred, fading behind the warmth those words brought. For this moment, all he wanted is to let his little heart feel happy again in his father's embrace. But he didn’t know—how cruel and manipulator his father truly is.

Jungkook had never known the cruel side of his father—at least, not the full truth. Taehyung had kept it from him, unwilling to let his baby cry or carry the heaviness of that pain. So, all his life, Jungkook believed his father had simply misunderstood everything, believing the lie that his mother had cheated, and throwing him away because of it.

No one had told him what really happened that day. All Jungkook knew were fragments—words his father had spoken back then, pieces of a puzzle he never fully saw. It wasn’t surprising, then, that his pure heart could still forgive easily when someone asked for it—especially when guilt softened their voice. And this time… it was his own father, the man who had once hurt him, now asking for forgiveness. How could his heart not falter?

But forgiveness was not so simple. Could he truly forgive the man who stood by when his mother died right before their eyes—who didn’t try to save her, who locked his stepmother away in a room as if nothing mattered? Jungkook still didn’t know how his mother had died; only broken flashes of that day haunted him, each one cutting deeper. And after her death… his father’s cruelty only grew. He beat him and his mamma, tore them apart, and finally threw Jungkook away—leaving him to grow without love, without warmth, and with scars that never truly faded.