𝐁𝐈𝐋𝐋𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐀𝐈𝐑𝐄'𝐒 𝐀𝐑𝐑𝐀𝐍𝐆𝐄𝐃 𝐖𝐈𝐅𝐄 || 𝐉𝐉𝐊

chapter sixty-nine

A/n: Do not read this chapter if you feel uncomfortable reading heavy smut because that's what you are going to find when you scroll down.

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—#[a few days later]:[night]:[Jungkook's pov]:

I almost lost everything. Then I got it all back.

Weird, isn't it? How life works. I’ll never understand it.

But tonight, none of that matters. The only thing that’s real, the only thing that exists, is the fact that I’m here. I’m back in the life I was almost robbed of, back in the moment I’d already mourned once before.

With her.

The woman I love. The same woman who once felt like a wrong turn in a life I had meticulously planned. A beautiful, chaotic disruption I’d tried so hard to avoid. A mistake.

If you asked me today what she is to me… I couldn’t tell you. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to. Not now, not tomorrow, not in all the years I pray we have ahead of us. Our forever.

It’s not that I don’t know the answer. It’s that there are no words big enough, no language deep enough. How do you explain air? How do you describe your own heartbeat? She’s not just a part of my life anymore; she’s the reason it keeps going. What a minute without her feels like? That’s a hollow, sucking darkness I can’t even let myself glance toward.

Seeing her on that cliff’s edge… I didn’t just forget to breathe. It was like watching my own soul being dangled over the void. Every step she was forced backward wasn't just a threat against her. It was a piece of me being torn away. It wasn't her life in danger; it was mine.

My hand tightened around the knife I was holding. Just the memory was a physical ache, a cold blade of "what if" twisting in my gut.

What if Vivian’s hand had been steadier?
What if the gun had turned a different way?
What if Ethan hadn’t been there?
What if I’d been there even one second later?

The questions are like ghosts, cold and whispering. They follow me into the quiet moments. They’re the shadows in the corner of our bedroom when I watch her sleep.

Before the thoughts could pull me all the way under, my fingers loosened. The knife settled silently on the kitchen counter. It was a small, deliberate act. I wasn't even thinking about it. But it felt like setting something down. Letting go of the sharp edge of that fear, if only for tonight. Putting down the memory, heavy and cold as steel.

I’ve tried everything to shake it. To just be here, in this safe, warm present with her. But some memories don't fade. They just live under your skin, a constant, low hum of dread that surfaces in the dark, turning the echoes of that night into dreams that steal the air from my lungs.

The quiet of the house was suddenly deafening. I stood there at the counter, my gaze locked on the knife I’d just set down. It was like my soul was desperate, clawing for something solid in that cold steel, something to pull me back from the edge of my own thoughts. Anything to make the ghosts shut up for a while.

But do ghosts ever really fade once they’ve sunk their teeth into you?

I’ve spent my life winning. Building an empire, a name, a fortress no one could touch. And in the same breath, I’ve lost everything that ever truly mattered. My parents, gone when I was too young to understand ‘forever’. My grandfather, the only anchor I had left, taken from me in his own home. And then… the faint, fleeting hope of a child, gone before it ever really was.

And that day on the cliff, I stood there ready to lose her, too. The woman who did the one thing I thought was impossible—she made me feel real fear again. Not the calculated risk of a business deal, but the raw, gut-wrenching terror of having your heart held outside your body, in someone else’s trembling hands.