All Bets Are Off

Chapter 24

Donghae shifted in his sleep and automatically stretched out his arm to reach out to Dara but only find nothing but an empty space on the bed next to him. He groggily opened one eye to confirm that and looked around the room. He rubbed his eyes awake and sat up slowly, his brows furrowed. First thing his mind had thought was, Was it a dream?. He sit there for a minute then looked at the bed where he thought he hugged Dara as he slept. The sheet was rumpled and there's a dent of someone's head on the pillow next to his. No, it couldn't have been a dream, he decided as the remnants of sleep washed off him little by little. It was real. Dara was with him last night. Dara went to him and she had kissed him. He had kissed her. Quite incessantly so, even as he is slowly undoing her shirt, mindless with want and going crazy over her butterfly-like touches, her fingers softly stroking the bare skin of his back. There's no way he could've only dreamed of that. It was too intense to be even real.

And he was naked to top the proof of its realness. He never sleeps naked.

He picked up his boxer shorts thinking Dara might be outside, probably eating or... trying to get over her embrassment... or shock of having her first—. He smirked at that. Dara shocked? He couldn't imagine Dara ever being shocked at anything.

He went out of his room hoping he would really see Dara stuffing her face even if a part of him knows she wouldn't be. His house was empty. The glass door of his balcony is still open just as he had left it, showing a promise of a clear sky today. He went to his kitchen and turned on his coffee maker then sat down on one of the stools. He couldn't understand the worry that is springing up inside him. He doesn't even know what he's worried about. Maybe it was because there's a strange look on Dara's eyes when she looked at him last night. He would probably be relieved of worry if he woke up and found her beside him but... He shook his head knowing he's not making any sense even with himself.

He poured himself some coffee and took his phone to call Dara. He wanted to ask her if she's okay... if he had hurt her last night... did she got home safe.... Why did she leave without waking him up... Why did she want to leave in the first place.... He heard the phone ring and all the questions immediately got jumbled in his mind,his heart started pounding. Look at that, he was getting nervous. To talk to a girl. Man, he had never felt this nervous even when he was in highschool asking any girls out on a date. What did Dara do to him?

As it was, his nervousness just got wasted as the phone kept ringing until it went to voicemail.He glanced at the clock and saw that it was close to 9 in the morning. Is she still sleeping? Or did she already went to work? Would it be alright for him to keep on calling or would it be right for him to give her time to come to terms on what happened to them? Is she embarassed at what happened? Will she talk to him this early?

He sighed heavily as he lifted his cup of coffee to drink as he stared at Dara's name on his call list.

"Dara, even now you're making me absolutely crazy," he muttered to himself.

Dara looked up at the house in front of her remembering how it looked like with all the colorful lights that had encased its enormity last night. She had been too busy with her own thoughts that she hadn't had the chance to fully appreciate the beauty of the house. It reminds her of the one they used to have when her dad was still alive. The one which she had taken advantage of not knowing it will be taken away from her. It's not the sense that it's similar because of its vastness. It was because that is the only house which she had felt she was home.

She took a deep breath, shaking off the sudden feeling of nostalgia in her as she pressed the doorbell. A security guard had opened the gate looking at her questioningly.