Chapter Seventy-Eight: Collars & Consequences
The university halls buzzed with the usual chaos—students rushing between lectures, the clatter of lockers, the low hum of gossip that followed me like a shadow. But today, the whispers had a new flavor. A fresh scandal simmering beneath the surface.
Sara looped her arm through mine, her eyes gleaming with theatrical delight. "So. The Mafia King nearly died. You nursed him back to health. You're basically a tragic heroine in a gothic romance now. How does it feel?"
"Like I'm living in a fever dream," I muttered, clutching my books tighter.
"A fever dream where you're obsessively in love with your dangerous husband?"
"I'm not—"
"The whole campus saw you two at the awards ceremony. He looked at you like you invented gravity." She fanned herself dramatically. "I nearly combusted, and I was fifty feet away."
I shoved her, but she only laughed, bouncing off a passing student with zero apology.
Before I could formulate a suitably cutting response, the temperature in the hallway shifted. Conversations dimmed. Heads turned. The air grew thick with that particular tension that preceded his arrival.
I didn't need to look.
Kim Taehyun.
Walking through the crowd like a blade parting water, his presence a gravitational force that pulled every eye. He wore a black shirt today—sleeves rolled to his elbows, revealing the edge of white bandage against his forearm. His collar was slightly askew, tie loose, as if he'd dressed in a hurry. As if he'd been thinking about something else.
Someone else.
His eyes found mine immediately, that dark, possessive gaze cutting through the sea of faces like a searchlight. Sara's grip on my arm tightened to the point of pain.
"Okay," she breathed. "He's looking at you like you're breakfast. I'm going to find a seat. Far away."
"Sara—"
But she was already gone, swallowed by the crowd, leaving me frozen in the middle of the hallway as he approached.
He stopped inches away, close enough that I could smell the familiar scent of sandalwood and something sharper—the antiseptic from his morning wound care.
"You're staring," I said, aiming for annoyance and landing somewhere around breathless.
"Observing," he corrected, his voice a low rumble. "There's a difference."
"You're going to be late for your lecture."
"So are you."
The crowd flowed around us like water around stones, but in the bubble of space he'd created, we might as well have been alone. His hand lifted, fingers brushing a strand of hair from my face, tucking it behind my ear with a gentleness that made my chest ache.
"You look tired," he said softly.
"I was up late. Watching someone breathe."
His lips curved—that slow, devastating smile that had been appearing more often lately. The one that softened the sharp edges of his face and made him look almost human. Almost vulnerable.
"Worth it," he murmured.
I opened my mouth to retort, but the warning bell cut through the air, sharp and insistent.
His hand dropped, but his eyes didn't leave mine. "Lecture Hall 3B. Five minutes."
"I have my own class—"
"Come."
It wasn't a request.
---
The empty classroom was a mistake.
He pulled me through the door before I could protest, his hand firm around my wrist, the latch clicking shut behind us with a finality that made my pulse spike. The room was dim, blinds half-drawn, dust motes floating in the thin stripes of sunlight.
"Taehyun, we can't just—"
He turned, backing me against the door, his body caging me in without touching. The heat of him was a physical force, the scent of his skin overwhelming in the confined space.
"You've been avoiding me," he said quietly.
"I've been in class."
"You've been running." His hand rose, palm flat against the door beside my head. "Every time I get close, you pull away. Every time you let me in, you build the walls back up the next morning."
My throat tightened. "I'm not—"
"The forehead kiss," he continued, his voice dropping lower, more intimate. "The shower. The way you held my hand while I slept." His eyes searched mine, dark and endless. "I know you feel it, Aish. Stop pretending you don't."
My heart was a trapped bird in my chest. "You're injured. You shouldn't even be here."
"I'm fine."
"You're bleeding, you idiot."
He looked down at his side, where a faint spot of red had begun to bloom through the white of his shirt. A wince flickered across his features, quickly suppressed.
"I'll survive."
"You're impossible." I reached for him instinctively, my hand pressing against his chest to steady him, to check the wound, to—
His hand caught mine, pressing it flat against his heart. The beat was strong, steady, defiant.
"This is what you do to me," he murmured. "Every time you look at me. Every time you touch me. Every time you pretend you don't care when we both know you do."
I opened my mouth to deny it. To deflect. To rebuild the walls he kept demolishing with nothing but his stubborn, impossible heart.
But his lips found mine before the words could form.
The kiss was not gentle. It was the collision of weeks of denial, of nights spent watching him breathe, of mornings pretending I didn't count the hours until he came home. His hand tangled in my hair, tilting my head back, deepening the kiss until I forgot why I was supposed to resist.
My fingers fisted in his shirt, pulling him closer despite every warning screaming in my head. He made a sound—low, desperate—and his arm wrapped around my waist, hauling me against him like he could fuse us together through sheer force of will.
When we broke apart, we were both breathing hard.
His lips brushed the corner of my mouth, my jaw, the sensitive spot below my ear. "Say you don't want this. Say you want me to walk away."
My hands were shaking. My heart was a war drum. My entire world had narrowed to the heat of his body.
"Your collar is a mess," I whispered.
He pulled back, just enough to look at me. Confusion flickered in his eyes.
"What?"
I reached up, my fingers finding the twisted fabric at his throat. "Your collar. It's crooked. Your belt's loose. You look like you dressed in the dark."
A slow smile spread across his face—that infuriating, devastating, knowing smile. "Fix it, then."
"I'm not your—"
"You're my wife." His hands settled on my waist, thumbs tracing circles on my hips. "Fix it."
I should have stepped back. Should have laughed, pushed him away, pretended this was just more of our endless, pointless war.
Instead, I rose on my tiptoes, my fingers working at his collar, straightening the fabric, smoothing it against the strong column of his throat. His breath caught as my knuckles brushed his skin, and I felt the tremor that ran through him.
"Careful," he murmured, his voice rough. "I'm injured."
"You're a menace."
"Your menace."
I finished with his collar, my hands dropping to his belt—and stopped. The heat in his eyes was a physical thing, burning through every defense I'd ever built.
"Don't stop now," he breathed.
"I'm not doing your belt."
"You started."
"I finished." I stepped back, my cheeks burning, my heart a catastrophe in my chest. "There. Presentable. Almost."
He caught my wrist before I could retreat further, pulling me back into the warmth of his body. His voice was a velvet threat against my ear.
"Next time," he whispered, "I'm making you fix everything. And I won't let you stop."
---
The door opened.
We froze.
Professor Kim Namhyun stood in the doorway, his kind eyes widening for just a fraction of a second before smoothing into something unreadable. He held a stack of papers, his reading glasses perched on his nose, his expression one of mild, polite inquiry.
My entire face ignited.
"I was looking for a misplaced exam file," he said, his voice perfectly calm, perfectly professional. "I didn't realize the room was occupied."
"It's not what it looks like," I heard myself say, the words tumbling out in a desperate rush. "I was just—his collar was—he can't—"
Beside me, Taehyun's arm slid around my waist, pulling me against his side with a possessiveness that made my skin prickle. He wasn't embarrassed. He wasn't flustered. He looked like a predator who'd just been caught marking his territory, and was enjoying it.
"She's helping with my injury," Taehyun said smoothly. "My wife has a very attentive bedside manner."
Wife. The word was a brand, a declaration, a stake driven into the ground.
Namhyun's gaze flickered between us—my flaming cheeks, Taehyun's smug satisfaction, the disheveled evidence of exactly what we'd been doing. His expression didn't change, but something in his eyes softened. Understanding. Or perhaps, disappointment.
I couldn't tell which was worse.
"I see," he said quietly. He shifted the papers in his arms, his movements unhurried, deliberate. "I'll leave you to it, then. Professor Kim, your lecture begins in seven minutes."
He turned to go, and something in my chest seized.
"Professor Namhyun—"
He paused, looking back.
I didn't know what I wanted to say. An apology. An explanation. Anything to erase the look in his eyes, the quiet acceptance of something that felt like a door closing.
"Congratulations on the award," he said gently. "It was well deserved."
Then he was gone, the door clicking shut behind him, leaving me alone with my shame and the smug bastard who was watching me like I was the only thing in the room worth seeing.
"You could have said something," I hissed, shoving at his chest. "You could have let me—"
"Said what?" His hands caught mine, holding them against his heart. "That we were kissing in an empty classroom? That my wife was fixing my collar because she can't stop touching me even when she pretends she wants to?"
"I hate you."
"You don't." He pressed a kiss to my forehead, soft and devastating. "You never did."
I pulled away, my face still burning, my hands still shaking. "Your idol thinks I'm—"
"My idol?" He raised an eyebrow. "Kim Namhyun?"
"He's brilliant. He's kind. He's everything—" I stopped, the words dying in my throat.
Taehyun's expression didn't change, but something flickered in his eyes. Something that might have been hurt, quickly suppressed. "Everything?"
I wanted to take it back. Wanted to explain that I didn't mean it like that. That Namhyun represented everything I'd wanted before this life—intellectual safety, gentle admiration, a love that didn't come wrapped in violence and secrets.
But Taehyun was the one who'd stayed. Who'd bled for me. Who'd watched me sleep with the same reverence I'd felt watching him.
I couldn't say any of that.
"Your collar," I said instead, my voice small. "It's crooked again."
He caught my hand before I could reach for him, pressing a kiss to my palm that stole my breath.
"Fix it later," he murmured. "When there's no one watching."
---
I found Sara in the courtyard, pretending to read but clearly waiting to ambush me.
She took one look at my face and gasped.
"What happened? You look like you just ran a marathon. Or committed a crime. Or—" Her eyes narrowed. "Why is your lipstick smeared?"
I clamped a hand over my mouth, but it was too late.
"You made out with him?" she shrieked, loud enough to turn heads. "In the classroom? Before lecture?!"
"Sara, keep your voice—"
"And Namhyun caught you?" Her voice climbed higher. "My God, this is better than any drama. This is cinema."
"It was mortifying."
"It was iconic." She grabbed my arm, dragging me toward the building. "Tell me everything. Every detail. And don't you dare leave out the part where your husband looked at Professor Namhyun like he was contemplating a crime."
"He didn't—"
"He absolutely did. I could feel it from across campus."
I let her pull me along, my cheeks still burning, my lips still tingling, my heart a disaster zone I didn't know how to navigate.
In the doorway of Lecture Hall 3B, Taehyun stood waiting. His collar was straight now, his belt fixed, his expression the picture of professional calm.
But his eyes found mine across the courtyard, and for one breathless moment, the mask slipped.
He smiled.
Not the smirk he wore like armor. Not the cold curve of a man calculating his next move. Just a smile—soft, unguarded, meant for no one but me.
Sara's grip on my arm tightened. "Okay," she breathed. "I get it now."
I couldn't look away from him. "Get what?"
"The way you look at each other." Her voice was unusually gentle. "It's not something you walk away from."
I thought about Namhyun's quiet acceptance. About the life I might have had—safe, simple, ordinary. About the man who'd burned my world down and built something new from the ashes, and who was standing in a classroom doorway, waiting for me like I was the only thing that mattered.
"Yeah," I whispered. "I know."
And for the first time, I didn't want to run.
I walked toward him instead.