Page 87 of Lethal in Pink

“My eyebrow does not do a thing.”

“It twitches upward when you’re being polite instead of honest.” She reaches up, tapping the space above my brow with her index finger. “Right there. Telltale tell.”

I catch her wrist before she can pull away. Her skin is hot, the thin silver chain biting cold against my palm. She doesn’t flinch. For three suspended heartbeats, amid the chaotic roar of the terminal, my hand circling her pulse and her eyes locked onto mine, the whole damn building could cave in and I wouldn't even notice.

I let go first. She tucks her hand against her hip, and we keep walking.

The security checkpoint looms ahead, roped-off lanes snaking toward the scanners. The crowd thickens. The air smells like cheap cologne, stale upholstery, and anxiety.

I am memorizing her. Not the broad strokes—anyone can look at a face and see a face—but the precise, involuntary things she does when she thinks she’s off-camera. The hitch in her breath right before she catches me staring. The way the tip of her nose wrinkles when the terminal air hits her wrong, like she’s mentally filing a complaint against the entire airport authority. The tiny, defensive tuck of her chin when she’s hiding a laugh. I am cataloging her down to the cellular level, hoarding every twitch and micro-expression because I know down to the exact second how much distance is about to bleed between us, and the math of it tastes like copper and rot in the back of my throat.

This isn’t the routine ache of skipping town on a place you’ve outgrown. It’s structural. It’s the terrifying realization that someone has moved straight into the load-bearing walls of your life—and worse, you’d rather the whole house collapse than kick them out. I’ve never caught feelings like this. Not the girls I ditched in hotel lobbies after a set, not the rotation of models trotted out for press shoots to prove I wasn’t a complete trainwreck. Those were transactions with expiration dates stamped on the receipt. This is different. It’s roots. It’s invasive, stubborn, and taking up square footage I never budgeted for.

And sitting right at the base of my throat, heavy as lead: the secret.

Hyunjae Kim. Kai Ryu. Crown & Throne Records. The global machinery my father built from a basement studio in Gangnam. The life waiting for me in Seoul that has nothing to do with stethoscopes and everything to do with a dynasty I didn't ask to inherit. I’ve rehearsed the confession a dozen times—over coffee, in the quiet dark of my apartment, up on Mulholland. Every version ends the same way: her face going flat, then cold, then that particular, untouchable distance of someone rewriting our entire history through a lens of fraud.

There is no clean way to detonate it. There is only the mess of the truth and the cowardice of the silence, widening every time I kiss her and swallow my real name.

We’re twenty feet from the TSA agent. Amiyah stops the suitcase with her heel, turning to face me, both hands gripping the handle, her weight shifted back.

“Your boarding pass,” she says, holding out her palm.

I pull the crumpled paper from my back pocket and hand it over. She studies it like a hostile witness, her eyes tracking the gate number, the seat assignment.

“Exit row,” she nods. “Good. Your legs are too long for coach.”

“They’re proportionate.”

“They’re offensive. You take up too much room.”

“Sorry for existing vertically.”

“Don’t apologize. Just don’t manspread into the middle seat.”

I take the pass back. Our fingers brush—a static snap of friction that shouldn’t register over the chaos of the terminal, but does. She doesn’t pull away. For a second, the armor slips. Just a fraction, but enough to let me see the raw edge underneath.

“Go,” she says softly, before the line pushes us apart. “Before the queue gets worse.”

I nod once, turning to walk off. But I only make it two steps before the math of leaving her catches up—a sudden, violent wrench in my gut that tastes like copper and makes my stomach pitch. It’s a sickening, sour drop, like the floor has vanished beneath me. I turn right back around, closing the distance before she can even blink, and pull her in. I kiss her—hard, desperate, and entirely unhinged, drowning in the panic of what I’m leaving behind right there in the middle of the terminal noise.

When I pull back just a fraction, my forehead resting against hers, my voice is raw enough to splinter. “I’m going to miss you so fucking much, hotshot.”

Amiyah’s breath hitches, her fingers curling into the fabric of my jacket like she’s anchoring herself to the floor. The corners of her eyes shimmer, bright and dangerously thin.

“Don’t cry about it,” she whispers, her voice cracking around the edges. She looks like she’s about to break right along with me. Then, so quietly I almost miss it beneath the roar of the crowd: “I’m going to miss you too.”

I drag my thumb once across her cheekbone, memorizing the heat of her skin, before forcing myself to step back. “I’ll text when I land.”

She swallows hard, blinking rapidly as she forces her chin up into that familiar, stubborn tilt. “Okay. But don’t think I’ll be waiting by my phone.”

I nod, turn on my heel, and walk into the checkpoint without looking back.

If I look back, I don’t get on the plane. If I see her standing there in that cream dress with the pink headband, looking at me like she actually knows who I am, I will drop the bag, walk back through the ropes, and spill every rotten secret I’m carrying. And then I’ll miss my flight, and then I’ll have to face my father’s wrath and possibly his legal team with zero excuses.

So I keep moving forward.

The TSA agent takes my ID without looking up, swipes it, and waves me through to the conveyor belts. I shed my boots, empty my pockets into a gray plastic bin—phone, wallet, keys, loose change. My laptop goes into its own tray. My jacket follows. I stand on the freezing industrial carpet in my socks, listening to the hollow thrum of the millimeter-wave scanner as the line shuffles forward.