“I was never going to ask. I know I have to stay.”

“Hm…” Bai Xue kissed Xiaokai again, gentle and lingering. “I think you’re finally telling the truth. But it’s not the whole truth.” He stood again, lifting Xiaokai with him.

“Wait—wait!” Xiaokai squirmed against him. “I don’t—I don’t know what Liu Baiyan wants! I don’t—”

He didn’t break again after that.

Bai Xue kept trying.

HE WAS SO cold.

21

THE FALL

SOMEONE WAS KNOCKING incessantly at Weiran’s door. He blearily checked his phone—two in the morning—before he grumbled and slid out of bed. This was supposed to be a high-class hotel. What the hell were they doing letting nobodies up to bother people at all hours of the night? Maybe he’d gotten it wrong and it wasn’t as high-class as he thought.

He opened the door.

Liu Xiaokai was in front of him.

He looked…the same. Absolutely unchanged. There was a small bruise on the corner of his mouth, but when didn’t Xiaokai have little mysterious bruises? Most importantly—he was here, right in front of Weiran, after being gone all that time without a single word.

Xiaokai didn’t wait for him to say hello. He just seized his collar and threw him back, leaving Weiran stumbling until his legs hit the mattress.

“What the hell is wrong with you?”

“What the hell is wrong with me? What the fuck did you do!” He threw a hand at the door, but though his tone was beyond pissed off, he wasn’t raising his voice. Ever the proper fu’erdai. “Not only did you put yourself in a position where you could be seen by Liu Baiyan—you made direct eye contact with him and glared at him?”

“What the fuck do you expect me to do when I meet the man who killed my parents?”

“Walk away, you fucking idiot!” He shoved at Weiran again, hard enough to knock him onto the bed. “That’s what we told you to do! We explicitly told you to just turn around and walk away! You put everything at sake!”

“I’m here, aren’t I?” Weiran wasn’t even going to bother with why the hell Xiaokai knew this, or why Liu Baiyan would remember someone like him—it wasn’t as if he was the only one on the planet who hated the man, and it wasn’t as if murder was the only reason to hate the CEO of a major corporation. “So nothing happened! What are you so pissed off about?”

Liu Xiaokai just glowered down at him. Then suddenly, his face smoothed. He planted his hands onto the bed on either side of Weiran, leaned forward, and kissed him.

Weiran pushed at his chest. “This isn’t really the—”

“Just pretend I’m Xingyu. Like always.”