Free Web NovelChapter 12: HE DOESN’T HAVE TO
Chapter 10
Lumi
The side of his lips twitched up, just barely. Gone almost as fast as it came.
He walked in and asked how I was doing. I said I was fine. Neither of us mentioned the song.
When he stepped further into the hallway his eyes caught the dining table and his feet slowed. Just a fraction.
His brow lifted once. A single, quiet movement but I caught it because I wanted to catch all his reactions.
He looked at the table. Then he looked at me.
I watched his throat move.
He didn’t say anything. Just nodded once, slow and deliberate, then walked to the table like the decision had already been made somewhere before the nod.
He pulled out the chair carefully. Sat down. Opened the meal with the kind of unhurried attention he seemed to give to most things, like there was no version of the world where rushing made sense.
I stood by the kitchen doorway and tried not to look like I was watching him. But I was watching him.
He picked up the spoon and brought it to his mouth and I stood very still, barely breathing. He chewed once. I searched his face for something, anything at all — a shift in his jaw, a flicker behind his eyes, the small involuntary things a face does when it doesn’t know it’s being read.
Nothing.
His expression stayed exactly as it was. Calm. Unreadable. Like the food was something he was simply processing and not something I had spent the better part of the afternoon standing over.
I exhaled quietly and looked at the wall. I’d intentionally made his best food, not sure if it still was his best food though.
He didn’t know this but last night had done something to me.
The song. The quiet of the guest room. The way sleep had come without a fight for the first time since I left London.
It had settled something in me that I had been circling for days without knowing how to land.
It gave me clarity. I had never been more certain of anything.
"If you come tomorrow," I said, keeping my voice even, "you won’t meet me home."
The spoon stopped halfway to his mouth.
He looked at me. Held it there for a moment, suspended. Then he set the spoon down slowly, then pushed back his chair.
I blinked. "Where are you going?"
He paused mid-rise. Turned to look at me and there was something in his face that was steady and direct but not unkind. freewebnovёl.ƈom
"You need to be plain about what you want, Lumi." My lips parted slightly but I closed them again.
"I understand you want me to stop checking up on you, that you’re not a child. But you don’t have to go this far to make that clear." He glanced briefly at the table, then back at me. "It’s better I leave now."
I stared at him.
He had arrived at a conclusion. I could see it sitting in the straight line of his shoulders.
He had taken my words and built something out of them that made complete sense from where he was standing and was entirely wrong.
I lifted both hands and waved them quickly between us. "That’s not what I meant."
He stopped. Turned back fully. His head tilted a fraction and his eyes moved to my face, unhurried, waiting without impatience.
"I’m going back to the UK tomorrow." I steadied my voice. "There are things I need to handle. People I need to face. I said it because I didn’t want you arriving here and not finding me." I paused and looked at him directly. "That’s all I meant."
He looked at me for a long moment.
Something moved through his face slowly, working its way through his expression. His brows pulled together.
The silence stretched.
"Have you forgiven him?" My eyes went wide before I could stop them.
The question landed before I had any defense ready, before I could arrange my face into something neutral.
"What?" My voice came out sharper than I intended. "No." I shook my head. "No. Never."
Something left his shoulders. A barely visible release, like pressure that had been sitting just below the surface finally finding somewhere to go. He drew a long breath and let it out quietly.
Then he looked away from me for the first time since he had turned back around. Just for a moment. Just long enough for me to see that the answer had mattered to him more than he would have said out loud.
I know it did because even though we’ve had this backa and forth, he wouldn’t want me to make that decision.
I’d never make that decision, it’s actually quite the opposite.
"Then why are you going back?" His voice was quiet when he brought his eyes back to me. "You’re already becoming Lumi again."
The words hit somewhere I hadn’t thought to guard.
My throat closed before I could stop it. I felt the sting come fast, the kind that starts behind the eyes and works its way forward before you have any say in the matter. I blinked once, hard, and looked just past his shoulder.
He was right. frёewebηovel.cѳm
That was the entire point. That was the reason I had stood in front of the bathroom mirror this morning and felt something different looking back at me.
That was why I had gone for a run this morning, cleaned the house, cooked a real meal and set two plates on the table without deciding to.
I was becoming Lumi again.
And the only way to keep her was to go back and close what I had left open.
I didn’t say any of that. I didn’t know how to yet. The words were there somewhere but they weren’t ready, they were still tangled up in things I hadn’t fully sorted through, and saying them half-formed felt worse than saying nothing at all.
So I said nothing.
He didn’t push. He just looked at me for a moment longer and then walked across the room, drew the empty chair close to mine, and sat down in it.
He rested his forearms on his knees and looked at me.
"Who am I to you?" I looked at him.
The question sat between us simply, without weight or pressure, which somehow made it heavier.
"Answer me truthfully. Please."
I held his gaze. "You’re my best friend’s younger brother."
He nodded. Once. Slow and deliberate.
"That’s okay." A pause. "We can manage that for now." He looked at me steadily, not moving.
"But in case you’ve forgotten... I’m Ren." His voice didn’t change, didn’t dip into sentiment, just stayed even and certain. "It’s been seven years, Lumi. But I’m still Ren."
Something moved in my chest. Quiet and old, the kind of feeling that has been sitting somewhere undisturbed for so long it’s grown roots.
Seven years.
I let the thought sit there for a moment and behind it came the memory, sudden and clear.
The memories that were preserved somewhere careful.
The night before I left, my apartment was a mess and I was almost getting frustrated because I hadn’t finished packing my stuff.
He had come with Neve. He was so much younger then and still preserved.
Then he doesn’t smile only to his family, I was the only he smiled with that wasn’t family.
He had folded things carefully and carried boxes without being asked and moved through the apartment with a steadiness that had felt, even then, like someone older than his age.
Halfway through the night I had turned to him and asked why he was helping.
He had looked at me the same way he was looking at me now. Direct, unhurried and without apology.
*I’m Ren,* he had said. Like it answered everything. Like it was the only answer that would ever be necessary.
I hadn’t fully understood it that night. I understood it less now, sitting across from him in a house that wasn’t mine with seven years of distance pressed quietly into the space between us.
We used to be so close that even though he was much younger than Neve and I, If I was planning something, if I needed something, he and Neve were simply the first people I went to.
I didn’t know when that had become past tense.
I didn’t know how we had let seven years of silence and distance happen so quietly, without either of us meaning to, without either of us stopping it.
"I’ll follow you back to the UK." The air in the room shifted.
I couldn’t believe what I heard. I would have said he was joking but Ren is one person that’ll joke about something like this.
My eyes moved to his face and found it completely calm, like he had said something simple. Like he had said he would take the bins out or close a window.
My mouth opened.
"What?"
"I know what you’re about doing and I know you’ll need a friend. Even though I’m not one, at least I’m Neve’s brother." I stared at him with mouth wide open.
He was right, what I wanted to do was something I’d never imagined ever doing.
No woman gets married and thinks of divorcing. And I do need someone but not him.
I won’t let him follow me. He doesn’t have to.
