Lee Felix had grown up in a house filled with warmth. Two fathers who loved him loudly, who danced in the kitchen on Sunday mornings, who hugged him even when he insisted he wasn’t a kid anymore. At twenty-three, he still felt a little guilty whenever the silence of heartbreak replaced all that color.

His dad was leaving for a week-long business trip, suitcase half-zipped, shirt collar crooked. “Lixie, you’ll be fine,” he said, smoothing Felix’s hair like he’d done since Felix was five. “Hyunjin will check on you. He’s staying a few days, actually.”

Felix blinked. “Hyunjin? As in Hwang Hyunjin? The Hyunjin?”

“The very tall, very pretty one,” his dad teased. “Your father and I ran into him last weekend. He was excited to see you.”

Excited. Felix’s heart clenched. Childhood memories, muddy sneakers, popsicles melting down their wrists, Hyunjin laughing with that foxlike grin, rose up like sunlight through water.

But Hyunjin wasn’t the problem. His problem was the hollow ache where a relationship used to be.

His boyfriend. his ex-boyfriend had cheated on him. Repeatedly. And Felix, who loved too easily and forgave too quickly, had stayed far longer than he should have. Now he sat on the couch, wrapped in an oversized hoodie, staring at the wall like it was supposed to tell him what came next.

The doorbell rang.

Felix padded barefoot to the door. When he opened it, the world seemed to tilt just a little.

Hyunjin stood there, taller than he remembered, hair falling in soft waves, eyes warm and impossibly gentle. Twenty-five and gorgeous in that annoyingly effortless way he’d always had. He gave a soft smile, the kind that traveled slowly from his lips to his eyes.

“Hey, Lix.”

Felix swallowed. “Hey.”