LEMONS / 𝗺𝗹𝗺 (✓)

4: where he apologizes

CHAPTER FOUR
where he apologizes

Hwan didn't want to go back to the bar.

As much as he despised to admit it, the thought of Andrew talking about him—about Kalen—and making others associate the two of them as if they still lived in the same space, had Hwan taste bile in the back of his throat. Even if it was just strangers and the Mexican bartender who liked to hit Kalen on the shoulder, it was still a thought that made Hwan's skin crawl.

Hwan had worked so hard for him to be separated from Andrew and the parents he knew the said male still had contact with, and he'd be damned if he ever fell back into the hole he had climbed up from himself.

Andrew was just that kind of person you didn't want to be associated with — even when related to him by blood and an invisible brother bond that was supposed to be unbreakable.

The kind of person who was too reckless for his — and others — own good and who wouldn't hesitate to throw someone under the bus, if it meant his own being would be out of danger. The person who never forgave and forgot or shied away from getting revenge, even if it really wasn't worth it; Hwan believed the only thing his brother feared was a bruised pride.

He had the persona of a perfect son carrying a wild soul, but the mind of an angry being with no conscience.

Andrew was the kind of person you didn't want to be hanging around with—

—unless you were his kind of people.

Like Lucas, who looked like he stepped into the bar by accident on his way to the church with his white shirt (that was unbuttoned halfway down the first time Hwan had properly met him); the man, Kalen didn't seem that fond of. The one who wore shoes in the color of his eyes, and with no visible tattoos except for the one on the side of his neck.

Or Harrison, whom Hwan had only met once in his lifetime when he had tried to hit on him in his own house, to one of the countless parties Andrew would host whenever their parents were out of town. Hwan had almost spit the blond man with the strong British accent in the face, before he told him to fuck back to the homophobic piece of shit, whom Hwan called a brother and Harrison, a friend.

But Hwan wasn't Lucas or Harrison or anything like his brother, so he tried to avoid Andrew and anything revolving him, as much as possible.

When he had been younger, Hwan had wanted to be just like Andrew — the brother who could get away with anything, and who shared all of his chocolate bars with Hwan when they hid in the tree house in the garden; who told him scary stories and then made him feel better when Hwan would be unable to fall asleep the same night.

Then Hwan grew up alongside Andrew, who stopped sharing candy and comforting his younger brother when insomnia was keeping him up, and Hwan learned how to think for himself, as he watched the person whom his hero was slowly turning into over the years.

Andrew was an asshole and he made Hwan sweat even when he physically wasn't around.

So, Hwan didn't want to go back, because the fear of running into his brother appeared every time he walked by the bar at night.

Hwan had known Andrew visited the bar—he had even run into him before—but even as that was what he kept telling himself, his beating heart just wouldn't go back to its normal rhythm.

But hwan wasn't angry at Kalen, and he didn't want him to think he was.

Hwan didn't blame Kalen for anything—he didn't even blame Marcus who seemed like a person who ran his mouth just because he could. But the way he had walked out of there, not even looking over his shoulder as Kalen called his name in confusion and, what Hwan believed was concern, could make it seem like it. Hwan swore, it wasn't on purpose. He just couldn't breathe or think or react with anything but anger when it involved his family by blood.