Chapter 261: Caught

*Ling Yue’s POV*

The thing about Wuchen Siying is that she is objectively the most beautiful baby that has ever existed.

I am aware this is not a neutral assessment. I am aware that every person who has ever looked at a newborn they love has thought approximately the same thing. I am also aware that in this particular case I am simply correct and the subjectivity argument does not apply.

She has been in the world for less than two weeks and she already has opinions. She has a specific cry for hunger that is different from her specific cry for discomfort, and I have learned to tell them apart, which is something I did not expect to be able to say about myself. She makes a sound when she is almost asleep that is somewhere between a sigh and a complaint, as though she resents the unconsciousness coming for her, and every time she makes it something in my chest does something embarrassing.

The point is: she deserves a gift.

She lacks nothing — I am aware of that too. The nursery is stocked with everything a small person could require for the first several years of life, and whatever it doesn’t have Mrs. Wen will quietly arrange before anyone notices the gap. Siying will not wake up one morning wanting for anything.

But I want to give her something anyway.

I tell myself it is because I have been cooped up at the estate for weeks and need air. I tell Runze I’m going out for a few hours. He looks at me the way he looks at me when he knows exactly what is happening but has decided to be kind about it, which I appreciate more than I would ever say out loud.

I take Runze’s car, tell his driver, Liang Feng, the general area, and spend the ride looking out the window at the city moving past.

It is strange, being outside. The estate has its own rhythm and its own contained world, and stepping out of it feels slightly like surfacing from water. The city does not know or care what has happened in the past several weeks. It is simply moving, the way it always moves, indifferent and continuous.

I find this privately comforting.

The boutique is on a quiet side street off the main shopping district, the kind of place that announces its prices through the quality of its silence rather than any visible signage. The window display has three items in it — a hand-stitched rabbit, a cashmere blanket in pale cream, and a mobile with hand-painted ceramic birds — arranged with the particular care of people who understand that restraint is its own form of statement.

I push the door open.

Inside smells like something floral and very clean. Soft music plays at a volume designed to be felt rather than heard. The staff member nearest the door looks up and gives me the particular smile of someone who has assessed me in under three seconds and reached a favorable conclusion.

I begin to look.

This is, it turns out, more complicated than I anticipated. There are too many things and all of them are beautiful and I have no framework for deciding between them because I have never bought a baby gift in my life and everything looks both perfect and insufficient simultaneously.

I pick up a small stuffed bear. Set it down. Pick up a rattle shaped like a star that is apparently hand-painted by an artisan in somewhere scenic. Set that down too. Hold up a knitted set — hat, mittens, booties in pale yellow — examine it, decide the yellow is wrong for Siying who I have decided suits cooler tones, and put it back.

The staff member drifts closer with the professional patience of someone used to this.

"Is it for a newborn?" she asks.

"Eleven days old," I say. "Girl. Very beautiful, and has opinions already."

She smiles in the way people smile when they find something genuinely charming. "Then perhaps something she can grow into? Something that will still mean something when she’s older?"

I look at her.

"Show me," I say.

She leads me to a cabinet near the back of the shop. Inside, on a small velvet stand, is a bracelet, thin white gold, a single pale jade bead, the kind of thing that could be worn at any age, that would look the same on a small wrist at one year old as it would on a grown woman’s wrist at thirty.

I look at it for a long moment.

I think about Siying’s small fist curled against Runze’s chest. I think about her face in the dim light of the nursery, already so certain of herself, already so present.

"That one," I say.

I am standing at the counter waiting for it to be packaged when my phone buzzes.

The boutique door opens behind me.

I don’t turn around immediately. I sign the card receipt, watch the staff member fold the tissue paper over the bracelet box with practiced precision, accept the small bag with both hands and a polite thank you.

Then I turn.

Jin Hao is standing just inside the doorway.

He is wearing a light coat, his hair slightly wind-tousled, and the moment I see his face everything I spent the last few months carefully putting away comes loose at once. Just like that. All of it, immediate and unwelcome, like it was never actually gone, just waiting very patiently for exactly this moment to remind me that I am not over this at all.

He looks exactly the same as he always has.

My legs do not move.

I hate that.

I tell them to move. I have a clear path to the door — Jin Hao is to the right of the entrance, the left side is open, I could walk past without making a scene, I could be outside and in the car before anything happens. My legs simply decline to participate in this plan. They stand exactly where they are while my heart does something loud and inconvenient in my chest.

Jin Hao takes a step forward.

My legs finally get the message. I take one step back, then another, until my back finds the counter and there is nowhere further to go.

"Jin..." I say, and hate how my voice comes out, neither sharp nor cold, not any of the things I have spent months rehearsing. Just his name, said in the voice of someone who has missed saying it.

"Ling Yue," Jin Hao says.

He closes the remaining distance between us in quick steps and I have time to think don’t before his hand cups the back of my head and his mouth finds mine.

The kiss is not gentle.

It crashes into me hard and certain, no permission asked, no apology offered. His other hand grabs my waist and yanks me flush against him, fingers digging in like he has been holding this back for too long and will not let go now. His mouth moves over mine with raw focus, lips parting mine open, tongue pushing in deep and hungry, tasting me like he has every right to.

My hands press against his chest. I push — genuinely, palms hard against his coat, body trying to create space while my mind races *no, stop, this is not how this works, you don’t get to just—*

He does not stop.

He only kisses me deeper, tilting my head with the hand in my hair, sucking on my lower lip before sliding his tongue back in, wet and relentless. The heat of it floods through me. My pulse jumps under his palm. My knees weaken for half a second.

And then... and I will not forgive myself for this, not immediately, not for some time... my hands stop pushing.

They do not pull him closer. They simply go still against his chest, fingers curling weakly into the fabric of his coat. My mouth, which was pressed shut and resistant a moment ago, opens under his, soft and yielding, giving him exactly what he wants. A small, helpless sound slips out of me into the kiss.

Jin Hao makes a low sound against my mouth, he deepens it further, one last thorough stroke of his tongue against mine, before he finally pulls back.

His hand stays at the back of my head, holding me there. He looks at me from an inch away with dark, certain eyes.

"Did you really think," he says quietly, "that I would let you go?"

I open my mouth.

Nothing comes out.

He looks at me properly, and then he bends and in one smooth motion scoops me off my feet entirely, one arm under my knees and one at my back, as though this is a completely reasonable thing to do in the middle of a baby boutique on a Tuesday afternoon.

"What are you—" I start.

"I have the car outside," he says, already moving toward the door.

"You can’t just—"

I realize I am still holding the small bag against my chest. I don’t remember picking it up. My hands apparently made that decision without consulting me.

I have approximately four seconds to decide whether to make a scene.

I do not make a scene.