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“Do you ever think about what could have happened if we’d never met?”
Ye Xiu didn’t answer, calmly exhaling a stream of smoke. His eyes watched the traffic down below, cars and buses and motorcycles streaming by in a blur of light.
Chen Guo, for her part, watched Ye Xiu. After video calls and three-a.m. conversations on the phone, not to mention constant news coverage of the Glory World Championship, seeing him in the flesh was almost surreal. They had reunited hours ago and she was still stunned at how amazing it was to actually touch him, to feel his warmth against her and his arms around her.
Not that those arms were around her now, naturally.
She tapped his hand where it rested on the balcony’s railing. “What are you thinking about so hard? Hold me.”
With a twitch of his lips, Ye Xiu obligingly pulled her close, his embrace blocking out the chill of the night air. It was nearly winter; they shouldn’t even be out here. Chen Guo was pretty sure she’d booked this hotel specifically because it was so damn comfortable, so why weren’t they inside, getting comfortable?
“It’s pointless to think about what-ifs,” Ye Xiu said, seemingly out of nowhere.
Chen Guo puzzled over that for a moment before she remembered her earlier question. She…hadn’t really been expecting an answer, in all honesty, but if she’d had, that would be it. “It’s pointless to think about what-ifs”—what a Ye Xiu-like thing to say.
“Well, maybe when you’re a living legend,” she teased lightly, breezily, wrapping her fingers around his forearms where they were crossed atop her chest. “But us ordinary folk think about what-ifs all the time. God, can’t you put that out.”
“At least let me finish,” Ye Xiu grumbled, pulling the hand that held his cigarette away from her. When he replaced his arm, there was no cigarette in sight. His words weren’t the least bit unclear when he next spoke, even though that damn cancer stick had to be between his lips. “You didn’t have to follow me out here, you know.”
“You know I like being close to you after sex.”
Chen Guo couldn’t see him, but she knew he was rolling his eyes. She felt it in the air or something. “And you know I like smoking. All the time.”
“I’m aware. Didn’t you promise me you’d cut back on that?”
Ye Xiu’s chin bumped against the back of her head. “Don’t remind me.”
Chen Guo scoffed and elbowed him, because she was ruthless and concerned about his health, like any good employer-turned-girlfriend.
“Why don’t we go inside?” she asked after a minute, prodding him again, but more gently this time.
Ye Xiu dropped one of his arms wordlessly and wrapped the other around her shoulders as he turned them toward the sliding glass doors. “Not much to see out here anyway…”
“What were you expecting? Got used to those pretty European cities?”
It was so much warmer inside that Chen Guo couldn’t help a relieved sigh. She had slung one of the quilts around herself when she saw Ye Xiu standing on the balcony, his silhouette indescribably lonely against the city’s lively glow. It had helped to some extent, but her bare legs were left to suffer.
Ye Xiu tsked as she flung herself onto the big bed and burrowed under the sheets. Chen Guo merely stuck her tongue out at him.
Once he discarded his cigarette and popped a few breath mints into his mouth, he joined her, languidly lifting the bedspread and eying her mostly nude body. “Don’t you wanna put on pajamas or something?”
“Pfft. Did you think we were done?” As if to underline just how not done they were, Chen Guo reached down and slipped her panties off—the only piece of clothing she’d deigned to put on after their very heated bout of reunion sex.
Ye Xiu propped his elbow against his pillow and smirked at her. “What, still not satisfied?”
“I haven’t seen you in ages,” she said, only a bit defensively.
“I thought the phone sex was an interesting experience myself.”
“Interesting, yes. Fulfilling, not so much.” Chen Guo arched a brow at him. “So? Are you gonna keep me waiting?”
“I wouldn’t dare,” Ye Xiu replied, already reaching for her.
* * *
It was some time later, when they’d just barely emerged from post-coital bliss, that Ye Xiu brought up their exchange from the balcony.
“You called me a living legend earlier,” he said.
Chen Guo turned onto her side, coincidentally pressing herself against him in the process. He had an arm folded beneath his head, eyes pointed at the ceiling, and his expression was impenetrable in a way she had grown unaccustomed to after all the exposure to the Ye Xiu who lay beneath the cocky, shameless facade. (Not that that was some kind of act, precisely, but there was so much more to him than that.)
Cautiously, she said, “So I did. Don’t let it go to your head.” But who was she kidding, it would anyway.
“And you asked about…what-ifs,” he continued, ignoring her comment. “And maybe you got the impression that—I never think about them. Because I am who I am, and I’ve done what I’ve done.”
Now she was just confused. She barely even remembered what she’d said—but she supposed that had been her impression. “Um…”
“But I think about what-ifs plenty.” She saw a smile tug at the corner of his lips. “Even though it’s pointless.”
Chen Guo studied his profile worriedly. “Ye Xiu…”
He twisted to face her. They were suddenly nose-to-nose, eye-to-eye. His back was to the balcony, so it was the lamplight that illuminated his clean-cut features, that put that golden glow in his pale eyes. And Ye Xiu seemed so much more vulnerable like this, didn’t he, gilded in that yellow light, as opposed to the cold white and blue of the world outside this temporary haven.
“I don’t want to think about what could have happened if we’d never met, if I’d never walked into that Internet café.” Long fingers caressed the edge of Chen Guo’s jaw, the pressure so faint she could almost pretend it wasn’t there. “I wouldn’t be a living legend now, just an old one.”
Chen Guo couldn’t think of what to say. Ye Xiu could be introspective and philosophical and profound, when he so wished, but he rarely did. And emotional honesty—yeah, no. She wouldn’t mention emotional honesty in the same sentence as Ye Xiu unless accompanied by something like blackmail or obligation or threat. Getting Ye Xiu to open up about his feelings was almost as unrealistic as getting him to quit smoking. Nay, Chen Guo was somewhat optimistic about that. As unrealistic as him quitting Glory, maybe.
“You really need to stop calling yourself old,” she managed at last. “I mean, if you’re old, what am I?”
“…The epitome of womanly youth?” Ye Xiu offered. After their last discussion concerning Chen Guo’s age, it paid to tread carefully.
She scoffed, disbelieving, but her hand found his somewhere in the virtually nonexistent space between them. Threading her fingers with his, she told him, “Well, one day you’re going to be an old legend regardless. But nobody would ever forget you.”
Ye Xiu smiled. “Being forgotten doesn’t really scare me.”
“Then what does?”
“Being someone who never met you.” He leaned forward just far enough to place a gentle kiss against her lips. “That person wouldn’t be the same as the me of today. And the me of today only exists because of you.”
Chen Guo smiled back, warmth filling her right down to her toes. “Aren’t you exaggerating a little?” she whispered hoarsely.
“Not at all.”
“You would have found your way to where you needed to be, and I would have carried on with my uneventful life.”
“Maybe, but maybe not.”
She shook her head. “And you’re still—still the same as you were back then. And even if things had gone differently, you’d still be you. You’ll always be you, and I’ll always want you.”
Ye Xiu stared at her, something like shock coloring his eyes. The look on his face was one Chen Guo had never seen before—she didn’t have a name for such an emotion.
“You really don’t know how much I changed—how much you changed everything for me. Do you?”
“I didn’t change anything,” Chen Guo denied again. She was ready to argue, to convince him that she had only been a small stepping stone on his path back to glory. That he’d never needed her, truly needed her, because he’d always been competent, driven, ready; a legend long before that winter day. He’d always had a dream and the willingness to fight for it. So what if she had facilitated the process? Was there anything on this earth that could have stopped a man like Ye Xiu?
But Ye Xiu didn’t argue. He didn’t tell her she was wrong or right, or that he couldn’t have done it without her. Instead, he closed his eyes and rested his forehead against hers.
“My love, if only you knew…”
Legends always die alone. But he never was.