He Broke Me to My Lover's Music, Now the CEO Chases Me novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Fang's Hands

Mingzhou goes to the concert hall to make Fang stop playing his music, and Fang kisses his knuckles just as Yuheng walks in.

Mingzhou woke on the floor of his own bathroom with the shower still running.

He didn't remember getting there.

The water had gone cold. His neck throbbed where Yuheng had bitten him, a fresh row of tooth marks set over the old mark.

He turned off the tap and looked at himself in the mirror.

Purple on his hips. Purple on his thighs.

His eyes were swollen.

Last night he had shut a piano lid in front of an apex alpha, and the apex alpha had let him walk out of the room.

That was the part he couldn't make sense of.

His phone buzzed on the sink.

It was his father.

"You didn't answer last night," Xia Dehai said. He sounded tired. "I called six times."

"I was busy."

"Busy." His father cleared his throat. "Mr. Qin's office phoned me. Just to say the house had a loud night."

Mingzhou closed his eyes.

"They want you to know there are no complaints," Dehai said. "Not yet. Mingzhou. Please. Eighty million is eighty million. Whatever you did, undo it."

"I didn't do anything."

"Then do it quieter."

The line went dead.

Mingzhou put the phone face down on the sink and stood there for a while with both hands on the porcelain.

Then he dressed, in the high-collared shirt that covered the bites, and went downstairs.

The villa was silent.

Qin House stood on the hill above the harbour, all stone and glass, and the living room was the first door off the hall.

He didn't look in.

"Mr. Xia."

Ou Jin was standing by the front door with a tablet under his arm. He had been awake most of the night.

He was thirty-four, a beta, with round glasses and a grey suit, and he had been Yuheng's assistant for ten years.

"Mr. Qin left at six," Ou Jin said. "He asked that you stay in the house today."

"I'm going out," Mingzhou said.

"I was told to tell you to stay."

"And you've told me."

Ou Jin looked at him for a long moment. His eyes went to the collar, and then away.

"The car's in the garage," he said. "Take the grey one. The driver has the morning off." He tapped his tablet. "I'll log that you left at nine. It's quarter to eight."

"Why?"

"Last night I cleaned the sofa," Ou Jin said. "I don't want to clean it again."

Mingzhou took the keys.

Lanting Hall was a glass shell on the waterfront, white and curved, with a poster of Fang on the side three storeys tall.

NIGHT SUITE, it said. World premiere. Fang Jinyan, piano.

Mingzhou stood under it for a moment.

Then he went in through the stage door, which Fang had given him a code for in the spring.

The hall was dark and empty, and the stage was lit by one lamp.

Fang was at the piano, practising a run with his left hand only.

He looked up at the sound of the door.

His face crumpled.

"Mingzhou."

He was out of the bench and halfway across the stage before Mingzhou could speak.

"I'm so sorry," Fang said. "I'm so sorry. I didn't know what he'd do, I didn't know what he'd make me watch. His driver said if I stopped, the hall's lease would end that week. I couldn't breathe."

"You played well."

It was meant to wound, and it did.

Fang flinched. Then he caught Mingzhou's hands in both his own.

They were warm and long-fingered, and they were trembling.

"I'll tell them," Fang said. "I'll tell everyone, tomorrow, at the press call. That it's Ye's music. That I only arranged it and it was never mine."

"No."

"You don't have to live like this."

"No," Mingzhou said again. "Ye stays a secret. It's the only thing I own that Qin Yuheng didn't buy."

"Then you shouldn't be in that house."

"I'm in it for fourteen months."

Fang's eyes shone. He lifted Mingzhou's hands and pressed his mouth against the knuckles, once, then again.

It was the same kiss as before.

It was gentle, and it asked for nothing, and Mingzhou let it happen because last night had left him cold to the bone.

"Come away with me," Fang whispered. "Not for the music. For you."

Mingzhou opened his mouth.

He didn't know what he would have said.

Behind them, at the back of the dark hall, someone began to clap.

Slowly.

One pair of hands, spaced apart, each clap loud in the empty seats.

Mingzhou knew without turning around.

He felt the pressure arrive before he heard the footsteps, a heavy, familiar weight that came down the centre aisle and into his legs.

"Don't stop on my account," said Qin Yuheng.

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