Contract Marriage 18+ [A Hopekook Fanfiction] ✓

7.5🥀

"He was in love with her before my father forced him into this marriage. She's the woman he wants to have a family with. I'm the one who screwed up his life, Eunwo... not vice versa. Once I have this baby we'll go our separate ways and both be happier for it."

"This is so messed up," Eunwo shook his head in disgust. "What about you and the baby? Don't you count for anything?"

"I would hate it if he stayed out of some outdated sense of duty... I'm worth more than that, don't you think?"

"Absolutely," Soobin whispered, squeezing Hobie's narrow shoulders reassuringly before sitting down on the chair beside the bed and leaning toward Hobie. "So you felt the baby move?"

Hobie's eyes lit up with remembered joy.

"It was amazing," she nodded and both Eunwo and Soobin went misty as they verbally recalled Chaebin's first movements. "After the fright I got, it was such a relief to feel him moving around in there."

"Is he doing any wriggling now? His Auntie Soobin wants to meet him," Hobie shook her head with a slight laugh.

"He's all quiet right now," she rested her hand on her stomach. "I can't believe I have to stay in bed for a week."

"Yeah that's a bit crap," Soobin nodded sympathetically. "So glad I wasn't confined to bed at any time during my pregnancy."

"God, if only... she was like a little dynamo, I had to force her to slow down," Eunwo recalled with a shudder.

"Do you think I could stay with you for the next week or so?" Hobie asked hesitantly and Eunwo and Soobin both frowned before nodding.

"Of course," Soobin said. "But why?"
"Jeon's going to Japan for a week and before this happened I had every intention of staying in my own home but..."

"If you think I'm going to Japan with you confined to bed, you can damned well think again," Jeon's gruff voice suddenly interrupted from the doorway and three heads swiveled towards him. He looked... strange. His hair was disheveled, his suit wrinkled and his tie loosened. He was also clutching a wilted bunch of flowers in one hand and gaily wrapped square box in the other. Added to that he had an incongruous bunch of foil helium balloons trailing behind him and it was the latter that caught and held everybody's attention. They were colourful, some were downright garish and most of them either read Happy Birthday or Happy Anniversary and one woefully out of place dolphin had the legend "Yippee for SUMMER" emblazoned across its side, a very optimistic sentiment considering it was July and the middle of winter.

"Jeon, bro..." Eunwo managed in a voice that barely trembled with laughter. "Did you go raiding all the wards in the hospital for those?"

"These were all the seriously under-stocked gift shop had," Jeon grumbled, obviously sensitive to Eunwo's mockery, which raised Hobie's brows because she had never heard her self-assured husband sound so defensive before.

"Thank you, Jeon," she said before Eunwo could come back with anything else. "I love helium balloons."

"I know you do," he said fiercely... surging forward until he elbowed Eunwo aside and stood staring down at her intently. "I know that you like helium balloons and pink gerbera daisies. I know that you like truffles," he shoved the gift-wrapped box, which probably contained truffles, and wilted pink daisies into her arms. "I do know things about you, Hobie. I've been learning."

"Uhm..." okay? Right, so he remembered the conversation they'd had months ago when she'd accused him of knowing nothing about her and he'd obviously been paying attention during their evenings together but what on earth was he trying to prove with this? "Thank you."