Jungkook pulled the hood of his black sweatshirt up over his head and donned a pair of sunglasses. I mourned the loss of his eyes — I could no longer see them. I sighed. He gazed down at me.
“You walk out ahead of me. Walk down the block to the stoplight. I’ll get my car and pick you up there.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Where are we going? Kookie, don’t you need to go to the stadium?”
He nodded. “But we have a little time. I’ll text Jimin and have him bring Sanduni to practice. You can come with me.” Then he looked at me. “Do you have everything you need?”
I looked down at my clothes then back up at him. “Do I look all right?”
He considered me for a moment. “No. You’re right. Something’s missing. Hold on a sec.”
Then he turned around, crossed the hall, quietly opened his hotel room door, and disappeared for a minute. When he emerged, he was carrying a black hoodie. His black hoodie. He walked up to me and held it out to me, encouraging me to slip my arms into the sleeves while he pulled it up over my back and shoulders. Then his hands turned me around and found the zipper before he zipped it all the way to my chin, his head bent over me. I stared down at his silky, raven hair, flopping forward to hide his face from my view. I resisted the urge to comb my fingers through it. I watched as his thumb and forefinger rode the zipper all the way up. I hadn’t felt this treasured in a long time. How could I feel like a small child being tenderly cared for by her adoring, older brother and a grown woman being cherished by her lover – both at the same time?
Kookie smiled down at me as he pulled the huge hood up over my head, tucking my hair inside. As his hands slipped out from under the hood, they framed my face, his thumbs caressing my cheeks, and Kookie leaned forward to kiss me on my nose. There was that strange feeling again – little girl warring with woman.
He smiled down at me. “Now I won’t have to worry about you getting cold. If you need another layer, you can have this sweatshirt too.” He tugged on the hoodie he was wearing. “And you’re nicely hidden, so if someone sees us together, they won’t be able to identify you.” Then he pulled a pair of sunglasses out of his pocket. “Wear these. They should fit over your glasses.”
I took them and put them on. “How do I look?”
He grinned at me, revealing those cute bunny teeth. “Absolutely adorable.” He pressed his forefinger against the tip of my nose. “Let’s go.”
My heart did a flip in my chest. After everything I’d said to him, he was still being so affectionate. What was wrong with me? Why had I thought that I couldn’t wait ten years? The truth was that I didn’t think there was any way Kookie could possibly care for me the way that I cared for him. After all, he had just met me yesterday. I had known him for over two years. Well… Maybe not known him. But certainly, filled my head with hours of videos of him. It was more exposure than he’d had to me.
He smiled at me. “You think I’d grow tired of you, don’t you? That this is just some fleeting infatuation? That when I head home for Korea, I’ll forget about you. That’s what you believe.”
Could he read my mind?
I just stared up at him. “You’ve known me for about twelve hours, Kookie, and half that time we were both sleeping.”
He smiled again. And for some reason that smile made me blush. What was he thinking?
He bent his head towards me. “Perhaps someday we can do that together too,” he whispered provocatively.
“Jungkook!” I exclaimed, slapping him on the shoulder.
“What?! I was just talking about sleeping, you know? When you snore?”
“I don’t snore!” I shouted, in mock outrage to cover my embarrassment. I knew exactly what Kookie had been intimating. “But seriously, you can’t make a lifetime commitment based on six hours of acquaintanceship,” I reasoned with the unreasonable man.
“Romeo and Juliet did, based on a few minutes together in a garden.”
I looked at him pointedly. “And where did that get them? They’re both dead.”
He grinned, making me feel faint again. “That’s what I love about you, Grace. You’re so practical.” Then he waggled his eyebrows at me. “But I also know that you are a diehard romantic under all that good, old-fashioned common sense.”
Oh, dear. He had me pegged quite accurately. I felt my heart quake. I was in big trouble…
