ink bound (JJK, Book 1 of the Soulmate Series)

chapter eighteen

2 days passed by quickly and nothing could prepare me for the ache in my chest at my last night being with Jungkook for who knows how long. He somehow convinced me that it would be okay for him to leave the hotel, after hours of going back and forth with each other about his safety. His presence here is so comforting though. Even if all I can think about is how I'll be leaving him and whether I'm making the right decision, he's doing a great job at constantly reassuring me that everything will be fine. I'm on the floor stuffing clothes into my suitcase worried about making sure I'm checking everything off my list so I don't forget anything. Meanwhile Jungkook is sitting right next to me taking out everything I'm throwing in to neatly fold them and place them back into my suitcase. It's a team effort if I do say so myself. An organized chaos.

"Hey T, I'm gonna head out for a few hours. I'm meeting up with Vera." Malia says from across the room. Her korean slow and choppy, rarely using it unless she wants to talk shit about Alex while he's around. But with Jungkook being here, she made sure he didn't feel left out and uses korean even when she's just having a conversation with me.

"Ah okay." I nod. "Tell her I said it was great meeting her and hopefully we'll be able to see each other again."

"You'll be here when I get back? I'll only be gone for like an hour or two, maybe we can have dinner or something." She grabs her bag, heading to the door turning to face me just before she opened it.

I see Jungkook scratch the back of his neck nervously and I peek over at him, quirking an eyebrow at the sudden nerves coursing through the bond.

"Actually, I wanted to take Taylor out to dinner tonight. The guys wanna see her again to say bye." He catches my gaze, "If that's okay with you of course."

Is it okay? I was gonna do my best to avoid them like the plague. But I guess there's nothing I can do to avoid it and regardless of what happened between Taehyung and I, the other guys didn't do anything. And I miss hanging out with them. I've been really quiet since the incident, not texting Jimin or Namjoon as much as before.

Malia looked at me, her eyes telling me that if I needed an out she could help. I shake my head at her and then look at Jungkook, smiling "Yeah, of course that's okay."

"Okay soulmies" Malia walks to the door, opening it. "I'm out. Text me if you need me, T."

"Love you, bye." I shout to her as the door closes behind her.

"Soulmies?" Jungkook questioned trying to imitate Malia's english, too cute for his own good. He looked at me with his brows furrowed.

"You're very cute you know. Yes, you're my soulmie." I giggle reaching out to boop his nose.

He snatches my hand before I can pull it away, intertwining our fingers in front of us. His eyes soft on mine. "Are you sure you're okay with going to dinner tonight? You don't have to if you don't want to, the guys just wanted to have dinner for your last night here in LA."

I sigh. "They didn't do anything wrong, they don't deserve to be on the other end of this. They're important to you so no matter what they'll be important to me."

Jungkook eyes soften on me and he smiles, squeezing my hand in his. "Great! We leave in an hour."

"What!" I pull my hand out of his and grab my phone off the bed, the time reading 4pm. "We just had lunch like 2 hours ago, why so early?" I frown.

"You have a flight tomorrow, Bella. There's no way I'm letting you stay out late." He leans back on his hands, stretching his legs out in front of him. My cheeks flushing at how thoughtful he is.