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Mouth full, I glance up at Eun, whose mournful eyes immediately begin softening my resolve to not talk to or see my friend again. I lower my chopsticks and utter, “Fine. Can you give us a minute, He Sook?”
“Maybe I should stay,” she says but her eyes radiate ire toward Eun.
“It’s okay.” I take her hand and gently squeeze it. “I won’t do anything stupid.”
“I’m not worried about you, Oppa.”
“I’m not here to start trouble,” Eun says respectfully.
“Fine. I’ll go sit over there.” She points to a table two rows down. “But I’ll be keeping my eye on you.”
At this moment, I love my sister even more than ever.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Rafe
“Five more minutes and we have to leave,” the pilot says to Dante, who’s glowering at the man as they tap one of their black, pointed-toe shoes on the worn carpet of the plane’s aisle. Dean Harper is letting us use one of his private planes, so we don’t have to fly commercial to Korea. Though it took a bit to coordinate the stops for refueling.
“Thank you for waiting.” Dante’s face is creased with frustration as they focus on the walkway to the plane. We are waiting on Bobby.
“I told you, he isn’t coming, Dante. He said so last night, and I doubt he’ll change his mind, not after how angry he was with me,” I say solemnly.
“Rafe is right,” Danny chimes in. “Once Bobby makes up his mind, he doesn’t back down. Bobby needs to cool off.”
“Well shit,” Dante spits out, then drops into the single seat up front. “Let’s go,” they say to the pilot. “No point waiting any longer.”
We all get in our seats and buckle up. Fig is right behind me, with Connor and John sitting next to each other in the seats in front of me. Danny and Tobias are in the back, with Callum and Dom in the row across the aisle from them. Pen elected to stay in L.A., since there’s only enough seats for a few bodyguards.
“What are we going to do without a keyboardist?” Callum asks. I glance to him and he’s squeezing Dom’s hand.
“We’ll make do,” Connor says. He leans into John, whose arm is around our drummer.
“I hope so,” Dante jumps in.
“We’ve done it before, remember guys? Back when we did a gig for the Hendersons,” Danny says.
“But that was when we were eighteen?” Callum counters, uncertainty written across his face.
“We can’t worry about it now,” I say, gripping onto the armrest to lean the seat back. I need to get some sleep, because it’s going to be crazy once we hit the tarmac in Seoul.
My mind drifts in and out of consciousness, but it’s still filled with thoughts of Lyric and my hope that he’s holding it together. I’m sure he’s as stressed as I am.
Sixteen hours later, including one stop in Japan to refuel, the jet finally lands at Incheon International Airport. With a time change, we missed twelve hours. What should be our night, is morning here. And we’ve almost no time to get acclimated to the shift.
“I’m glad we slept on the plane, because we’d be zombies otherwise,” Connor groans as he stretches.
“I told you, it’ll be an adjustment.” John smiles down him.
“God, enough of the lovey-dovey shit. Let’s get to the hotel,” I say grumpily, totally missing Lyric at the moment.
“Stop bitching. You’ll have your man soon enough,” Connor gripes back at me, and then leans into his boyfriend and whispers something that makes John’s face turn pink.
I keep on grumbling as we exit the plane and situate our luggage, meaning Dante’s, since they have three bags.
“Jesus Christ, Dante, what do you have in there? All three weigh a ton.” Dom grunts as he hefts up one of the suitcases.
“My things—now stop complaining. We will be meeting an advisor from KJP Entertainment at the hotel they booked for us,” Dante says, placing the cell to their ear. “I’m calling for the vehicles Dean arranged.”
