concerned frown. I forced my fingers not to tremble as I carefully unwrapped their small present and found a gift card to one of my favorite boutiques. It was a thoughtful gift but impersonal, and it told me they hadn’t wasted much energy putting effort into it.
Still, I was thankful for it, and I told them so as I hugged them both.
When they glanced at Palmer, still holding Jordan’s gift, I discreetly shot Mom a “Help me” look. Without question, she turned to the Moreittis with a beaming smile. “Oh, look! There’s Drake. Gabriella was telling us just last week how active you two are with GreenPlanet. Did you know they asked him to do a single just for their latest fundraiser?”
Their eyes brightened, and they let Mom lead them over to my dad. Once they were out of earshot, Palmer glared down at the present still in her hands. “What should I do with this?”
The smile I’d kept in place for Jordan’s parents vanished. When I looked at his gift, all I wanted to do was cry. His dad wasn’t very convincing about the work excuse, so I didn’t believe it for a second. Still, I couldn’t bring myself to throw away anything Jordan gave me.
I took the small box. “I’m just going to put this in my room,” I told her as I started for the stairs. “I won’t be long.”
Upstairs, I closed and locked my door before falling back against it. Tears burned my eyes, and I clenched my fingers around the shiny present so hard they quickly began to ache. Fighting a sob, I moved on shaking legs to the bed and flopped inelegantly down on the end.
Pushing my hair back from my face, I tossed the box on my pillow and then pulled out my phone. Heart racing, I hit a hashtag search on social media, and instantly, a hundred pictures appeared. The first one was time-stamped within the last ten minutes.
Jordan was in a suit, but his white dress shirt was half unbuttoned, his tie barely hanging around his neck. There was red lipstick on his shirt collar. That same shade was smeared over his mouth as well as his cheek and neck. Whoever took the picture had a good angle, because I could see the drunken look in Jordan’s dark eyes.
Beside him, some redhead hid her head in his chest, but the side of her face was still visible, and I could see she was grinning. The post that went with the pictures said Jordan and his date—Letizia, some Italian celebrity heiress —were leaving Milan’s hottest club. They got into Letizia’s limo. There were already over a hundred replies to the tweet, and one said they saw the couple getting out of the limo in front of Letizia’s villa. The time stamp was less than a minute before.
I quickly did the math in my head. Milan was nine hours ahead of California. That meant it was just after four in the morning there.
As I was doing the calculation, a new picture came up to go with the tweet, showing Jordan and Letizia passionately making out in front of the small but beautiful Italian villa.
Pain exploded in my chest, and it took me a few minutes before I could breathe again.
I swallowed the lump clogging my throat and turned off my phone. As I tossed it onto my bedside table, my gaze landed on Jordan’s present, and I let a single tear fall.
There would be no fairy tale for me. The man I’d loved and waited for wasn’t going to sweep me off my feet. While I’d been unrealistically building up what I was feeling for Jordan in my head—and my heart—he hadn’t been doing the same. I should have known better. Nevaeh, who was the smartest person I’d ever met, had tried to warn me from the very beginning. But I hadn’t listened.
I thought since Dad had fallen for and waited for Mom until she was eighteen, and the same had happened with Nevi and Brax, that it meant it would be my destiny too. Only, while I was falling head over heels for my Prince Charming, he’d just thought of me as a friend.
And not even his best friend.
That was reserved for Mia.
The pain in my heart and stomach only intensified. Hadn’t that Letizia chick looked a lot like Mia? What little I saw of her in those two pictures with her red hair and fair skin, she did resemble my cousin