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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 somewhat.
I pressed my hand to my chest, trying to rub the pain away. Of course he went for girls who looked like Mia. He was in love with her. I’d suspected it for years, but I hadn’t wanted to believe it.
Now, I had no choice but to.
“Stupid, stupid girl,” I whispered to myself, angrily scrubbing the single teardrop away. “You had no business falling for him to begin with.”
I drew in a slow, steadying breath and stood. Locking my knees to keep them from trembling, I walked to my full-length mirror and glared at the girl staring back at me. “You will not love him anymore. Jordan Moreitti is nothing more than your friend. You don’t need him. You won’t cry over him. You won’t even think about him.”
Walking back to my bed, I picked up the unwrapped gift and then placed it at the back of my closet, locking it away along with the key to my heart.
Seven Months Later
Jordan
Lana Stevenson’s soft sobs were so heartbreaking that no one was left unaffected. She clung to her husband, burying her face in his chest as the minister said the last prayer. The beautiful woman was surrounded by her children, sisters, and other family members, but she was so distraught she couldn’t see anything but the casket that held her father.
It was closed, with white roses on top along with a picture of Cole surrounded by his daughter and all five of his grandchildren. The smile on the old rocker’s face was possibly the most genuine the man had ever had. His happiness seemed to shine out of his eyes and glow around the seven people in the picture as the afternoon sun gleamed down on the silver frame.
But neither Lana’s heart-wrenching sobs nor the picture could hold my attention. Not when she was only a few yards away.
I stared across the open grave at the girl who had been tormenting me night and day from the time she was barely sixteen fucking years old. At times, I was disgusted with myself and how easily Arella Stevenson could twist my thoughts of her into something dirty and sexual.
The age gap between us might have been considered minuscule compared to the one between her parents, but since she’d been so young when I’d first started having those filthy fantasies about her, it made me feel like a lecherous old man.
But that hadn’t stopped me from seeking out her attention. From obsessing about her every move. Or from aching for just a smile from the beauty who haunted me even when I was halfway around the world and deep between someone else’s thighs.
It hadn’t worked, though. I couldn’t fuck her out of my system with other women, and eventually, I just gave up trying to make the ache go away with random hookups. Because no matter how many other girls I’d fucked, none of them could make me feel the peace that Arella could with just the brush of her fingertips down my jaw.
And now she stood in tears as the world said its final goodbye to her grandfather.
Cole Steel had passed in his sleep days before. The paps had gone crazy with the story, spouting bullshit like they found him facedown in some pornstars’s pussy, coked out of his head. They claimed he’d overdosed and that was why his heart had stopped.
The truth wasn’t nearly as dramatic, from what Mia had shared when she’d called to tell me about Cole’s passing.
