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I hid my smile as I pressed the call button for the elevator. It sounded like he was pouting, but I didn’t look at him to confirm if he was or not, afraid he would see how much I liked that he was sulking over the idea of having to glove up with something we knew wouldn’t break the next time he was inside me.
The elevator doors opened, and I walked in, leaving him there to pout or to follow me. I heard him grumble something to himself a split second before he grabbed me around the waist and turned me to face him. After hitting the button for the garage, he backed me against the wall and kissed me senseless.
I didn’t even notice when we stopped several times on the way down. It was only when he finally released me and I saw the others exiting ahead of us that I realized we hadn’t been alone.
Jordan took my hand in one of his and lifted his other to brush his thumb over my kiss-swollen bottom lip. “You’re so beautiful, I lose my mind when I’m this close to you.”
I sucked his thumb into my mouth, causing him to groan like he was in physical pain. That sound vibrating out of his chest made me feel oddly powerful. Releasing the digit with a wet pop, I moved toward his car. With his hand still holding mine, he was right beside me, and he opened the passenger door for me.
Once we were in traffic and stopped at a red light, he reached out and touched my necklace, pulling my eyes to him. He had a smug smile on his devilishly handsome face as he skimmed his thumb over the interlocked hearts with the diamond in the center connecting them. “I was wondering if I was ever going to see you wear this,” he murmured. “I’ve been aching to see it around your graceful neck for almost two years.”
I frowned. “What are you talking about?” I covered the hearts. “My parents gave me this for Christmas.”
“No way.” He shook his head, reaching out to turn the hearts over. Whatever he saw when he did had his jaw clenching. “No,” he denied again. “I gave you this necklace for your eighteenth birthday. Only, the hearts were engraved…” He dropped the hearts and pulled back his hand, clenching his fingers into a tight first. “Didn’t my parents give you my present?”
Swallowing hard, I looked out the windshield. “The light is green,” I tol
d him, my heart aching.
I heard his whispered curse, and then we were moving forward again.
“Did they give you the present?” he gritted out after he’d driven several blocks.
“They did,” I confirmed, keeping my gaze straight ahead.
“So, why have I never seen you wear it?” He grasped my hand, interlocking our fingers. “And why would your parents buy you a necklace you already have?”
“Probably because they didn’t realize I supposedly already owned it,” I told him honestly. “Neither did I.”
His fingers squeezed mine, hard, before he realized what he was doing and eased his hold. “Why?”
Everything I’d felt the night of my eighteenth birthday, from the moment his parents had arrived at my parents’ house until I’d sat on my bed, looking at pictures of Jordan in Italy with Letizia, swept through me. Needing some distance from him but unable to get it within the car, I pulled away from his hold and clasped my hands together in my lap.
My eighteenth birthday was a day I thought would be the beginning of my forever with Jordan.
Instead, it had been the day my heart had been irrevocably broken.
I’d stayed his friend since then. Gone on as if nothing had changed between us. Even put on a brave face for my family when they thought I might fall apart.
Slowly, I’d put myself back together, but there were still parts missing. Parts I knew I would never find again because they had been crushed into sand somewhere on my old bedroom floor.
“The present your parents gave me from you is still in my closet back at my parents’ house.” I inhaled slowly, willing my voice not to tremble even as I fought the sting of tears. “Unopened.”
His foot stomped on the brake, causing the car to jerk abruptly to a stop for the next red light. After a few tense seconds of silence, I chanced a glance at him. He was staring out the window at the car in front of us, his hands clenched around the steering wheel so tight, the white of his knuckles glowed in the dimness of the car’s interior. His jaw was so rigid, a muscle ticked in his cheek.
Jordan didn’t speak, didn’t even move until the light turned green once again, and he carefully eased on the gas to stay with the flow of traffic. He looked pissed, but I felt too raw from the emotional war going on within me over everything I’d felt that night to really care if he was mad at me.
Seventeen
Jordan
Days before Arella’s eighteenth birthday, I’d shopped for hours for her gift. It had to be perfect. Something that would tell her what I was feeling without overwhelming her or scaring her off. But at the same time, I’d needed it to tell her everything I was too much of a chickenshit to say aloud.
In truth, I’d been scared out of my ass to tell her what was in my heart back then. She’d still been in high school, for fuck’s sake. What if what I was feeling—what I thought she might have felt too—was really just an infatuation that burned out for her?
Which was why I’d bitched-out when my father had said he had an issue in Italy that needed personal attention. I’d hopped on one of our private jets and asked my parents to go to Arella’s party in my place. Work got crazy, and time ran away from me. It was as if one minute, it was her birthday, and then I blinked, and it was months later.
When she started dating that Lyle loser around the time her grandfather died, I thought I’d been right. That her feelings were just as I’d feared, and she’d moved on. But I hadn’t given up. I’d stayed in the background, calling her and keeping in touch like nothing was different, biding my time.
