“Has the rage-baking session been helping any?” her cousin Cassie murmured, eyeing Katy closely from where she was perched across the table, frosting cupcakes.
Katy stopped by the counter and leaned against it. Exhaling heavily, she glanced over at the short, blonde-haired girl.
“He’s already trying to convince me to get back together with him," she replied, struggling to keep her voice even. “Wants me to meet him in Paris over the winter break. We’ve barely started sophomore year, for crying out loud! He must think I’m completely stupid—or an utter narcissist. Like a bunch of smarmy declarations that I’m the center of his universe could erase the fact that he wasted three years of my life.”
Cassie smiled. “I’ll take that as a no, then…”
Katy dropped her head into her hands, giving another sigh. Usually, rage-filled baking with Cassie was the ultimate stress reliever. When her dad was being completely unreasonable and wouldn’t let her garden because the hobby was “beneath her”? They’d rage-baked coconut macaroons. When her mom snidely told her she ought to try starving herself once a week? They’d rage-baked a decadent chocolate cake slathered in ganache. When Alexei’s letter had arrived, Katy had immediately proposed making red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting.
But today, none of it was helping. Not even the bonus multicolored sprinkles Cassie had discovered in a drawer.
Alexei had been her first boyfriend, and they’d been together for over three years. They’d explored the world together. Shared times that, even now, she would struggle to forget. Bonded in ways she’d thought had made them unbreakable. She had never felt so swept up by anyone in her life, and she had been so sure that he felt the same about her too.
Then, last summer, she had caught him behind the sauna with his pants down, screwing the family housemaid.
Not a good look, man!
It had shaken her world to the core, given how unequivocally—and stupidly—she had trusted him. It was the reason she had moved to America and enrolled at Harvard in the first place: to escape his lying, cheating ways and move on with her life.
Yet here he was, less than six months later, trying to lure her right back into it all—with a cheesy letter no less—even when he knew she wanted nothing more than to forget his face.
The thought alone was enough to throw her into a dark, sugar-craving mood.
Katy grabbed the letter and tore it to shreds over the trash can, then strode toward Cassie and started helping her with the frosting.
“What I don’t get is how he even knows you’re here,” Cassie remarked, licking at a smudge of cream cheese on her wrist. “Maybe he hacked your phone’s location somehow.”
Katy shook her head, more irritation bubbling to the surface. “I don’t think so,” she said. “I mean, I blocked his number, so he couldn’t have done it through a phone or text conversation.”
Not even the paparazzi—or any of the girls who shared Cassie and Katy’s house—knew Katy’s true identity as the famed Princess of Lorria. Although the country was the smallest in Europe, it was still influential, and Katy had to be cautious.
Katy groaned, realization suddenly dawning. “I’ll bet you anything my parents had a hand in it.”
Of course they would have. It should have been the first thing she thought of. They hadn’t been pleased to find out he’d cheated on her, of course, but that hadn’t stopped them from asking her to give him a second chance. They had always believed that Alexei, being from a powerful Russian family, would be an ideal match in marriage.
Ugh. The nerve of them, too.
“Hey, don’t squish that cupcake so hard,” Cassie chided. “You’re making it crumble in two!”
Katy loosened her grip begrudgingly and proceeded to frost, while Cassie made her way over to the sink.
After washing her hands, she pulled up a stool and sat down, glancing at Katy tentatively.
“What?” Katy mumbled, catching her cousin’s eye.
Cassie’s gaze wandered across the table toward the envelope the letter had come in—along with a small box, which Katy had almost forgotten about with all the frantic baking.
“You planning to open that thing or what?” Cassie asked.
Katy stared at the box for a moment, narrowing her eyes as she considered the question. Then she blew out a sigh and dropped the cupcake, wiping her hands on her apron. “I guess,” she grumbled, slinking around the table toward it.
As she picked it up and opened it, her frown turned into a grimace. She immediately regretted opening it at all.
Inside lay a bracelet encrusted with sapphires and diamonds, alongside another damned piece of paper with Alexei’s handwriting on it. This one was much shorter, though no less vexatious.
“Diamonds for my diamond.”
Hurt and anger washed over her. She’d told him repeatedly when they were dating that expensive jewelry meant nothing to her, and yet here he went again, trying to win her back with that very thing. He didn’t know her at all. Or, more like, didn’t care to know her.
“We’ll give it to charity,” Katy spat, dropping the bracelet back into its packaging and pushing the box away with such force it skidded across the table.
Cassie lunged forward and grabbed it before it could reach the edge, and Katy paused from her tirade as she noticed the expression on her cousin’s face.
Cassie gazed down at the box longingly. “You should’ve just let Alexei keep buying you expensive gifts,” she murmured. “After all’s said and done, you were lucky to have a guy who cared about you enough to try and woo you.”
Katy immediately sensed the note of bitterness in her cousin’s voice, and her heart ached for Cassie. She realized then how insensitive she was probably being, dragging out this whole ex-boyfriend subject over an entire evening. After all, Cassie had been just as unlucky in the love department. Much more so, in fact. Katy knew her cousin’s scars ran far deeper than her own.
She moved over to the smaller girl and took her by the shoulders, squeezing gently and giving her a reassuring smile. “Don’t worry, Cass. You’ll capture the attention of a good man someday. There are guys out there much better than the likes of Alexei…or that douchebag, Jason.”
Cassie’s hazel-brown eyes warmed at that, and though a tinge of bitterness still lingered there, the overriding emotion was hope, which was the effect Katy had been hoping to have.
A creak sounded, and the two girls whirled toward the kitchen door to see a curvy brunette stride in. It was Michelle, one of the few upperclassmen who shared their building.
“And what are we chatting about in here?” she asked. Her eyes widened as they passed over the rows of cupcakes. “Good grief, don’t let me near those. I feel like I’ve gained two pounds just looking!” She moved over to the sink for a glass of water.
Cassie sighed. “We’re talking about men.”
Michelle turned back around to lean against the counter with her glass, arching a manicured eyebrow. “Oh. Men. Well…you’ll both want to start flaunting your natural attributes more if you want to be attracting one of those.” At this, she flashed Katy a wry grin.
