He tore his eyes away from the paper, gasping for breath.
“You okay, David?” the muffled voice of Giles called from his left.
David swallowed hard, realizing his tears had been accompanied by sounds. Too loud sounds. He quickly cleared his throat. “Fine,” he grated out.
Pushing the newspaper and the light to one corner, he swiped roughly at his eyes with the back of his sleeve and slowly leaned back in the gloom.
What would he have told his friend, anyway, even if he had wanted to talk?
For who would have believed it…that an invisible like him could have ever held the heart of a princess?
Chapter 2: Katy
Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Five years earlier.
Katerina stared at the letter, her heart in her throat. Her eyes zoned in on the closing sentences.
“Think about it, Katy. Please. I know I’ve been an absolute jerk but I am so, SO sorry for everything, and I’m paying for it now with each day we’re apart. I’m thinking about you all the time, remembering when you stayed with me here in our chalet. I’m missing you, gorgeous, so very much…From Russia with love, Alexei.”
She scoffed in disgust, then finally tossed the letter aside and slid off the kitchen stool. The heady scent of fresh cupcakes filled the room, but her stomach was roiling.
How dare the selfish prick contact her again! How dare he. After all he’d done. After all the hell he’d put her through. She always knew the guy had a pair of balls large enough for two, but she had never thought that he would stoop to this.
“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.
