Page 22 of The Sexy Billionaire

“Hey, what are you doing all alone here?” I ask Paige.

“Everyone has paired off except me. None of the boys are interested,” she confesses, but I can see the sadness on her face.

Are those other boys blind? She’s the most beautiful girl at this party.

“They are stupid then. I think you’re the most interesting person here.”

Paige chuckles and then playfully hits me. “You’re only saying that because we are friends. I’m interesting, but not pretty like the other girls.”

How can she say that?

“I think you’re the prettiest girl here.”

Paige stills beside me. Did I say the wrong thing? I shouldn’t have said anything. I’m too scared to look at her.

“You do?” she asks.

I gulp and turn my attention to her. “I do.”

A frown forms on her face. “You’re just being kind, Gio, I appreciate it. But don’t you have to get back to Chiara? She’s been eyeballing you all night.”

“And yet here I am with you.”

“Because you’re a good friend.”

“Should a friend think about what it would be like to kiss another friend?” I confess.

“Gio.”

I look up into her confused eyes. Her cheeks have turned a pale shade of pink; she keeps licking her lips and all I can think about is what they would feel like against my own. Should I kiss her?

We continue to stare at each other, the tension thickening with each second until gravity starts to pull us together and the next thing I know, our lips are touching and the world explodes into fireworks.

From that night on, we spent the rest of the summer kissing and slowly exploring each other until the last night when Paigeasked me to take her virginity. I was a virgin at the time, too, and she was who I wanted my first time to be with. So, I agreed. I set up rugs in one of the stables, with only the light from my cell phone, not wanting to set the hay on fire with candles. And that night, under the stars, we made love. The next morning, she flew back to the States. We agreed that what we had was only for the summer and that whatever happened during the year, neither of us wanted to know about. Yes, I’d kissed a couple of girls that year but never went further. The next year she was back, and we had both blossomed. I was now a strapping seventeen-year-old boy, and she had developed so much in that year. As soon as we saw each other again, it was as if no time had passed, and we fell right back into our routine of sneaking away from our brothers and meeting up under the cover of darkness. Those last two summers we were together were the happiest time in my life.

“Are you okay? You look lost in thought,” Natalia asks, pulling me from my memories.

Shaking my head. “I’m okay,” I tell her, then take another large gulp of rosé. I shouldn’t be thinking about another woman while my life is imploding, especially not a married one. After the funeral, I may have looked her up, trying to see what she had been up to over the years. She looked happy, thriving. She had a successful French restaurant in New York and a great group of friends. Her socials showed how happy in her life she was. It was funny because at the exact moment I was stalking her, it seemed she was stalking me, as a notification came up.PJ NYC started following you. Next thing I know, I’m following her back and that was it, until the panic hit me. I thought I shouldn’t be following my ex when I’m an engaged man and she is married. But I couldn’t also turn around and now unfollow her, that would be weird, so I left it and tried to forget all about her, until now.

“It’s okay to not be okay, Gio. You don’t have to be strong for me,” Natalia tells me.

She’s right; I shouldn’t have to hide how I feel about the situation, but the thing is, other than feeling numb and shocked, deep down inside I feel free. Is that bad? That’s bad. I shouldn’t feel like that.

“I don’t know how I feel.”

“Relief is what you should be feeling. Marrying her would have been the biggest mistake of your life,” Natalia states.

Maybe she’s right.

We continue with our ice cream binge and drinking rosé until I can’t see straight, and I’m belting out the words to “You Oughta Know” by Alanis Morrisette as the next song on theBest Revenge Breakup Songsplaylist.

“What the hell is going on here?” Luca asks as he and Lilly walk into my apartment. Both are staring at me as if I’ve lost my mind, and maybe I have, but the rosé has given me a buzz and the ice cream has given me a sugar rush so when Natalia suggested we dance, I thought hell yeah, let’s dance and here we are.

“We are dancing tonight out of Gio’s mind,” Natalia explains to our shocked brother.

“Yeah, fuck her,” I scream as I continue to thrash around my apartment as if I’m in an imaginary mosh pit.

“This is healthy, I guess,” Luca states.

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