Whispered Desires

Chapter 2: Picture Perfect

JASMINE

I've never been to a wedding before. 

I also never thought I'd see the day my best friend, introverted and just a tad quirky novelist Mila Lyne, marries infamous star quarterback Hayden Cross. 

It's not that I didn't believe she deserved it or something like that - quite the contrary. To me, no man was ever good enough for her, for the girl who stood by me through thick and thin and who has been there for me every step of a very painful way. She might come off as shy and a little clumsy, but she fights for the people she loves, and that love does not come easy, for her.

And maybe that's why I got so emotional at the wedding, watching her and Hayden dance just made me realize that this is it. My best friend starts a whole new life now, a life which I won't be a part of in the way I was before. And I have to admit... It's harder than I thought it would be.

Don't get me wrong, I'm insanely happy for her. Hayden is the perfect man for her, he's the same amount of weird in his own way, even though he looks like a freaking God. It's ridiculous, really. And objectively no one would probably ever say that the hunk of a quarterback and the tiny brunette with glasses belong together, but those thoughts immediately vanish into thin air the second you see the way they look at each other. 

The love they share is so obvious, so palpable... It's sickening, really. It makes me wonder, sometimes, if maybe there is someone out there for me, after all. 

I stopped believing in love a long time ago. After my failed high school romance I just came to terms with the fact that it wasn't for me, that I didn't need it. The whole ordeal broke me to an extent I still can't fathom, and I decided then and there that I will survive life without the whirlwind romance everyone seems to dream about.

"Fuck, what a day..." I wheel my three cases into the hotel room, catching my breath after carrying them up three flights of stairs. 

"Why did I refuse to let the bellboy help me?! Ugh... Stubborn ass woman." I mutter to myself as I plop onto the large leather sofa located in the prestige-looking lounge of my hotel room. 

It's two days after the wedding, and I had to fly out to Chicago for a photo shoot, a city I didn't think I'd ever get any reason to visit in my life. Normally I wouldn't bother traveling two thousand miles for the sole sake of getting one guy in front of my lens, but this isn't just any guy. This is Mitchell Brown, the one and only tennis child prodigy, winning tournaments left and right from the age of six, breaking individual records for being the youngest athlete at every single competition he enters. And then he also wins them, too. By a long shot.

And so, when I got the chance to have my name written beneath the new displays for the sportswear line he just developed, I obviously had to say yes. 

Fuck, yes!  To be exact.

Because not only would this boost my career, it would also mean getting a close look at that twenty-two-year-old Adonis who could get Beyonce herself to leave Jay-Z for him, if he wanted to. 

Hell, I'd let him do whatever he wants with me. 

Long story short, that's the reason why I find myself in one of the most expensive hotels in this part of town, sipping some top-shelf red wine that tastes just like the two-dollar merlot from Trader Joe's, if I'm being honest.