Pajama bottoms are so 2009.

Wearing nothing more than a T-shirt and the wisp of lace I dare to call panties, I roll over and squint as the sunlight streams through my bedroom window.

Landon is beside me with a cup of coffee in one hand and a plane ticket to California in the other. “Time to rise and shine, sleeping beauty. You have an hour before you have to be at the airport.”

Sitting up, I rub the sleep from my eyes and try to remember what happened last night, and how the hell I decided to fly out to see my brother.

Oh, yes, right. Me being me, I started crying before Landon and I even got in the cab. And before we even made it to my apartment in the Village, I had told him everything.

Even though he had his hands all over me at the club last night, once I had broken down, he turned into a perfect gentleman. The whole damsel-in-distress thing does it to men. Kills the desire, that is.

Anyway, he listened to me.

Talked to me.

Even gave me the quarter I used to decide what to do.

Alcohol raging in my blood, I resorted to the age-old way of deciding what to do. Heads, I was going to California to talk to my brother. In person. Find out what the hell was going on. Tails, I would stay in New York and call him. Once I’d sobered up, of course.

As crazy as it sounds, I left my fate in the hands of that coin. Tossed it high in the air, caught it, and covered it with my other hand. Then slowly I lifted my palm. Heads it was. And as fast as I tossed the coin, I bought my ticket.

Landon didn’t make a move on me, but he did sleep beside me. Such a change from earlier that night when he was all hands and mouth. Then again, letting your skeletons out of the closet is like pouring ice water over someone else’s libido.

I told you so.

Yet, as I sit here right now, in a flimsy T-shirt and no panties to speak of, his gaze roams hungrily, and I have to say, I like it.

With a secret smile, I take the cup from his hands and sip the hot liquid, and then I groan.

“Head hurt?” he asks.

I nod. Normally, I’m not much of a drinker, although after last night, I’m not sure he’d believe me.

In the blink of an eye, he’s handing me a glass of water from my bedside table and a couple of aspirin. “Here, I thought you might need these.”

“Thank you,” I say, and look at him. And think how gorgeous he is. How hot he is. How perfect he is.

Wow!

How cruel life can be?

I finally find someone who might have turned out to be my prince, and I’m not sticking around to find out.

I can’t.

Now isn’t the right time for my happy ending. There is a lot about my life I have to figure out. Starting with what the hell has my family been keeping from me?

I never thought of myself as naïve—boy, was I wrong. I feel like I’ve been living in an alternate universe. Perhaps a delusional one.

Tossing back the pills, I drink the water and grab my old camera. After snapping Landon’s photo, I look at him and smile. “You’re definitely not a toad.”

Landon moves a little closer, caging me in. “If you didn’t have to leave right now, I’d have you on your back, showing you just how much of a toad I’m not.”

The camera falls beside me, and I find myself breathing heavily. “Can you hold that thought?”

“I’m not sure,” he breathes.

It happens all at once, so smoothly, how he pulls me close to him, like he is going to kiss me again. But at the last second, I turn my face, unable to allow things to move any faster when I’m leaving. “We shouldn’t,” I whisper.

Landon smiles and everything inside me melts. Then he pulls me closer anyway and kisses my neck. Loving the way his no longer clean-shaven face rubs against me, I thread my fingers through his hair and give in to this one small moment of intimacy. “I feel like you’re saying goodbye,” he says between kisses against my throat.

I toss my head. “Not goodbye, really.”

He pauses his kisses, and his breath is hot on my cheek. “For some reason I feel like you’re never coming back to the city.”

“Oh, I’ll be back.”

His mouth slides up, and he kisses me on the forehead. “I’ll call you because I like you, and I want to see where this goes, but I have to tell you I’m not so sure you’ll be back.”

And it’s then I think, with the feel of this man on my skin, this man who I really want to get to know, this man who might be my Mr. Right, that neither am I.

Neither am I.