With All My Love And More

I think we're famous

The next morning was like a horror show. The whole city was talking about the incident on the train. My face was plastered everywhere.

Friends, at least people I had thought were friends, were all over the news talking about me. Some of it was good. Some of it was bad.

Old classmates resurrecting from the dead speaking about me as if they have kept in touch this whole time. They were making up stories about me and them. Some were even speaking about me in present tense.

Even Leonardo popped up on the screen, the guy from the Italian Buddy tour company. While I didn't pay much attention to his interview, it was shocking how people who met me for less than a day were speaking about me as if we'd known each other all our lives. While I didn't heard anything he had said, the way he looked told me he had nothing positive to say about me.

The world was buzzing with my name. The whole world was building me up and tearing me down. I was bearing witness to my whole life being turned upside down without any of my control. I was becoming a celebrity with no intention of ever wanting to become one. It was like watching a plane go down from the cockpit.

Many people in Italy found me weak, a hindrance to the royal family, and an embarrassment of Italian taste. Many couldn't understand why I had ended up like that. Even though it was made completely clear that Lorenzo, the Prince and second heir to the throne, had verbally abused me. No one could understand how I could react so "dramatically" as they put it. Many believed I was an attention seeker.

My parents were calling and texting me. I responded to their texts, reassuring them of my health and that I was okay. They didn't want me to stay in Italy any longer. They wanted me home as soon as possible. My mother was freaking out, thinking I was going to be murdered. My father was enraged, and hated the fact the world was speaking about me as if they knew me. My sister kept reminding me that there were more compliments and good press than anything negative. While my brother was being a realist, reminding me that even the most loved will be most hated.

I guess I never really thought about what would happen when my face did come out.

Perhaps I just thought it was never going to happen.

I thought, maybe, I would just disappear.

Like I had always wanted.

But it would seem, my disappearance from the world would very much be noticed.

"Chance."

I turned my head to the side, pulling myself out of my thoughts. Gino was leaning against the door frame of the now packed opera house, all here to watch the show, but something about the way they all seemed to have their opera glasses pointed specifically at our box smelled oddly suspicious. It had been two days since the incident and it was coming closer and closer to my departure, five days to be exact. I couldn't believe how fast it had gone, and yet another part of me wondered how less than two weeks had felt like 5 years. Is this what a whirlwind romance feels like?

"I was just thinking."

"I can tell," he gave a teasing smirk, his eyes squinting in a playful manner. "There's smoke coming out of your ears as we speak." I rolled my eyes at his teasing behavior, but sunk into my chair at how it made my stomach flutter with butterflies. "Is it Lorenzo?" I knew Gino had yet to forgive his brother, it didn't prevent me from doing it almost immediately. The sight of him falling to his knees in front of me had taken me by shock. I didn't know what to do. How does anyone respond to a Prince bowing to someone and begging for their forgiveness?

For me, it was simple, I just happily accepted and went on my way. I would be lying if I wasn't scared of Lorenzo, but I also knew from the way he had looked at me, he meant every word of it. And the way Gino towered over him by my side told me that not only was this ever going to happen again, that if he were to ever cross me in any way, Gino was going to do things to him I don't think I ever wanted to know about.