“Okay!” she cheers.
“Why don’t I show you to Lyra’s room?” Camille offers and leaves to escort my niece and Hettie.
I owe her one because I don’t want Hettie to report back to Abigail.
Once they’ve gone. I turn to Bo. “What did he say?’ I ask, taking the screech out of my tone.
“He contacted Grayson, said he wanted to come on the show,” my brother reports.
“Hewantedto come on the show,” I repeat, shaking my head in pure disbelief. Spencer cares so much about privacy that I never expected there would be even an alternate universe in which Spencer would show up on a reality show. But he’s here.
He’s here.
It doesn’t help the confused collage of my thoughts.
Instead of my room, I head straight to Camille’s office. There’s a landline there, and since my phone was confiscated when we started shooting, this is my only way to communicate with the outside world.
And there’s one person I really want to communicate with.
Sophie answers on the first ring. “I wondered if I’d hear from you,” she says with a smile in her voice. “What’s going on?”
“Can you tell me?” I beg.
“Did you talk to him?”
My shoulders droop, relieved that Sophie seems to know about Spencer showing up so I don’t have to tell her the story. Because I’m not sure if I’m the good guy here? Or the villain.
Should I have stayed to talk to him? Should we have worked things out right then and there?
Would Spencer have told me that he’s had feelings for me this whole time, instead of vaguely suggesting that there is the potential that he might have feelings for me. Maybe.
It’s something he needs to figure out.
And that’s why I’m going to stay mad.
“No, I didn’t talk to him,” I say a little too vehemently. “I’m supposed to be with seven other guys tonight and I can’t just stop and say, hey dudes, gotta go talk to this guy here.”
This is your show. You can do anything you want.
“You can do anything.” Sophie echoes my mother’s imaginary voice. “Don’t worry, I’m coming to you. I’ve already asked Gunnar to give me a ride to you tomorrow morning. I’ll be there first thing. We’ll figure this out,” she soothes.
“How am I supposed to figure out your brother?” I demand, but the thought of Sophie here does calm me down. The only thing better would be Kate.
With the two of them, I can handle anything, even the sudden earthquake that is my love life.
You can handle everything, even on your own.
I blow out my breath in a raspberry. “Can you at least tell me what he’s doing here? All he said was aboutmaybe feelings. What about Abigail?”
“They broke up,” Sophie reports. “How do you feel about him?”
I want to feel nothing. I’ve always tried to feel nothing and the stupid idiot won’t let me. I even asked him to go to a wedding with me and he said no because of Abigail. What was I supposedto think about that? I remember what they were like hanging with Bo and Hettie years ago. It made me sick to see them together.
Because I wanted that with him.
“You know,” I murmur.
“Ah—no, I don’t,” she says. “No one does because you refuse to talk about him. The chemistry between the two of you is amazing, Lyra. It always has been. But the only thing you ever say is that he’s “Just Spencer.”
