Harper wondered if she’d have to wrangle her upstairs. What exactly was the protocol in these situations? “Come on,” she said instead, hoping words would be convincing enough. “Megan is waiting for—”
“Have you ever been scared about something that you never thought you’d be scared about?” Jamie interrupted. She was still looking down, but Harper could tell the question wasn’t willy-nilly. She was seemingly contemplating her life.
Harper could think of several instances she’d been unexpectedly terrified, none of which seemed appropriate for this conversation. “Is everything okay?” she asked.
Jamie hung her head low. “I think I might be in love,” she said, her voice hoarse. “Which is completely fucked up.”
Harper frowned. Wasn’t that the entire point of the show? To fall in love. She walked deeper into the courtyard, grabbed another crate, this one with tufts of chicken feathers sticking to the torn rope handle, and sat down beside Jamie. “Isn’t that why you entered?”
Jamie chuckled, but there was nothing funny about it. “No,” she said. “It wasn’t my reason.”
Harper hadn’t expected that. But then again, she hadn’tnotexpected it. Jamie was this season’s wildcard. She was here to do the unexpected.
“I came here to have fun,” Jamie said, her voice wobbling between guilty and horrified. “Maybe get a bit of spotlight. Maybe cause a bit of trouble. The last thing I thought would actually happen was that I’d fall in love with Megan.” She groaned into her palms while the cigarette still masterfully held between two fingers. “This is so ridiculous,” she said, then looked at Harper again with green eyes that showed nothing but desperation. “You know, this morning, I actually woke upcontemplating poisoning the other girls, so that she’d have no choice but to pick me.”
Harper blinked. “Poison?”
“Not lethally. I mean, I wouldn’t actually do it,” Jamie said quickly. “But if I did, it would be just enough so that they’d get mildly sick and withdraw. Nothing permanent, of course.”
Harper considered moving a few inches away in case Jamie could actually set fire to that cigarette with her mind. “Right,” she muttered.
“Anyway,” Jamie said, “I guess I’m just trying to figure out how this happened. It wasn’t like I saw it coming. In fact, it completely blindsided me.”
Harper thought about Namibia all those years ago. The feelings for Elise had blindsided her too. They just appeared one day out of the blue like a rogue wildfire she hadn’t seen coming. It was the very reason she’d run away before she had to face how she felt. She’d been in the same position Jamie was in right now, only instead of sitting with the feeling, actually facing it, she’d bolted back to London and ruined any chance of something with Elise.
Jamie looked at her. “But if you know, you know, right? That’s what they say. Like some switch flips in your brain and suddenly you’re imagining surprising her with coffee at the hospital in case she’d had a crap day or planning a weekend trip to the mountains because sleeping under the stars with her feels like it will be the best thing ever.”
Harper didn’t know what to say. Or she did. And that was the problem. She’d had her shot all those years ago, and she hadn’t taken it. Now it seemed it was too late.
“We should probably get up to the one-on-one date,” she said, already pushing to her feet. She dusted off the back of her jeans, checked for any stray chicken feathers, and started toward the archway, then stopped. “If you think you’re in lovewith Megan, you should tell her.” Harper had made that mistake ten years ago, and she wasn’t going to let someone else do the same. “You don’t want to spend the next decade wondering what would’ve happened. Believe me, regret gets heavier every year.”
Jamie rose too and stuck the cigarette into her back pocket.
For the first time since Harper had entered the courtyard, she was smiling.
“I will,” Jamie said.
Chapter Twenty
“What do you mean Megan doesn’t want to carry on with the show?” Elise stammered, feeling her entire body spasm like she’d stuck a fork into a socket. “There are five contestants left. Five rose ceremonies.” She couldn’t believe this was happening again. “I take one fricken personal day and the entire show goes up in flames.”
Gillian winced like Elise had thrown a lemon from the fruit bowl at her face. “It happened so fast.”
“Car crashes happen fast,” Elise snapped, spinning around the small space of the production tent. Everyone who had been inside—six grown adults with jobs to do—had magically vanished the moment Gillian had broken the news. “Heart attacks happen fast,” she added. “Tornados ripping through small Midwestern towns happen fast. Megan deciding she’s found the love of her life before the final rose ceremony is not something that happens fast.”
Gillian opened her mouth, then closed it again. Twice, like a goldfish struggling to breathe. Gillian was clearly panicking, and even though Elise wasn’t far from ripping the tent poles out of the ground and sticking someone with the sharp end, she knew this mess wasn’t on Gillian.
It was Megan’s fault. Or maybe it wasn’t. Maybe this show was cursed, as Elise had suspected all along. Maybe the more Elise fought to hold it together with duct tape, the faster the threads seemed to yank loose.
She pinched the bridge of her nose so hard that she saw stars in the center of her vision. “Start from the top, please,” she said, trying to sound calm. She wasn’t calm. Her insides weredoing laps. “Maybe we can salvage something. It’s possible we could spin the story.”
Gillian didn’t look hopeful, but Elise didn’t care. She was extremely good at her job. The last two seasons she’d worked on had to be flukes. She would undoubtedly find something to save from the footage. After that, she’d go speak to Megan. If she went straight to the horse’s mouth right now, she’d probably do more than just shout. And Elise needed this job too much to be charged with assault.
“Okay, Jamie went missing right before we were set to start shooting,” Gillian said, exhaling. “So, I asked Harper to find her. Which she did. When Jamie arrived, she looked very emotional.”
Of course Harper was somehow involved.
“Emotional?” Elise repeated. She couldn’t imagine Jamie ever looking emotional.
