Any guilt I might have felt at turning his proposal into a declaration of my feelings for Nate quickly withers. I narrow my eyes at Preston. “I told you in the DallianceTower that this wasn’t happening,” I say, giving that same back and forth between us gesture I did that night. “You agreed!”
“I thought you meant you still didn’t want to have sex! Like, I don’t know, you were on your period or something, and didn’t want to say it.”
Oh. My. God. Are we talking about myperiodon nationalTV now?
“Look, Preston.” I’m trying to hold it together, even though I’m seething. “I’m sorry I wasn’t clearer. I thought you understood. But I don’t want to marry you.” I turn to step away.
“You don’t get to walk away from me!” Preston yells, and then he throws the slipper at me. It bounces off my skirt and shatters all over the stone.
I freeze again, surrounded by glittering shards of glass with one of my feet bare. I’m not hurt—thank god for full skirts— but my muscles are bunched up in fear and fury, my pulse pounding in my ears.The whole amphitheater is echoing with about a hundred gasps, one of which may or may not be mine.
“What the hell?” I hear Nate yell, and I swivel to look at him. His face is a thundercloud, and he was clearly headed this way, but Levi has a grip on his arm now, tugging him back.
“If you want to keep your job, you’ll fucking stay right here,” Levi growls, then turns to gesture wildly at someone over by the canopies.
Nate wrenches his arm from Levi’s hand and looks like he’s going to tell him where he can shove his job—holy shit, is he really going to do that?—when suddenly a woman’s voice calls out shrilly, “Preston! Wait!”
We all turn to see Madison in her massive white wall of a wedding dress running this way. She was apparently far enough back that she didn’t hear what was happening up here, because she calls out, “Don’t propose! Don’t marry her, Preston!”
In addition to marksmanship, Madison must also have won trophies in football, because she is booking it in that dress, ramming through crew like Marie Antoinette turned quarterback, her wide skirts knocking over a camera and its hapless operator, and nearly taking Nate out as well.
She gets to the bottom of the dais, breathing heavily, her strawberry-blond hair falling out of its intricate bun. “Preston, you can’t propose to her!” She glares at me so hard I almost take a step back, until I remember that there are shards of glass all around me. “She’s not here for you,” Madison growls. “She’s sleeping withhim!”
She whirls around and points right at Nate, and my stomach drops to my toes. Nate stares at me, his eyes wide, and I stare right back, neither of us having the faintest clue of what to do. Cameras are pointed every which way—on me and Preston, but also on Madison and Nate.
Levi is still standing right next to Nate like he’s ready to grab his arm again.There’s this smug expression on Levi’s face, and it’s all suddenly too clear—he already knew about Nate and me. Maybe someone on the show did get their hands on my journal. Or maybe we weren’t nearly as subtle as we’d hoped.
Regardless, he knew and he must have told Madison, and now he’s unleashed her like a vengeful, beauty pageant Kraken.
Preston whirls back from gaping at Madison to gaping at me again. “You wouldn’t sleep with me, but you slept with a fuckingproducer?”
My fury pushes through all the shock, and I’m about to yell at Preston how thatfucking produceris a hundred times more of a man than he’ll ever be, but Levi’s own furious proclamation cuts me off.
“Is this true?” he barks at Nate, all smugness gone, replaced by faked indignation. “Because if so, I will fire you so fast your—”
“No need,” Nate says. “I quit.”
Then he storms up onto the dais, shoving none-too-gently past Preston, and scoops me up in his arms. “I’ve got you, Becks,” he says quietly.
My heart is hammering even harder than it did when I got a glass slipper thrown at me, but my whole body is flushed with heat as I twine my arms around his neck, holding him tight.Then he carries me past the shards of glass and down the steps, and this feels like the most surreal dream, like there’s no way this has actually all happened, and maybe I’m deep asleep back at the hotel. Possibly on some sort of drug trip?
“Fine!” Preston yells after us. “Whatever. I don’t need you, anyway. It’s—It’sherI need!” He turns back to Madison. “I knew it,” he says, clearly trying to recover his princely mask of romantic charmingness that somehow managed to hide his ultimate douchbaggery from every single one of us. “I let myself doubt it, but I knew it was you all along, Madison. It’s you I want to spend the rest of my life with.”
They’re getting farther behind us as Nate carries me through the crowd of crew, which is parting to let us pass, but we’re still close enough to hear Madison smugly proclaim, “I knew it too! I love you, Preston.”
Yep, if I’m dreaming all of this, I am definitely high.
But Nate feels so real, so solid and right as I cling to him, as I feel his strong arms holding me tight. We’re near the edge of the amphitheater when he sets me down on my feet—one foot bare and one still in that fake glass slipper.
There are a few cameras still on us, though most of them have been summoned by Levi to film the second proposal. Preston is on one knee now and Madison is struggling to get up the stairs to the dais in that horrific dress. But I only see all of this for a heartbeat, before I’m looking into Nate’s warm brown eyes and the rest of the world disappears entirely.
He stares back at me with the same intensity I feel in every part of me, and I think that maybe everything else has disappeared for him, too.
“Did you really mean that?” he asks hesitantly, like he’s too afraid to even hope, and god, so am I, except I can’t help it, I can’t help but wildly hope. “Are you really—”
“I am,” I say, flushing again at cutting him off. “I’m in love with you, Nate. And I know I don’t deserve to—”
Now he cuts me off, but I don’t mind in the slightest, because he’s cradled my head in his hands and brought his lips to mine, and we’re kissing desperately, deeply, recklessly. Everything is him and me and longing and this bliss I never thought I’d feel again, not like this.
