Ten
Becca
Oh my god.
My knees are so weak as I head down the stairs that I’m wondering if maybe I should sit down on the steps for a moment and collect myself. But I already know there will be no collecting myself after that, not for a long while.
Nothing happened, not really. He politely removed the weird piece of fabric that was stuck in my zipper—a piece of fabric that I’m holding in my hand right now—and we joked a bit and he left.
Except.
He hesitated when he was behind me, and when I looked back there was something like hunger in his eyes, and it burned right through to my core. I could feel the whisper of his breath on my skin while he worked at the zipper, and heard the strain in his voice.
I worried I was making him uncomfortable—he asked me twice if I wanted to get wardrobe to help, after all. But that tension in the air, that heat. It didn’t feel awkward in some cringey way, like he was thinking of me as this pathetic girl he couldn’t wait to escape—even if he did sort of run off at the end there.
He wants me; I could feel it.
And oh, how I want him. More than I’ve ever wanted anyone. More than I ever imagined I could want anyone (and I have a pretty healthy sexual imagination.)
But that’s the problem. Because it’s not just sexual for me, no matter how much I want to retreat back to my room and lock the door and relieve the deep, desperate ache. And while I hoped—my throat dry, my heart pounding, my nerves sparking like live wires—that he might cross that line and relieve me right then and there, I know it wouldn’t be enough.
I want more and I’m terrified that he doesn’t.
I want more and I’m terrified that he does.
Am I even capable of that? I mean, that’s what I’m here for, right? Helping me be open to the possibility of a relationship?
But there’s relationships and there’srelationships, and the intensity of the effect he has on me, the connection I feel with him . . .
There’s more than one kind of loss, I said to him in the carriage. Even if it wouldn’t be the same way that it was with Rob. He’s nothing like Rob, I can tell. Nate’s kind and good and warm and—
“There you are!” a voice says, and I jolt out of my thoughts. It’s Olivia, one of the producers, and she impatiently waves me over and gets a mic pack on me. “The party’s in full swing.” She’s got a huge smile on her face, and I can immediately hear why she might be so thrilled.
“I would never call you mentally unstable,” Addison is saying from the garden just outside the kitchen door. “I said you were a psycho!”
Holy hell, what am I walking into?
I step out into a fairy land of twinkling string lights and sculptured hedges and a bubbling fountain lit in gold.
As I expected, Addison’s shrieking at Madison, who is red-faced and returning a very un-pageantlike scowl.
“Don’t you wave your finger in my face,” Madison growls at her, even though Addison is several feet away. Madison shimmies forward—the only way she can walk in that skin-tight silver mermaid dress—until she’s practically putting her face on Addison’s finger, daring her.
To Addison’s credit, she doesn’t step back. “I will always have my finger in your face!” she says, waving away and nearly poking Madison’s eye out with a newly manicured French tip.
The other girls on our group date—minus Yasmine, who is probably off getting one-on-one time with the also-absent Preston—are hanging out at the fringes. Cameras are, of course, focused on the fight, but there are plenty pointed at each of us, getting our reactions.
I’m not sure I’m even capable of a normal reaction to a bitch fight, given that my whole body is still reeling from all its earlier reactions to Nate. Who, I notice, is not here.
Is he interviewing someone? Working in one of the production rooms?
Londyn’s next to me, wringing her hands. “I hope they stop this.”
Jo’s on the other side of her, sipping at her wine. “I hope they don’t.”
“But Preston’s going to be so upset!” Londyn looks over at me, and the horror at the thought of Preston’s distress vanishes almost instantly. “Oh, Becca, I love your dress,” she says.
“Thanks,” I say automatically. “Your dress is gorgeous, too.” But I’m barely looking at it, barely hearing her, because my mind is still back in that room, lost in the fantasy that ran through it when he was kneeling behind me. Picturing him pressing his lips to the skin of my back, running his fingers up my legs under my dress, hiking up my skirt and moving those fingers around to the front of me—
