Relationships can’t grow in secrecy.
I don’t want to lie anymore.
I’m really going to give this relationship a chance.
No one else will have heard it, but she couldn’t be any more clear.
She’s done with me. She’s choosing him. And I guess I can’t blame her. He’s Prince Charming, after all, and I’m the asshole who hurt her.
I’m not seeing the garden, anymore, or the glass, only the image of Becca’s face last night when she first came into my room.I have feelings for you, she said, and like an idiot, I filled in all the gaps. I hoped she felt the way I do, but if she did, she wouldn’t be able to push me aside so easily.
“Nate,” Levi says from behind me, and I startle and spin around, probably looking guilty as hell. “Becca wants a minute to compose herself and then you can interview her.”
“Of course,” I say.
So she’s not going to request someone else. She’s going to make me go in there and ask her how she feels about what she just did, and what she thinks it means for her relationship to Preston.
I could ask someone else to do it, but Levi is already looking at me like he thinks something’s off.
More importantly, Iwantto talk to Becca, even if it has to be veiled, even if I can’t ask what I really want to know:How could you do this to me?
“You ready?” Levi asks.
“Yeah. Still waking up, I guess.”
Levi smiles at me and claps me on the shoulder, a habit of his that I hate. “Aren’t we all,” he says, then turns to where Preston is being ushered into another hotel room to be interviewed.
He’s still wearing his mic pack, so I hear the beginning of his interview through the headset.
“Wow,” he says. “That was, wow. After our date yesterday, I knew she was incredible, but I had no idea she’d been through something like that.”
I squeeze my eyes shut.Their date yesterday, the one she said she spent wishing was withme.
“I’ve overlooked Becca,” Preston says. “I’m so glad she’s still here. I feel like I’m only now starting to get to know her, but on our date yesterday—I knew then that she was someone I could fall in love with. She’s just sodifferentfrom the others. I’m going to give her a tiara this week, for sure.”
I look up at the ceiling. Ofcoursehe is. He hasn’t chosen her any other week, and now that Levi has his footage, he’s not going to insist that Preston keep her. I’ve been wishing all this time that Becca would go home so that I could have a chance with her, and now I probably won’t, either way.
She’s going to stay here and date Preston, and he’s going to keep her because he’s only now waking up to what he’s been missing.
“I can’t believe I didn’t see how wonderful she is,” he continues. “She’s been right here, right under my nose, all along.”
I tear off my headset, resisting the urge to throw it against the wall.
“Nate,” Darlene calls from down the hall. “Becca’s almost ready for you.”
The fuck she is. Becca’s made her choice, and what am I supposed to do now? I could still quit, but for what? She’s not going to give me a chance, not going to listen to a damn word I have to say. She was a wreck last night, and I understood, but I hoped she’d give me at least one more chance to explain.
But no. She’s back on the show, and I’m back to being the producer who gets a front row seat to watch her chase a happily ever after.
Just not with me.
Fuck.
I can’t do this. I can’t.
But what’s the alternative? Quit and go home with nothing? Not a chance with her, no credit for my resume,nothing?Pretend this never happened?
As if I ever could.
