Page 109 of Frosted Fakes

"There's something else," she said, and her voice steadied. Strengthened. "Elliott and I pretended to be in a relationship. I told you it was fake. A business arrangement so she could keep living in the flat above the bakery while I figured out what I was doing. I told you she was my girlfriend because I panicked, and then it just… snowballed."

Gabby made a small, strangled sound.

"But here's the thing." Julia looked directly into the camera, imagining Elliott watching somewhere, hoping desperately that she was. "Somewhere along the way, it stopped being fake for me. I fell in love with her. Really, properly, completely in love. The kind of love that makes you do stupid things like show up on your mother's cooking show and confess everything."

A ripple of laughter moved through the audience. Julia smiled, though it wobbled at the edges.

"And I ruined it. Because I was too scared to be honest with her, too busy trying to fix things without actually communicating, too caught up in being what everyone else wanted me to be instead of just… being myself."

The audience had gone completely silent. Julia was vaguely aware of cameras zooming in, of production assistants biting their lips, of her mother standing frozen beside her like a waxwork figure.

None of it mattered.

"Elliott Sinclair is the most talented, stubborn, infuriating, wonderful person I've ever met. She pushes me to be braver. She makes me want to be better. She calls me out on my nonsense and makes me laugh and bakes me lemon drizzle biscuits when I’m having a terrible day." Julia's voice faltered, but she kept going. "And I love her. I love her, and I was too afraid to say it when it mattered, so I'm saying it now. In front of everyone. Because she deserves to know that someone thinks she's worth making a complete fool of themselves on national television."

For a long moment, nothing happened. The studio paused.

Then someone in the audience started clapping. Slow at first, then faster. Then someone else joined in. And suddenly the whole studio erupted in applause, whistles and cheers rising from the crowd, and Gabby was staring at her daughter like she'd never seen her before, and Julia was laughing and crying at the same time.

She'd done it.

Whatever happened next, she'd finally told the truth.

✽✽✽

"She loves me."

Elliott said it out loud because she needed to hear it, needed to make it real. On the screen, Julia was crying and laughing and the audience was applauding like she'd just won something, and Elliott's entire chest felt like it was on fire.

"She loves me," she said again, and then, with rising urgency, "Jamie, how much further?"

"We're here." He pulled into the studio car park at the kind of speed that suggested he'd been waiting for an excuse to drive like this his whole life. "Go."

The car hadn't fully stopped when Elliott reached for the door handle.

"Elliott! The car is still moving!"

She didn't care. She shoved the door open and stumbled out, catching herself on the wing mirror before she could faceplant on the tarmac. Her ankle twisted slightly. She ignored it. Behind her, she heard Jamie slam on the brakes, heard him shout something that sounded suspiciously like so much for not making grand gestures, but she was already running.

The studio entrance was thirty metres away. Then twenty. Then ten.

Elliott Sinclair, who had spent her whole life convincing herself she didn't need anyone, who had built walls so high she'd forgotten there was a world on the other side, sprinted toward the door like her life depended on it.

Because maybe it did.

Chapter Thirty-Five

Elliott crashed through the studio doors like a woman possessed.

Well. More like she shoved them open with slightly too much force and nearly took out a startled production assistant carrying a clipboard. Close enough.

"Oi! You can't be back here!"

"Watch me."

She dodged past a rack of cooking equipment and nearly tripped over a cable the thickness of her arm. Somewhere ahead, she could hear voices, raised, sharp, unmistakably furious. One of them belonged to Gabby Richardson. The other was Julia.

Elliott followed the sound like a homing beacon.