Chapter Eighteen
Day Eight
Lyla
I register the consuming warmth beside me before my eyes are even open.
Another body’s familiar weight. The slow, even rhythm of breathing that isn’t mine. The particular slant of morning light slicing through the windows. For one unguarded heartbeat, suspended between sleep and waking, I almost let myself sink into that warmth—
Then reality crashes in. Yesterday’s debacle. The ceremony, watching Scott climb into bed, then lay beside Valerie until the lights went out.
I snap open my eyes.
Damon lies with his back facing me, his breathing slow and even in the deep, untroubled sleep of a man that has nothing left unresolved.
I watch the steady rhythm too long, and the old hollow in my chest cracks wider, goes deeper than before, raw and gnawing, like teeth working bone from the inside.
Nothing about this feels right.
I turn my head. Across the room, Scott is already awake. Flat on his back, one arm cocked behind his head, eyes fixed on the ceiling like he’s been mapping every crack for hours. Valerie sleeps deeply on the far side of the mattress, as though she tried not to touch him.
He must sense I’m awake because he turns his head in my direction. Our gazes lock across the distance.
Nothing moves except the lazy spin of the ceiling fan. Outside, the ocean exhales against the shore. That familiar pull to him ignites in my chest.
Damn him.
After yesterday, after Valerie chose him, how can he still look at me like that? Is there more to the story, or does he think he can have his cake and eat it, too?
I break first, sliding out of bed, and being careful not to disturb the sheets still warm from Damon’s body. I reach for my cardigan on the nightstand, pull it on, and pad toward the bathroom without looking back.
The morning unfolds the way morning on this island has since day one—coffee, fruit, the low hum of half-awake voices.
I claim the chair beside Emily, curl both hands around my mug, and let the group’s chatter wash over me like white noise.
I’m halfway through my second cup when I hear familiar footsteps behind me.
“Can I talk to you for a minute?”
Scott’s voice echoes in my ears, sliding under my skin like it always does, low and steady. He stops beside my chair, holding a glass bowl of granola and yogurt. He sets it in front of me like an offering, then waits.
I set my mug down beside the bowl. “Scott—”
“Not here.” He angles his head toward the far side of the pool deck where the morning shade still clings and the nearest camera is twenty feet away. “Just for a minute.”
I sigh. If I don’t go now, he’ll keep asking me until I do.
Standing, I follow. The space between us stays careful, deliberate, like we’re both afraid one wrong step will ignite whatever’s still smoldering from yesterday.
What else could he have to say other than what I already know? That doesn’t change the strain between us.
When we reach the quieter end of the deck, I turn to face him, arms crossed. “Go ahead.”
He studies me for a long beat, blue eyes scanning like he’s reading every line I haven’t spoken. Whatever he sees makes him tighten his jaw before he smooths it away.
“I know you don’t want to hear this,” he starts, voice rough. “But what happened yesterday wasn’t—”
“Scott.” The word comes out flat, tired.
Last night I felt confusion and heartache.
Now I just feel numb. “I already know what you’re going to say.
And I’m not going to call you a liar. For all I know, you could be telling the truth.
But I will never know that for certain. I don’t care if it was real or scripted or whatever the hell it was between you and Valerie yesterday. None of matters to me anymore.”
His expression shifts. Jaw flexing. “How does it not matter—”
“Because it doesn’t,” I reply plainly, flat and final.
Yesterday still sits heavy in my chest like a stone I can’t swallow, but I refuse to let it drag me under again.
I have to choose me. I can’t keep pining for a man I’m not sure I can trust with my heart—or my body.
“I’ve said it before, but I mean it this time.
I can’t keep doing this. I can’t keep letting myself want you when I don’t know if any of what you say is real. ”
I pause, the truth scraping raw on its way out. “We both just need to move forward. Whatever that looks like.”
“Not with me?”
Silence falls between us, thick and electric. The ocean keeps its steady rhythm behind us, but everything else holds still.
He looks at me solemnly, those blue eyes reading every flicker I’m trying to hide. “Is there anything I can do to change your mind?”
I sigh, the sound too heavy for the morning air. “I don’t know what to think or trust anymore.”
He holds my gaze. I meet it. We stare at each other like this for a long, aching moment.
The part of me I’ve been locking down, the traitorous one that still remembers his hands and his mouth and the way his voice used to say my name like it belonged to him, almost wishes he’d reach for me.
Just once. Just enough to make me break. To change my mind.
But he doesn’t.
“Okay,” he says quietly. No fight. No push. He simply nods, turns, and walks away.
I should feel better about this.
I don’t. Instead, I feel like a huge hole has been punched through my chest.
I head back across the deck toward the table. Emily is watching me over the rim of her coffee cup. That careful expression on her face that says she’s debating whether to ask.
I shake my head once.
She nods, understanding.
Dropping into my chair, I pick up the bowl of granola and yogurt Scott left me and start eating. My coffee has gone cold, but I don’t care. This food is the only thing that seems to comfort me now.
The morning stretches into afternoon, and I move through the day on autopilot, smile glued in place, heart somewhere back on the shaded deck with the man who finally stopped chasing me.
I grab a water from the bar when Emily falls into step beside me.
Touching my shoulder, she holds my gaze. I stare back in confusion. She doesn’t say anything at first. Then—
“I need to show you something.” She scans around her as though careful about who could be watching.
“What?”
She glances once toward the nearest camera mounted above the corridor junction, then back to me. “Follow me.”
She leads me through the common area and into a narrow gap between the kitchen and the production hallway.
What does she want me to see? The pantry?
I’ve never had a reason to meander over here. But I quickly realize that I probably should have. It’s quiet with the ambient hum of production equipment somewhere behind a thick wall and the distant sound of the ocean.
Emily pulls me into a corner, and I realize then why she has me in this particular spot. This is a blind spot in the cameras.
I open my mouth to speak.
She shakes her head, standing beside me before reaching behind her and clicking off her mic. She gestures for me to do the same.
“Why?” I mouth.
She reaches into the pocket of her shorts, producing an envelope with my name written on the front—in Scott’s handwriting.
My heart pounds in my chest as I click off my mic, too.
What the hell is going on? Why is Emily handing me an envelope with Scott’s handwriting on it? Couldn’t he have handed it to me himself? Now that I think about it, I haven’t seen him since this morning.
“He asked me to give it to you and for you to read it alone.”
Giving me a compassionate smile, she reaches behind her again and clicks her mic back on before walking away.
I stand in the quiet for a moment, looking at my name. The envelope is sealed. And whatever is inside has weight, like there’s more than paper inside.
Why should I open this?
On the one hand, I have every reason not to. This little thing doesn’t erase the past, much less make what happened yesterday go away.
But then there’s the what-if questions that go off in my mind. What if I don’t open it and something happens? What if I do open it and it means nothing?
What if I do open it, and it changes everything?
In the end, curiosity wins and I open the letter.
Inside is a single written page and a picture of a small, one-story starter home with blue shutters.
The property looks like it’s on the edge of open land, modest and quiet.
The house has a covered porch facing a lake.
It looks like somewhere a person could breathe. Somewhere they could build a life.
What is this?
I read the letter:
Lyla,
I’ve never been good at saying the right thing at the right time. You know that better than anyone. So I’m writing this down because if I tried to say it to your face, you’d find a way to stop me before I finished, and I need you to hear all of it.
I came here for you. Only you. From the moment I found out you’d be on this show, there was never a question in my mind about whether I’d follow. I would have found my way back to you eventually. This just gave me a reason to stop waiting.
I need you to know that nothing happened with Valerie.
Not at dinner, not after. She’s a good woman who deserves to find what she’s looking for.
But she never was for me. Nobody here is.
Nobody anywhere has been, for ten years, and I’m done pretending that’s something I can change by staying in a place that keeps turning every honest thing between us into a story it can use.
I know you don’t trust me. That you may never trust me.
I know I haven’t earned it. And I know that staying here and enduring two more days of challenges and cameras and whatever the producers engineer next won't change that. It’ll only give you more reasons to doubt what’s real and what isn’t.
I can’t win you back inside this place. I’ve come to realize that.
All this time, I thought leaving was like giving up.
But now I know it’s the only honest thing I have left to give you. So this is me giving it.