Chapter 42
forty-two
RYAN
The mansion feels like a mausoleum. Same furniture, same cameras. But now it smells like her shampoo and regret.
I dump my bag in my room and stare at the bed that suddenly feels too big, too empty. Forty-eight hours ago, I was sharing a king-sized bed with Wren in paradise. Now I’m back to this sterile box where everything smells like industrial cleaning products and broken dreams.
My phone buzzes. A text from Coach T:
How’s it going, kid?
I stare at the message for a long time before typing back:
It’s going.
Not exactly the truth, but not exactly a lie, either. Because it is going. Going straight to hell, but going, nonetheless.
I can hear voices downstairs. The other contestants welcoming Wren back, probably fishing for details about our romantic getaway. The thought of facing them, of pretending everything’s fine, makes my stomach turn.
But I’m Ryan Haart. I’ve been pretending things are fine my whole life.
Seven weeks in and I’m one bad move from losing Wren completely.
I change into clean clothes and head downstairs, plastering on the same cocky grin that’s gotten me through every uncomfortable situation since I was thirteen years old. The one that says I don’t have a care in the world.
“Look who’s back,” Heidi calls out when I walk into the living room. She’s curled up on the couch in tiny shorts and a tank top that leaves nothing to the imagination. Her smile suggests she knows something I don’t. “How was your romantic getaway?”
The other girls look up expectantly. JacqLyn, Divya, Nikki. All waiting for details, for some hint about whether their chances just got better or worse.
“It was great,” I say, settling into the chair across from them. “Beautiful location. Good food. Can’t complain.”
“That’s it?” JacqLyn presses. “Come on, give us something. Did you guys connect? Was it romantic? Did you…”
“Where’s Wren?” Divya interrupts, looking around like she just noticed the obvious absence.
“Upstairs, I think,” I say with a shrug. “Probably unpacking.”
But that’s not why she’s avoiding this room. She’s avoiding me, just like she has been since our fight. Since I fucked everything up by hesitating when she asked what she meant to me.
The truth is, she means everything. But I couldn’t say that. Couldn’t hand her that kind of power over me when she was already looking for reasons to run.
“So things went well?” Heidi asks. There’s something calculating in her voice. Like she’s trying to figure out if she should be worried.
“We had a good time,” I say. It’s not technically a lie. We did have a good time. Right up until we didn’t.
“You don’t look like someone who just had a good time,” Nikki observes. She’s always been too perceptive for her own good.
I laugh, but it sounds hollow even to my own ears. “Sorry, I don’t know what you want me to say. We hung out, we talked, we enjoyed the villa. End of story.”
“Bullshit,” JacqLyn says bluntly. “You left as a maybe-couple and you both came back acting like strangers. That’s not nothing.”
“Both?”
“Wren came through here like a zombie twenty minutes ago. Didn’t say a word to anyone. You look like someone killed your dog.”
Great. So much for keeping our drama private. If the contestants can see it, the producers definitely can, too. Which means this is about to become everyone’s business whether we want it to be or not.
“Maybe she’s just tired,” I suggest.
“Right,” Divya says with a smirk. “Tired from all that romantic connecting you guys were doing.”
I don’t respond. Can’t respond without saying something I’ll regret. So I just sit there, enduring their speculation and pointed looks, wishing I could disappear.
A PA appears in the doorway, clipboard in hand. “Ryan? Elena wants to see you in the production office.”
Fuck. I knew this was coming.
“Now?” I ask, though I already know the answer.
“Now.”
I follow the PA down the hallway, my chest tight with dread. Elena’s office is exactly what you’d expect from a reality TV producer. Awards on the walls, photos with various celebrities, and a desk covered in papers that probably detail every embarrassing moment of every contestant’s life.
Elena looks up when I walk in, her dark eyes sharp and assessing. She’s wearing another one of those power suits that make her look like she could eat you alive and not even feel guilty about it.
“Sit,” she says, gesturing to the chair across from her desk.
I sit, keeping my expression neutral. Whatever game she’s playing, I’m not going to make it easy for her.
“So,” she begins, leaning back in her chair. “How was your romantic getaway?”
“Fine.”
“Fine?” She arches one perfectly sculpted eyebrow. “Ryan, darling, I’ve been doing this for fifteen years. I can spot relationship drama from a mile away. You and Wren are practically radiating it.”
I shrug. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t you?” She leans forward, resting her elbows on the desk. “Because from where I’m sitting, it looks like you two had some kind of falling out. Big enough to kill whatever spark you had going.”
“Maybe there wasn’t as much of a spark as you thought.”
Elena laughs, but there’s no humor in it. “Please. I watched the footage from your overnight dates. I saw the way you looked at each other. The tension, the chemistry. It was electric.”
My jaw tightens. “Things change.”
“What happened, Ryan?”
“Nothing happened.”
“Bullshit.” She slaps her hand on the desk, making me jump slightly. “Something happened. Something big enough to turn you both into walking corpses. So I’m going to ask you again: what happened?”
I stare at her for a long moment, weighing my options.
I could tell her the truth. About the fight, about Wren pushing me away, about how I’m completely fucked up over a woman I can’t have.
But that would give Elena exactly what she wants.
More drama, more manipulation, more ways to torture us for ratings.
“She got bored.” Elena arches a brow. I almost say “I scared her off.” Almost say “I didn’t tell her what she meant to me until it was too late.” But instead, I smile. “Can’t win ’em all.”
Elena blinks. “Bored?”
“Yeah. Turns out, forty-eight hours of my company was about thirty-six hours too many.”
It’s a lie, but it’s the kind of lie Elena can work with. The kind that makes me look like an ass instead of revealing how much this is actually destroying me.
“Interesting,” she muses. “And how do you feel about that?”
“Disappointed, I guess. But not surprised. Wren’s always been hard to pin down.”
“So you’re moving on?”
“What else would I do?”
Elena studies me for a long moment. I can practically see the wheels turning in her head. She’s trying to figure out how to use this, how to turn our disaster into compelling television.
“Good,” she says finally. “Because we have a group date planned for tomorrow. Time to refocus on the other women.”
“Sure.”
“And Ryan?” She leans forward again, her voice dropping to a whisper. “Try to look like you’re having fun. Dead-eyed bachelors don’t make for good television.”
I force a smile. “You got it.”
She dismisses me with a wave. I walk back toward the living room on autopilot. The other contestants are still there, still gossiping and speculating. They look up when I enter, all fake smiles and barely concealed curiosity.
“Everything okay?” Heidi asks.
“Perfect,” I lie. “Just scheduling stuff for tomorrow.”
“What’s tomorrow?” Nikki wants to know.
“Group date. Should be fun.”
The word “fun” tastes like ash in my mouth. Because I know what tomorrow’s going to be like. Me going through the motions, pretending to be interested in women who aren’t Wren, while she watches from the sidelines and acts like she doesn’t care.
Fuck, I need a drink. Or ten.
I excuse myself and head to the kitchen, hoping to find something stronger than the wine they usually stock. But when I push through the swinging door, I stop dead.
Wren’s there, standing at the counter with her back to me. She’s changed into yoga pants and an oversized sweatshirt that swallows her whole. Her hair is damp from a shower, twisted up in a messy bun that makes my fingers itch to touch it.
She turns when she hears me enter. For a split second, her mask slips. I see the hurt in her eyes, the exhaustion, the same hollow ache that’s been eating me alive since our fight.
Then the walls go back up.
“Oh,” she says. “Hey.”
“Hey yourself.”
We stand there for a moment, separated by about five feet of kitchen tile that might as well be the Grand Canyon. The silence stretches between us, heavy with all the things we’re not saying.
I can feel her presence even when I’m not looking. She’s making tea. The same kind we had on the terrace at the villa, vanilla and honey that smelled like paradise.
“How was your meeting with Elena?” she asks finally.
“Fine. Yours?”
“I haven’t had one yet.”
“You will.”
She nods, turning back to whatever she was doing at the counter. Her movements are mechanical, precise. Like she’s concentrating very hard on not falling apart.
“Wren…”
“Don’t,” she says without turning around. “Please don’t.”
“I just…” I swallow. My hand grips the counter. “I couldn’t walk past you like you weren’t everything.”
“I know what you wanted to say. I don’t want to hear it.”
Her voice is steady, controlled. But I can hear the tremor underneath it, the effort it’s taking to keep herself together.
I want to cross the room and pull her into my arms. Want to tell her I’m sorry, that I fucked up, that she means more to me than I’ve ever admitted to anyone, including myself. But I can’t. Because she’s made it clear that’s not what she wants.
So I grab a water bottle from the fridge and leave without another word.
The rest of the evening passes in a blur of forced normalcy.
Dinner with the group, where Wren and I sit at opposite ends of the table and carefully avoid looking at each other.
A movie night in the living room, where she curls up in the chair farthest from mine and stares at the screen without really watching.
The other contestants notice. How could they not? The tension between us is thick enough to cut with a knife. We’re both doing a shit job of hiding it.
“You two are being weird,” JacqLyn observes during a commercial break.
“Weird how?” I ask, though I already know.
“Like you can’t stand to be in the same room together.”
“Maybe they had a fight,” Divya suggests with barely concealed glee.
“We didn’t fight,” Wren says quietly. It’s the first thing she’s said all evening.
“Then why do you both look miserable?”
“I don’t look miserable,” Wren lies.
“Honey, you look like someone ran over your dog,” Nikki says gently.
Wren’s face flushes, but she doesn’t respond. Just gets up and mumbles something about being tired before disappearing upstairs.
The remaining women all turn to look at me expectantly.
“Don’t ask,” I say.
“Come on,” Heidi presses. “What happened between you two?”
“Nothing happened.”
“Bullshit,” JacqLyn says for the second time today. “You guys had something. Everyone could see it. Now you’re acting like strangers.”
“Maybe we realized we don’t have as much in common as we thought.”
It’s another lie, but it’s easier than the truth. Easier than admitting that we have everything in common and that’s exactly the problem.
I make it through the rest of the movie, then excuse myself to go to bed. But sleep doesn’t come. I lie in the dark staring at the ceiling, replaying every moment of our fight. Every word, every expression, every opportunity I had to say something different.
Somewhere in this house, Wren is probably doing the same thing. Lying awake, thinking about us, about what went wrong and whether it can be fixed.
I could go to her. Say everything I didn’t say in that fucking kitchen. But what if I do and she still walks away?
But every time I think about going to her, about trying to fix this mess, I remember the look on her face when she asked what she meant to me. The hope and fear warring in her expression. How I failed her in that moment.
How I let my own fear of being vulnerable cost me the best thing that’s ever happened to me.
Tomorrow’s group date is going to be hell. Pretending to be interested in other women while the only woman I actually want watches from the sidelines. Pretending I’m not completely destroyed by our breakup while she pretends she doesn’t care.
But that’s what we signed up for, isn’t it? This whole show is about pretending. About performing emotion for the cameras, about manufacturing moments that feel real but aren’t.
The problem is, what Wren and I had was real. Is real, despite everything that’s happened. Now we have to pretend it never existed.
I roll over and punch my pillow, trying to find a comfortable position. But comfort feels impossible when everything inside me is screaming for the woman who’s probably crying herself to sleep three rooms away.
She was right. This whole thing is fake. But what I felt for her never was. Now I have to pretend she never meant a damn thing to me. I know I can do it. I’ve been pretending disinterest in Wren for years.
For the remainder of the show, I can fake it for the cameras. I just don’t know if I can fake it for myself.
What if I don’t want it to be fake?