46. 46
The last time I saw Gavin was in our shared kitchen. He had been looking at me with his head tilted to the side and his mouth slightly open, as though he couldn’t believe I was upset about our bank account being emptied. As though I was in the wrong for having a reaction.
It was an image that had been seared into my mind—his uncaring, almost smug face—and over the past few months, I had worked to erase it from my memory.
To see him standing in the very place that helped me forget was surreal. It was like some kind of bad acid trip I hadn’t signed up for.
I froze when my gaze locked onto his, like prey when it’s in sight of a predator. I could sense Harry behind me and a cameraman hovering to my left, poised to follow whatever I did next.
But I couldn’t move. I just stood there looking at the man that had once meant everything to me.
“Pop,” he said, taking a step toward me.
The way he said my name, the way he called me “Pop,” struck something deep and angry within.
He had never, not once before in all the years we had been dating, called me that. We had not been a nickname couple. To hear him say it now, when I knew it was something that only the people in this villa called me, Callum especially, jolted me back to reality.
“What are you doing here?” I spit out.
“I missed you,” he said. But he didn’t take another step forward. He must have known he was on thin ice.
I took him in as he stood there. He looked exactly the same as he always did; light brown hair, slightly curled at the top.
A dimple in his left cheek and a small birthmark above his right eyebrow.
But now I saw him in a way I hadn’t before.
The sleazy glint in his eye as he peered around, looking at the world like it was his for the taking.
How he stood slightly on his toes, trying to make himself appear to be six feet tall like he claimed he was.
I turned toward the camera, peering around to look for Harry.
I didn’t care that it wasn’t allowed, that I was supposed to be acting like there wasn’t a whole production set up behind me.
Bringing Gavin here was crossing a line.
Production had tried this once before, when they asked me about him on After Amore, and I refused to let them do it again.
I shouldn’t have been surprised to find that Harry was no longer standing there and that in his place was none other than Cecilia. I would bet all the money in the world that she had orchestrated the whole thing. Of course she would be here to watch it go down. It would likely be ratings gold.
Well, if they were going to use me like this, I could use them right back.
“You missed me?” I asked Gavin, turning back to face him and taking a step in his direction.
“I did. I came all this way to tell you that,” he said, eyes filling with tears.
It seemed he had learned how to act since I’d been out of the country.
“I’m curious,” I said, taking another step toward him. We were just inches apart. “Did you miss me before or after you drained my bank account and stole all my money?”
There it was. Out loud for everyone to hear. For the public at large to know. If Gavin was going to be here, was going to try to get famous, or rehab our relationship, or whatever it was that he wanted, I wasn’t going to sit by and let it happen.
I wouldn’t go quietly. I wouldn’t let him off the hook.
He was clearly stunned by my words because he opened his mouth to reply, but nothing came out. Good. It was his turn to listen anyway.
“I thought I was going to marry you, Gavin. I thought you were going to be my person for the rest of our lives. But you’ve only ever been your own person. You’ve only ever been there for yourself. I deserve more than that. I am more.”
And I was. I realized then that the greatest gift this show had given me wasn’t a new relationship or a steady paycheck. It wasn’t even the possible prize money.
It had healed me, given me a chance to find my way back to myself.
Gavin would always be a part of my past, but he didn’t have to be anywhere near my future.
“Goodbye, Gav. Enjoy Italy. The beaches are great,” I said, patting him on the shoulder and turning my back on him.
As I walked away, I looked past the cameras, locking eyes with Cecilia. She was grinning at me, of course. I had given her the showdown she wanted. But she also looked proud in a way that felt real.
Maybe she was.
***
Walking back to the garden, the rush from my confrontation immediately began to fade, and it felt like I was teetering on the edge of depletion. I was proud of myself in a way I had never felt before, yes, but I was also exhausted. Seeing Gavin zapped me of all my energy.
Still, there was one more conversation I needed to have before my social battery was totally dead. I needed to tell Callum that Gavin was here before he found out from someone else.
I caught his eye from across the lawn and mimed smoking a cigarette. He nodded, tossing me a wink. He got up to walk toward me when a producer called out over the speakers, “Callum, to the Love Shack, please.”
My heart sank for him. If his family had been here, if anyone had shown up for him, he would have been told to go to the living room.
I mouthed “Sorry” to him. He shrugged and held up his hands, signaling that he’d meet me in ten minutes. I nodded and made my way to the little area on the side of the house that had become our place.
Fifteen minutes later, I was kicking around crushed cigarette butts that littered the ground when I heard the gate open.
“What took you—” I stopped speaking when I looked up realized it wasn’t the gate that led to the villa garden that had opened.
No, it was the other gate, the one that led to the front driveway, that had swung open on rusty hinges.
I turned toward it, and my stomach sank.
Gavin was standing there. His eyes were gleaming, and his eyebrow was quirked as if to say, “Isn’t this funny, what we’ve gotten ourselves into?” He was notably less conciliatory than twenty minutes before.
“You’re not allowed to be here,” I said, not wanting to have any kind of conversation with him again.
“I know, I know,” he said, holding his hands up as if to profess some kind of innocence.
He walked toward me and stopped when he was just a few inches away.
“I just wanted to say that I meant what I said in there; I really do miss you.”
“Gavin—”
“I know. I know I messed up. What I did was unforgivable. I just . . . ”
He was so close that I was enveloped in his familiar scent, a crisp laundry smell that used to make my stomach flutter. Now, it had my insides turning sour.
“I still love you, Poppy,” he said.
He had somehow stepped even closer, and before I could think, before I could move away, he leaned in and kissed me.
I would have pushed him away immediately, would have slapped him or yelled at him, told him to fuck off back to America.
I would have done any of those things, perhaps even all of them, had one thing not happened at that exact moment.
When Gavin’s lips pressed against mine, the gate behind me opened. I heard the familiar creek of sun-dried wood, heard the person who was walking through call out my name.
Heard as Callum’s breath caught when he saw Gavin and me together.
It was a horrible, awful comedy of errors, all happening in the blink of an eye.
I pulled away from Gavin and spun around toward Callum.
I wish I hadn’t. I wish I had run away, booked it out of there at that moment. Or been struck by lightning on the spot. Anything not to have to see the look on Callum’s face.
He still had the ghost of a smile across his lips, a cruel reminder of how perfect everything had been only seconds before. But his eyes told me everything I needed to know. Hurt flashed across them, followed by confusion.
And then, worst of all, cold indifference.
I could see, in real time, his guard shooting up, locking into place with me on the other side of it.
It was like looking at the Callum of six weeks ago.
I immediately felt sick, a rush of nausea rolling over me. This can’t be happening. It was all a mistake, a misunderstanding.
But Callum didn’t wait around for an explanation. He simply turned and walked back into the garden.
I went to follow him, but Gavin grabbed my arm.
“Don't worry about that guy, he’s a loser,” he said, as if that was reason enough for me to completely disregard Callum and what just happened.
“Gavin,” I said, yanking out of his grasp. There was so much I still wanted to say to him. So much I wanted him to own up to. But right now I could feel the clock ticking down on my relationship with Callum. I could feel it slipping through my grasp the longer I stood here and didn’t go after him.
So I summed everything up in just two words.
“Fuck off.”
I didn’t wait for him to reply. I turned and hurried into the garden. I needed to find Callum.
I had made it halfway across the lawn when I realized something was wrong. None of the cast was in the garden. Instead, crew members were flooding in, fanning out across the villa’s backyard. Some were setting up lights; some were carrying in building equipment.
Had I actually been struck by lightning like I hoped for earlier?
I stumbled into the villa, hoping to find someone who could tell me what was going on.
Ella was in the hallway, about to walk into the glam room. She spotted me and yelled out, “Poppy! Where have you been?”
“Outside. I mean, the smoking area. What the hell is going on? Where is everyone?” I was trying not to panic, but I could feel Callum slipping away from me the longer it took to find him. He already felt out of reach. Like the loss was already setting in.
“We’re leaving.”
“Leaving?”
“Yeah. To a hotel for the night? Did Harry not brief you?”
“No, what are you . . . Wait, why are we going to a hotel? What is going on?”
My chest felt shallow, like I couldn’t get a proper breath of air down, and a dull ringing started to build in my ears.
“The show is over, Pop.”
“Over?”
As if on cue, as though the producers had been watching and waiting for the perfectly timed moment, the speakers overhead crackled and a voice called out to the villa, confirming what Ella had said to be true.
“Bellas, that is a wrap on Season Seven of Bella Amore!”