Chapter 26 Tyler
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
tyler
Beneath the heat of the late-afternoon sun, Tyler paces back and forth across the sand. Sweat drips down his spine, making his dress shirt stick to his skin. It’s eighty-eight degrees. He’s in a three-piece suit. And they’re an hour late.
What the hell is going on?
He glances at the cameramen stationed around the beach, then to the table by his side set with two gleaming puzzle pieces, then at the currently empty petal-strewn rug his final three women are supposed to be occupying.
It’s not as if he’s looking forward to the ceremony, but he’ll get to see Winnie, he’ll get to say goodbye to Cynthia, and afterward, he’ll get to eat dinner.
So really, for once, there’s no downside.
And if he’s being honest, he’s sort of looking forward to these last few days—an admission he would rather choke on than confess to Nina.
But it’s true. When he first signed the contract, the thought of having to propose at the end made him physically ill.
The idea of bending down on one knee before some woman he’d only just met and telling her a whole bunch of bullshit he knew he didn’t mean felt cruel.
Now, he can’t wait. Picking out a ring, placing it on Winnie’s finger, proving to the whole world that she’s his? Yeah, that day can’t come fast enough.
So if they could just get a fucking move on…
“We’re here!” Nina’s voice cuts through the tense quiet.
Tyler whips his head toward the producer. “About damn time.”
“Sorry we’re late. We had a bit of a…situation.”
“Situation?” He frowns.
“One sec,” she calls to him before muttering into her headset. The longer she ignores him, the more he mulls over that word.
Situation? What situation?
He scans the beach for clues. The crew don’t seem overly panicked.
A few of them speak softly into their headsets, clearly discussing something with Nina, but they don’t seem tense.
They’re not scrambling. The cameras still blink red.
They’re still trained on him. Above, the skies remain blue.
Behind, the waves continue to crash. Everything seems exactly as it’s supposed to.
Then Tyler catches a flash of silk through the foliage.
Scratch that—two flashes of silk.
As in, two dresses. Two women. And the moment they step onto the rug, everything becomes clear.
“Where’s Winnie?” he roars.
Nina glances at him with a tired expression. “That’s the situation.”
“What do you mean, that’s the situation?”
“She’s gone.”
“Gone?” His heart swoops like a trick plane in his chest. “Gone where?”
“The airport.”
He frowns, hating these frank answers from Nina, as if they’re the most obvious thing in the world to everyone except him. No, to him, it’s as if the entire world is crumbling. He can barely even find his voice, his throat is so clogged with emotion. Somehow he manages a strangled, “Why?”
Nina releases a heavy sigh, softness flickering in her dark brown eyes.
Then she murmurs something to her colleague before marching across the beach.
When she reaches him, she leans in, keeping her voice low and the moment private.
His pulse pounds. This is a hundred times worse than if she yelled across the beach for everyone to hear.
The fact that she wants to ease him into this revelation, as if she’s afraid of how he might react, is terrifying.
Because he knows her, and he knows how she plays the game.
She should want his crazy. She should want his explosion.
The fact that she doesn’t makes the world go still, go quiet, as if his entire life hangs on what she’s about to say.
“Look, I think Winnie was shielding you from this, but she hasn’t exactly had an easy time with the other women on the show.
” Nina offers him a meaningful glance, then flicks her gaze to the two remaining contestants before returning it to him.
“Some stuff just went down with Cynthia, and Victoria’s never been her biggest fan.
I think it all became too much for her. She left about two hours ago. ”
Nina steps out of the shot, done, as if that explained anything at all.
Tyler shakes his head, trying to make sense of it.
Scenes flash across his eyes. Winnie with ketchup spilled down the front of her shirt.
Winnie tripping over air in the middle of a ballroom.
Winnie off to the side with her friends while the other girls leered and jeered and whispered and smirked.
He saw it all, but he never saw it until right now.
And those were just the incidents while he was around.
There were countless afternoons where he was off filming and she was left alone in a den of vipers.
That level of bullying would be enough to undo anyone, let alone someone with her history, her past.
I’m not worried about you. I’m worried about me, she told him, all those nights ago. I don’t trust myself, Ty. I’m not a safe bet.
He spins toward the ocean and bunches his fist against his mouth to stop from making a sound. The water and sky blur into a blue swirl as panic steals his vision.
Why didn’t she say anything?
Why didn’t she ask for help?
But he knows that, too. She told him, beneath the midnight sun in Iceland, their souls bared. I don’t need you to save me anymore, Ty.
I don’t want to save you, he said. I want to fight with you.
He would’ve fought with her. He’s a hockey player, for god’s sake—he spends half his life fighting everyone anyway. He would’ve faced any opponent for her. If she’d told him, he would’ve done anything. He would’ve—
Stop.
Tyler scrubs his hands over his face, forcing himself to stop, to breathe.
He can feel himself on the edge of spiraling, a precipice he’s walked too many times before—every time his mom disappeared into her own demons, every time he saw his teammates crushed in the arms of their proud fathers, every time he spent a holiday surrounded by silence, with no family to fill the void.
He’s used to people leaving. Being discarded is his default.
It would be all too easy to step off the ledge and fall into that vat of self-pity he so frequently finds himself drowning in. But a realization stalls his foot.
If he wants to fight with her, as he said he did, maybe the first person he has to face is himself.
You won’t run? he remembers asking her, wincing at the desperation in his voice.
I won’t, she said.
You promise?
I promise.
He said he trusted her. Over and over again, he said it, trying to make her see, to make her stay.
But maybe all that time, he was really trying to convince himself.
Because he isn’t sure, with the life he led and the childhood he survived, if it’s something he even knows how to do.
But Winnie isn’t his mom. And he can’t keep living in that same merry-go-round.
Always doubting. Always afraid. Always expecting the worst, when she’s done nothing to deserve it.
He won’t.
Love can’t exist without trust. And right here, right now, he has to decide if it’s in him to put that sort of faith in another person. If he can’t, they’re already over anyway.
Tyler turns to Nina.
Without his own bullshit standing in the way, the truth suddenly becomes so clear.
“What did you do?” he asks darkly.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Nina answers carefully—too carefully.
“Where is she?”
“The airport, like I said.”
No, she isn’t. She can’t be. And if Nina won’t tell him the truth, he’ll just have to find her himself.
Tyler takes off down the beach.
“Winnie! Winnie!” he yells, cupping his hands around his mouth as he swivels his head, studying the windows of the oceanfront suites, searching for her face in the glass. “Winnie!”
He probably looks like a madman.
That’s probably the point.
He suddenly has no doubt he’s giving the crew exactly what they were hoping for—a big, dramatic scene they can splash all over the promos to draw new viewers in—but he can’t bring himself to care. He’ll gladly fall into any trap if it means finding her.
“Winnie!”
He cuts down a pathway, sprinting beneath palm fronds and over black lava rock, shouting her name at the top of his lungs.
The cameramen follow, their footsteps pounding behind him.
The regular resort guests give him a wide berth, fear and uncertainty in their eyes.
He’s not used to receiving those looks anywhere off the ice.
In his uniform, he’s an absolute savage.
But outside of the game, he’s never liked using his size to intimidate people unless they well and truly deserve it.
“Winnie!”
Someone by the pool recognizes him. Phones come out.
Unless Nina is prepared to pay them off, he has no doubt this footage of him acting like a maniac will be plastered all over social media within the next twenty minutes.
His agent is going to kill him. His publicist will do her best. And the producers?
Well, he isn’t sure if this is good or bad for the show, and he doesn’t really give two shits about it either way.
Still, the more ground he covers with no hint of Winnie, the more he realizes this is reckless and just plain stupid.
I need a plan.
He pivots, using all his athletic prowess to stop and spin in one fast motion, too quick for his tails to process.
By the time the camera guy even realizes he stopped moving, Tyler’s got him by the collar.
Two steps and he’s backed up against the wall.
Tyler lets every ounce of frustration from these past few weeks leak into his thunderous expression.
“Tell me her room number.”
The camera guy swallows, gaze sliding left then right as a bead of sweat drops down his forehead. “She’s not there.”
Tyler slaps the wall with his palm so hard it stings. “Tell me!”
“Suite 12.”
He drops the guy and runs.
Suite 12. Suite 12.
Almost—
Nina is standing in front of the door with her arms crossed. When he approaches, she casually lifts her hand and offers the room key sandwiched between her middle and pointer fingers. Tyler snatches it and scans the card. As soon as the light turns green, he rips open the door.
“Winnie!”
There’s no response.
“Winnie!”
He runs from room to room. The communal space is empty. Two of the bedrooms are packed with messy piles of clothes, but he recognizes them as belonging to the other women. When he enters the third room, he stumbles to a halt.
It’s empty.
Immaculate and barren.
His heart shudders as Nina steps up behind him. “I told you. She’s gone. She left for the airport two hours ago.”
“What did you do?” he demands.
“What I did is irrelevant.” Nina has the gall to shrug, a sly smile on her lips. “The question, Tyler, is what are you going to do?”
“Tear this fucking place apart.”
“That’s certainly one option.” Nina aims her eyes skyward as if begging for patience. “The other option is to go back to your room, pack your things, and meet me in the lobby in one hour.”
“And why the hell would I do that?”
“Because Winnie is booked on a connecting flight back to Dallas which leaves in about”—she pauses to check her watch—“forty minutes, with a five-hour layover in Sacramento. Whereas you, and the rest of my crew, are booked on a nonstop flight, leaving in three hours, which lands in Dallas four hours before hers. Any idea what we could do in those four hours?”
He frowns, brows pulling together, not sure if he believes her. “What about Victoria and Cynthia?”
“I’m pretty sure the shot of them stranded on the beach as you ran off shouting some other woman’s name pretty much finished their storyline, but they’re waiting outside with one of the producers, so if you’d like to film an official breakup scene, by all means—”
“No,” he blurts before he can stop himself. “God, no.”
“That’s what I thought.” She snorts, then runs a hand over her buzz-cut black hair as she lowers her headset.
“Look,” she finally says. “This was never personal, okay? And if I had my way, we’d be on a flight to Kyoto right now to film the rest of the season the way we originally planned.
But you and Winnie decided to stop playing the game you signed up for, so I had to come up with a new plan to keep the viewers engaged—and this is it.
So we can end the season with you heartbroken and alone—and I can keep your phone hostage for the next seventy-two hours while we’re still under contract—or we can fly to Dallas right now, you can give me the dramatic proposal we both want, and in fifteen hours you’ll be free. The choice is yours.”
“It’s not much of a choice,” he grumbles.
“That’s because I’m good at my job.”
“What job is that? Torturing me?”
“Helping people find love.”
“Is that what you think you do?” He barks out a dark laugh as his jaw drops. “I think you meant to say, Exploit people for ratings.”
“Maybe.” She shrugs. “But I’ve got a quote for you this time. Shakespeare. Your favorite. The course of true love never did run smooth.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“This show is a six-week pressure cooker. If a couple isn’t strong enough to survive here, there’s no way they’ll make it out in the real world.
And isn’t that better to know now? You might not like my methods, but they’re effective.
I got Winnie to face her darkest fear. I got you to face yours.
I got you both out of your own ways—and yes, I filmed the entire thing for my benefit—but in the end, you’re the one who can walk out of here one fiancée richer, if you want to.
That choice is yours. And it’s time to make it.
Do we have a plane to catch or don’t we? ”
Tyler grits his teeth.
After all the hell she put them both through, the absolute last thing he wants is to hand this woman a win. But if it’s a choice between Winnie and his pride, then it’s no choice at all. He’ll pick Winnie every time.
The answer comes to him in an instant.
“You want a finale to remember, Nina?”
She narrows her eyes. “I’m listening.”
“Good. Because it’s my turn to call the shots. Let’s see what you and your fancy network can do.”