Chapter 2 #3
I’ve spent thirty years building walls. Walls around my heart, around my history, around every soft and breakable thing that my father taught me to hide and my brother keeps trying to excavate.
I’ve built them so high and so carefully that no one has ever gotten through — girlfriends, colleagues, the string of women I’ve dated and disappointed and walked away from before they could see anything real.
She looked at me once and I felt them crack.
That’s not attraction. That’s reckless damage.
I should leave. Every instinct I have, every defense mechanism I’ve spent three decades perfecting, every lesson my father ever taught me about the danger of wanting things — all of it screams at me to go.
To run. To get out before she has a chance to find another weakness, exploit another fault line, bring the whole carefully constructed edifice crumbling down.
Instead, I opened the valise.
Started unpacking.
I told myself I was staying because the show was absurd and I wanted to expose it.
I told myself I was staying because Declan had challenged me and I never backed down from a challenge.
I told myself I was staying because leaving would let everyone assume they were right about me — the arrogant man who couldn’t handle a strong woman, the villain who ran away when things got hard.
The real reason didn’t exist. There was no real reason.
Just strategic curiosity. Professional interest in understanding the enemy.
She’d looked at me like she could see past the armor, and I needed to prove she was wrong.
I needed to prove that there was nothing to see.
That the defenses went all the way down.
That was the only reason.
I hung my shirts in the closet with more care than the task required, aligning the hangers at exact intervals, the same discipline I brought to the rest of my life.
Order. Control. Structure. These were the principles that governed my existence, and they would continue to govern it regardless of how many reality TV producers tried to manufacture chaos around me.
Sloane Mitchell was an obstacle. A variable to be analyzed and understood. And if understanding her required paying close attention — memorizing how she moved, the sound of her laugh, the shade of green in her hazel eyes — that was simply good strategy. Nothing more.
That I could still smell her perfume, hours later, miles away from wherever she was sleeping in this ridiculous mansion? Irrelevant. Olfactory memory was a well-documented phenomenon. It meant nothing.
That I kept replaying the moment I’d said “We’ll see” — the way her eyes had sharpened, the almost-smile on her lips, how she’d held my gaze like I’d just handed her a challenge she’d been waiting for? Strategic analysis. Know your enemy. Standard procedure.
That a wire pulled tight inside me every time I thought about tomorrow, about seeing her again, about whatever test they’d designed to measure our attention?
That was probably just the altitude. California was at sea level, but the mansion was in the hills. Elevation changes affected cardiovascular function. Everyone knew that.
The production schedule was sitting on my nightstand where someone had placed it during the mansion tour, a printed itinerary in an elegant folder with the show’s logo embossed on the front.
I hadn’t looked at it. Hadn’t planned to.
Looking at the schedule meant acknowledging that I was staying, and I was supposed to be leaving.
But my clothes were unpacked now, hanging in the closet like they belonged there, and my toothbrush was in the bathroom, and my book was on the nightstand next to the folder I’d been ignoring, and at some point between refusing to kneel and standing here at 2 a.m. I’d decided to participate in this farce after all.
I opened the folder.
Tomorrow’s page. Simple layout, clean design, corporate efficiency I appreciated even while hating what it represented.
DAY 2 Challenge: The Attention Test Format: Group challenge, individual eliminations Premise: Contestants will be evaluated on their ability to notice, remember, and respond to details about the Queen.
Details about the Queen.
I closed my eyes and she was there — a physical presence conjured by my treacherous brain.
The curve of her jaw. The freckle on her collarbone.
The way she’d tilted her head when I’d said “We’ll see,” like she was already three moves ahead and enjoying the view.
She was walking toward me, heels clicking on marble, that champagne dress catching the light.
I could smell the vanilla-and-citrus of her, feel the electricity in the space between us when she’d stopped near enough to touch.
I snapped back to the room. The chandelier glittered overhead, mocking me with its improperly mounted crystals.
The production team wanted us to pay attention? They wanted to test our ability to notice details about Sloane Mitchell?
A cold smile spread across my face. The first real expression I’d allowed myself since arriving at this aesthetic disaster.
Fine.
I’ll watch her. I’ll watch her until I’ve catalogued every tell, every weakness, every hairline fracture in that carefully constructed confidence.
I’ll learn her patterns, her habits, the micro-expressions she doesn’t know she’s making.
I’ll pay attention so closely that she’ll feel my eyes on her physically.
And then—
The thought stopped there. Refused to complete itself.
And then what, exactly? What was the endgame here? Study the enemy until I could predict her every move, and then… what? Use that knowledge to escape? To win? To make her look at me again with that flash of unguarded honesty, how she had when I’d refused to kneel?
I had no answer.
I lay down on the absurdly decorated bed, rose petals crinkling under my weight, and stared at the canopy while the question hung in the darkness.
And then what?
In my dreams, she walked toward me and I had no answer then either.
But I stayed.