Chapter Seventeen
Day Six
Scott
I’m twenty yards behind them on the torch-lit path, flip-flop-dressed feet silent out of habit, when I see Damon’s hand on the suite doorframe.
Lyla is already inside, the soft click of the latch cutting off the night like a guillotine.
He’s still standing there—tall, stable, the kind of guy who could make a woman feel safe just by the sound of his voice.
Fuck no.
I keep walking.
He must hear me coming because then he turns in my direction.
Our eyes meet under the low glow of the villa sconces.
No words are exchanged. No words needed.
His expression doesn’t change—calm, patient, like he’s already decided this isn’t a fight he’s going to lose tonight.
Deep down, the caveman in me would rather rip him apart with my bare hands than let him anywhere near her.
He nods once, civil. “She’s inside.”
I don’t thank him. I don’t need to. I get the message he’s sending. I’m not backing down. You want her? Earn her.
He steps aside without another word, disappearing down the path.
I push open the door.
Only a single lamp on the far nightstand is lit softly, enveloping the room in a soft ambiance of warm light. Lyla is at the bathroom mirror, face half turned away, working a brush through her hair with the focused energy of someone who heard the door and decided not to acknowledge it.
I close the door behind me. The latch clicks like a starting gun as she continues brushing.
I pull off my watch and set it on the dresser. The silence between us is filled with tension—and not the kind we’d found in the bungalow the night before. This is loaded, deadly. I run back through the evening trying to locate the source of it and come up empty.
I try to make small talk first. “How was your night?”
“Fine.”
One harsh-sounding word.
This doesn’t look good.
“You left the debrief fast.”
“I was tired.”
No, she wasn’t.
She’s been tired the way people are tired when they don’t want to be in the same room as you. With Lyla, I know when I’m on the receiving end of that specific kind of tired.
I lean against the doorframe of the bathroom, arms loose at my sides. She doesn’t look up.
“Little one.”
“I’m getting ready for bed, Scott.”
“I can see that.” I keep my voice even. “I can tell something’s off. So let’s not pretend this elephant in the room isn’t here.”
She sets the brush down on the counter with a quiet click. Picking up her moisturizer, she opens it and takes her time with the cap.
“Nothing’s off,” she says to the mirror. “It was a long day.”
“It was.” I watch her hands move, methodical, unhurried. “And now you won’t look at me.”
At my words, her hands slow for a fraction of a second before resuming.
“I’m looking at myself,” she says. “Some of us have a skincare routine.”
“Talk to me, little one,” I speak softly. “Whatever it is.”
For a moment, she meets my eyes in the mirror finally.
“How was your date?”
“It was fine,” I reply. “Dinner. Conversation. Nothing worth reporting.”
“Mmm.” She goes back to the mirror. “Funny. Valerie didn’t look like a woman who had a forgettable evening.”
“What did Valerie say?”
She turns then, crossing her arms. Eyes level. “It wasn’t Valerie.” She pauses. “Does it matter who said what?”
Translation: someone said something.
I run through the evening in my head—the group reconvening, the debrief, the way everyone stared between me, Lyla, and Valerie like fresh gossip—
It’s a hunch, but…
“Whatever you heard,” I say carefully, “I’d like the chance to tell you what actually happened.”
“What actually happened.” She repeats flatly. Not a question.
“Yes.”
“And what actually happened, Scott?”
“We had dinner. She tried to kiss me.” I hold her gaze. “I didn’t let her.”
Something shifts slightly in her expression. As though she’s working the information through her mind.
“I redirected it,” I explain. “It wasn’t what it probably looked like on a monitor.”
“A monitor.” Her eyes sharpen slightly. So she does know about the monitors. “You’re guessing an awful lot about what I heard.”
“I’m guessing because you won’t tell me what you know,” I point out, pushing off the doorframe and taking one measured step into the bathroom.
Not close enough to touch her, but close enough that my reflection fills the mirror beside her.
“Which means whatever it was hit hard enough that you’d rather stay angry than give me a chance to explain it. ”
She exhales deeply. “I’m not angry.”
“No,” I agree. “You’re hurt. Which is worse.”
The silence that follows is different from the ones before it. Longer. She looks at me with something behind her eyes that she’s working very hard to hide.
“It doesn’t matter,” she says finally.
“It does.”
“Scott—”
“Let me finish.”
She closes her mouth, eyes narrowed.
“I don’t want Valerie.” I hold her gaze and don’t let her look away from it.
“I didn’t want her at dinner. I didn’t want her when she leaned across the table.
I redirected her kiss because there is no version of this where I want anyone in this villa except you.
” I pause. “That doesn’t stop being true because you’re angry at me. ”
Something flashes through her expression. Gone before I can name it.
“You don’t have to believe me tonight,” I say quietly. “But I need you to have heard it.”
She looks at me for a long moment. The lamp light catches the edge of her face, the careful stillness she’s maintaining with both hands.
Then—
“Go to bed, Scott.”
She turns back to the mirror.
I stand there another second, reading her the way I’ve always been able to read her even when she doesn’t want to be read.
The way she turned back to the mirror instead of to the door.
The deliberate quality of her stillness.
She’s not dismissing me. She’s keeping me at arm’s length until she decides what to do next.
“Goodnight, Lyla.”
I pull the bathroom door halfway closed behind me and sit on the couch in the half dark. The tap turns, followed by the cabinet clicking shut. Her lamp goes off.
Then quiet.
I stare at the ceiling and hold onto the crack in her facade I saw. That half second where something got through before she closed it back up. Whether it’s still standing in the morning, whether she carries it into that ceremony or buries it— I won’t know until I see her face in the morning.
Day 7 (morning)
Lyla
The terrace has been transformed overnight into something deliberately romantic.
Hibiscus petals are scattered across the stone, the ocean glittering behind us, the morning light soft as though it was considered in the design like a paid actor.
Everyone is gathered in a loose semicircle, dressed and present, the air carrying that particular charged stillness of people bracing for whatever new drama will inevitably unfold.
I stand between Emily and Kylie with my hands loosely clasped and Scott’s words from last night still turning over in my head.
I don’t want Valerie… There is no version of this where I want anyone in this villa except you.
Maybe Ava didn’t have the whole picture. She saw, what, thirty seconds of footage? And through a monitor no less. She filled in the rest herself, the way people do when a story is more interesting than the truth.
That’s plausible.
But then Valerie walked back with Scott in tow—and the particular warmth of a woman who’d had a good evening—and that image can’t just disappear simply because Scott says nothing happened.
So I don’t know. That’s the honest answer. I don’t know what will happen or what I’m going to do.
My eyes scan the semicircle, from one nervous face to the next.
Scott, in a white dress shirt that makes his eyes impossibly bluer, stands with the other men, hands in his pockets, weight slightly forward.
He finds me the moment I look—like he could sense I was staring.
He holds eye contact with that sure expression that has been dismantling me since the first day on this beach.
Like he has nothing to hide and everything to prove.
I look away first and move my gaze to Damon just a few men down the line.
His presence is eye-catching in a stark black dress shirt and pants, his stoicism radiating across the distance between us.
He’s somewhat intimidating, intense, but perhaps underneath lies a deeper vulnerability than he’s willing to show.
His eyes soften when they meet mine. They’re kind and thoughtful, but the connection he’s trying to capture in his gaze feels distant.
Like I’m following a string on the ground, only to realize a brick wall blocks my path and I can’t move forward.
On paper, Damon makes perfect sense. He’s consistent, responsive, understanding, and asking nothing emotionally that I’m not already prepared to give.
But every time I try to picture settling into that life with him, I run up against the same hollow feeling I can’t explain away, no matter how many reasonable arguments I make with myself.
As though something is missing, a piece of him that I’m unable to reach, and I’ve been ignoring that feeling since our first date.
Out of all the other women here, he’d chosen me. Isn’t that enough to settle with?
Miranda steps forward into the center of the semicircle.
“Good morning. Today is our coupling ceremony. Soon, we’re going to find out where we all truly stand.
” She pauses. “Before we begin, a reminder about the advantage earned in yesterday’s challenge.
Valerie has an advantage that will allow her to make her choice without any steal or veto.
That extends not just to the other women choosing, but also her chosen partner. ”
Around me, the group seems to absorb this information quietly.