Chapter 28 #2
The show’s main premise is to get strangers to complete each other’s bucket list items and hopefully find love with one another.
From an inside source, we found out that Dean Vuk (32) and Nova Rivera (24) have known each other from before.
Both are globally, the most loved contestants.
But will they still be when you find out the two have been conspiring to win half-a-million dollars for longer than we think?
The second slide is from 2019, Dean Vuk’s criminal trial.
No one knows what went down, but we’ve circled in red a young girl sitting in the jury.
Yes, that’s right. It’s Nova Rivera. What are the odds of them reuniting all these years later?
Unlikely. We’ve included pictures and videos of the two working to trick viewers into thinking they’re in love and win popularity votes.
Comment below whether you think this is true
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Scandals are normal. I’m not worried about that. I know myself and Dean.
But I’m stuck on the part where I was on the jury for his trial.
There’s one video of us at the secret hideout.
Night sky. Me and him standing near each other.
But the video is cut. Words are erased. It’s made to seem like we came out to talk about what we’re going to do next instead of how that was the first moment Dean didn’t feel like my boss, but as someone I could trust.
The pick me .
There’s another picture of us down at the lake before his shirt comes off. We’re standing a good distance away from each other, but my body language is standoff- ish . More random pictures come onto the post, but I can’t help myself.
I swipe back to watch the video once more.
There’s a moment where the camera faces the ground.
Brown loafers with dark green laces.
Austin.
My heart has a panic attack.
Not sure if it’s a panic attack or confusion on crack. I read the words over and over again until it becomes blurry. There’s a lump in my brain, something knocking against my skull to make sense of this.
I’m not good at math, never have been. But I do it quickly in my brain. Then I look at Dean, he’s not looking at me. He doesn’t know what’s going through my head right now. I have to focus, to really dig deep into the picture and see if the girl with short hair and bow really is me.
The memory cascades down. It’s been waiting for me to remember.
I’m the girl he’s talking about. The one who defended him, almost got kicked out for interrupting when I shouldn’t have.
Eighteen—fresh out of Cornwall—me and my desire for justice.
I remember the look on his face when he caught my smile.
Shock. He couldn’t believe or let himself accept someone’s kindness.
I didn’t know his name, no one did. They didn’t let his name be heard nor did they want him remembered when they took him away .
They succeeded because I forgot him.
I sent him one letter afterwards, something about hanging in there with a smiley face. I used up my last limited-edition stickers to decorate the page.
Dean is a collision of atoms I’m not worthy of holding in the palm of my hands.
How could I forget him?
“It was me,” I say quietly. “I’m the girl that gave you hope.”
Dean’s looking into the mini fridge when his back freezes. He doesn’t turn around, but he hears me like I whispered intimately in his ear.
His no answer is the answer. “Look at this,” I throw the phone towards the end of the bed and dig myself up against the headrest. He takes the phone, not once looking at me. His eyes skimming over the words. Thumbs zooming into the pictures.
He tucks his bottom lip inside his mouth, swipes again and again until his very breath falls flat on the ground. “I wanted to tell you,” he murmurs hoarsely.
“I should’ve remembered,” I admit quietly. Whatever he hears in my voice causes him to come to me.
“No, Nova. I didn’t expect you to remember. It was a long time ago.” He reaches out to touch me then pulls away.
“I remember it now,” I look at him. Green is only a suggestion, swallowed by a black hole.
“That day. The trial. All of it. That’s why you backed away from me when I told your brother I want ex-convicts to stay away from me.
I forced you away.” I bring my legs up to my chest. “You tried to come closer to me, I see it now. You were trying this whole time and I ruined it.”
“You didn’t mean it then, you told me.” He sits near my feet. “What’s done is done. I’m here now. With you. Nothing will pull me away.”
“If I said leave, would you?”
His face breaks, but he doesn’t answer. We both know he would.
“Exactly,” a tear slips down my cheek. “You’re a good man, Dean.
The greatest. You’re the type to walk away if it’ll make someone happy and you technically did.
You didn’t come here for me, you came here for yourself.
For the first time, you chose you .” He reels back from that.
It never crossed his mind that being on a dating show would be for himself and not for some woman who doesn’t know what to do with money.
Yes, it started with me. But it ends with him.
“I’m the reason you lost the trial, Dean.” My big, stupid mouth. “six out of ten people voted you innocent. The judge hated me and went against it.”
Dean’s jaw tightens. “The judge’s decision had nothing to do with you.”
“You weren’t at fault,” I let my legs fall and move so I’m pasted against him. “You were defending yourself.”
“ I killed him, Nova.” It rumbles through us, low and final. I don’t know where we start or end, just that we are .
“You didn’t,” I insist. “You protected your brothers, your mom, and yourself. He was an alcoholic.”
“Don’t defend this. Don’t.”
“ Why ?” I plead. I’m holding him now. I remember his case.
Back then, it seemed odd for them to even have him on trial.
His drunk dad was going to kill his mom.
It seems like a no-brainer to me. “If it wasn’t you who did it?
If Callahan or Azar stabbed your dad multiple times because he was going to kill your mother, you would defend them too.
No , I bet that you’d do more than that.
You’d probably take the blame—” My voice thins out into the air.
The lines beneath his eyes retracing history to tell a truth only I’m piecing together. Not a Mona Lisa story, not of Cleopatra’s, but of Dean's.
Most ex-convicts want to tell people if they’re innocent.
When dad was released, the first thing he did was head into town to tell everyone the truth about the forged documents, the threats, and how the people held him at gunpoint to sign the papers.
The gambling den was a facade he dealt with for a long time.
He wrote a story, published it into the media.
He’d tell people he didn’t deserve the time in there, how he missed precious moments with his daughters.
No innocent person wants a lie to define them.
Rhys’ accusations, each daggering insult, Dean took like a champ. He doesn’t snarl, scowl, or defend himself. Because he’s never done that. It’s never been for him.
The admission comes slowly, foreign even. “You didn’t do it.”
He goes limp with exhaustion.
Only Dean—oldest brother, protector, man of his word—would drop his whole world for his brothers. He’d dive into molten lava to make sure not even a speck touched their fingers.
This was his lava.
“Tell me what happened.” I’m done asking. We’re here, right now. The world might be crumbling on the outside. Social media might hate us. But I don’t hate him.
We’ve known each other for years. He’s liked me for two of them.
He owes me an explanation from the beginning.
Dean’s eyes are hooded with shadows from the past when he finally tells me.
“It was late fall. The sun set early, I was finishing up work at the ranch. My friend called me to grab a drink with him down at the pub and I was going to go when I heard screaming. It was my mother. She only screamed behind closed doors with my dad, telling us we never had to worry about it. But it was loud, vicious, full of fear. I remember running through the field and cutting my leg on the splintered wood of our porch.” He takes a deep, wobbly breath.
“I’ll never forget what I saw. My mom crawled into a corner, Azar holding her.
My dad in a pool of blood in front of them and Callahan…
He wouldn’t stop until I held him. Then he cried and cried. ”
Dean’s shoulder’s wet from my tears. “You took the blame for him.”
“He was twenty-two. Had his whole life ahead of him.”
Sniffling, “You did too.”
“I’d do it again,” Dean admits. “If it came down to it, I’d take the blame for him again.”
He stands with his chest out like the big brother he is.
“You’re human, Dean.” I take his chin between my forefinger and thumb. “One day, every pain melted into your skin will kill you.”
He wipes a tear away. “That’s an honourable death.”
I have to force myself not to argue. Luck was on Dean’s side after.
He was sentenced to ten years but got out in four.
That doesn’t happen. Ever. But he lost four precious years.
The years people hit their peak, get married, have children.
Dean came out a newborn baby, he didn’t know how fast the world changed in those years.
Yet, he’s never lost faith or love. Doesn’t blame anyone for the choices he made.
But when he looks at me, raw and unfiltered, there’s a weight being lifted off his shoulders.
I’d gladly take it for him over and over again.