Fairytale Love - Becca & Brian (21 page)

Shit
. He might be playing this game, but he did not want to lead this girl on. Now she actually thought the stripper moves she was pulling, as she grinded against him, were turning him on.

An applause track played them in from commercial and Lance, who’d been on the phone, didn’t miss a beat and stepped on his mark. “Welcome back to
Fairytale Love
. I’m your host, Lance Sparrow, and this is the live elimination show. Each week, one of the couples behind me will be packing their bags and leaving this love land without their storybook happily ever after,” Lance said directly into the camera, reading off a teleprompter.

“After last night’s debut episode, we were flooded with tweets, posts, and messages on our website. Thousands of you chimed in, hashtagging your favorite and
not-
so-favorite fairytale couples.”

Lance paused while a laugh track played to make it sound like there was a studio audience.

“Let’s read some of those now. Player84 says, ‘Jax is a badass but his princess is a whiner. #jaxminusmadison.’”

Brian heard Madison gasp next to him. He looked over to see Jax smirking as he winked at the camera.

“Sweettea92 says, ‘Yawn! Could Leah and Blake be more boring? #fallingasleep #getapersonality.’”

Brian cut his eyes over to see what, if any, reaction Leah and Blake had to the tweet. Blake was still staring like a deer in headlights at the camera and Leah never let her pageant smile falter.

Oookay.

Just as he was about to return his attention to Lance, he caught Becca’s eye. His pulse raced. Her blue eyes sparkled as her red, full lips turned up into a small, knowing smile, and Brian wanted to grab her and pull her out of here, press her up against a wall, and kiss her so hard that she didn’t know where she stopped and he began.

Since he couldn’t do that, he winked at her and was rewarded with a slight blush creeping up her cheeks.

She looked back towards the center of the room, where Lance was holding court, and Brian realized that, as much as his hormones were on overdrive, as badly as he wanted,
craved
, Becca, he missed her more. He missed his best friend.

All week, they’d barely spent five minutes together. When they were all together as a group, all of the couples were paired up, and if they weren’t doing a group activity, then all the guys and girls were separated. The guys were given talking points to bring up as they worked out or swam. He assumed the same thing was going on with the girls.

Gavin had pulled Becca and Brian aside to film for about twenty minutes, but it’s not like they’d had a real conversation. They’d had a script that they were told to loosely follow. The entire thing was just them talking crap about the other cast mates. When they’d refused, Gavin had not been a happy camper. He’d huffed and puffed, and Brian had half-expected him to try and blow the castle down. But after realizing that they weren’t going to give in to his two-year-old-style tantrum, he’d directed them to just talk about their experience, “check in” with one another.

Brian would have
loved
to do that for real. Unfortunately, a camera up in your grill and a director beside you looking pissed, because you didn’t want to follow the script, was not the most conducive environment to have a heart-to-heart. So instead of talking like they normally did, his and Becca’s conversation had been stilted and fake. He’d seen in her eyes that she’d had a lot she wanted to say to him, and he knew that she’d felt the same thing from him. Since they hadn’t been able to say what they’d really wanted, they’d just made awkward small talk.

As much as it killed him to watch Becca and Colton flirt, he was the most jealous over the simple fact that the guy was getting to spend so much time with Becca.

His Becca.

* * *

Becca tried not to let the fact that Brooklyn was gyrating against Brian
shamelessly
affect her. But it was hard not to. That girl took flirting to the Olympic level. And although Becca didn’t believe for a second that Brian was actually enjoying the attention, it was still hard to watch.

“Screamer208 says, ‘Brooklyn and Brian are h-o-t! They need to have their own show where Brian is always shirtless. #BrooklynandBrian #ShirtlessBrian #iwanttohavehisbabies.’”

Well
, Becca thought,
I can get behind two of those hashtags
.

When she looked over at the ‘hot’ couple, she saw that Brooklyn could not look more satisfied and Brian looked like he wanted to be anywhere but standing on a stage where people were broadcasting that they not only wanted to have him shirtless, but also wanted to have his babies.

Aww, poor Bri.

“And now what did you have to say about our couple that is safe from elimination tonight, Becca and Colton?”

Oh, lord.
If they thought Leah was boring, then what could they possibly think about her? She braced herself for the worst. Becca fully understood that people sitting in the safety and anonymity of their own home, typing into their computers or phones, did not really understand that the words they were saying—the criticisms, the insults, the attacks—were actually about real people. They figured that, if you put yourself into the public eye, then you deserved whatever hateful or ignorant thing they felt like spewing at you. They were so mean, so hurtful.

She heard Weezer’s voice from
Steel Magnolia’s
. “
You are evil and you must be destroyed
.”

It actually made her feel better somehow. Empowered. More ready to hear herself get ripped apart. Becca had to admit that her ’80s movies quotes rarely failed to lift her spirits.

“What did you have to say about Becca and Colton?” Lance repeated and then paused dramatically. “A lot! And we’ll hear your thoughts and find out which one of these couples is at the end of the fairytale love road right after this commercial break.”

Well, that was anticlimactic
.

“And we’re clear,” Jennifer said as she stepped up to Lance, spritzed him with something, and handed him water while another PA held a small electric fan pointed at his face.

Becca would kill for a glass of cold water and a fan. Oh, and a chair. Tonight had taught her a valuable lesson about herself. If beauty equaled pain, then she was perfectly happy
not
being beautiful. Comfort—that was the name of her game.

That little competitive bug she hadn’t even known she’d had, had crept back up while all the girls were getting ready for tonight’s live show. Well, getting hoochiefied was more like it. Seriously, she didn’t know how some of the things these girls put on were actually considered dresses. Two of them, Brooklyn and Madison, had been sent back upstairs to change because their dresses were so short that Sabrina could see straight up them—and they hadn’t been wearing
underwear
.

Who did that?

When had showing your wooha become sexy?! Did anyone think it was sexy when celebrities had flashed their goodies to paparazzi?

Becca seriously could not understand some people.

Colton leaned down, and she felt the scruff of his five-o’clock shadow brush against her ear. A mini chill ran down her spine.

“You okay?” he asked as he slipped his hand to rest on her waist.

She tensed up slightly. It wasn’t that it didn’t feel good having his hand on her hip—it did. She just… It just… It felt too good, and that didn’t feel right.

“I’m fine,” she said under her breath.

He moved back but kept his hand where it was.

Guilt swept through her. She felt guilty for not being open to whatever could possibly be between her and Colton. She felt guilty for having the feelings she was having for her best friend. And she felt guilty that she was the one standing up here with immunity and not Brian. It should have been him.

The applause track sounded again, signaling that they were coming back from commercial break, and Lance stepped into his place directly in front of the camera. “Welcome back to
Fairytale Love
, the show where one lucky couple’s happily ever after will mean not only finding their soul mate, but also a half million dollars.”

A track played through the speakers of people
oohing
and
ahhing.

“That’s right. The stakes are high, and all is fair in love and war, folks. This week, the winners of our love challenge were Colton and Becca.”

Applause sounded in the air.

“They scaled the wall, becoming the first couple to gain immunity which makes them safe from elimination, and let’s just say you, the viewers, took notice. Let’s see… papadontpreach90 says, ‘Colton and Becca are the perfect couple. They should get married and have babies. #coltonandbeccababies.’ Starg8zer5 writes, ‘Becca is so hot and she’s going to be a doctor. Colton needs to lock that down. #lockthatdown #coltonandbecca.’ Marigold88 says, ‘Becca and Colton are so cute together. I could watch them garden and be entertained. #beccaandcolton #gardeningshow.’ There were hundreds more tweets and messages. Unfortunately, they were not TV appropriate.”

And cue laugh track.

Becca couldn’t believe how
fake
reality TV was.

Lance went on to talk about the elimination process. He talked about how viewer votes and also each contestant’s score, on the challenge that week, were added together and the couple with the lowest combined score was packing their bags and leaving.

As she waited to hear which couple had the lowest score, she couldn’t believe how nervous she was. Not for herself, obviously, but for Brian. Hearing Lance announce the amount of the prize money all night suddenly made it
real
to her. That money would mean so much to Brian’s family.

She’d talked to her mom and dad this morning and they told her that they’d seen Brian’s dad, Frank, at the auto shop when they’d taken their car in for an oil change. They’d asked Becca if Frank was feeling better and had been cleared to go back to work. Becca hadn’t known what to say. When Becca hadn’t answered right away, her mom explained that the reason she was asking was because Frank had seemed tired and his complexion looked a little gray.

That information had been weighing heavily on Becca’s heart all day. Should she tell Brian what her mom had said or not? If she did and his dad was fine, then what good would it do other than to make Brian worry? If she didn’t and his dad ended up overdoing it and, God forbid, something happened, would she ever forgive herself for not saying something? But was there really anything Brian could do even if he left the show?

These questions had been haunting her all day. She would never keep this information from Brian normally, but these were anything but “normal” circumstances. He needed to be here, doing exactly what he was doing. If not, he’d end up giving up on college completely, taking over his parents’ shop, and even then, Becca had no idea how he would make all of the financial obligations that came with the responsibility he was taking on; putting two people through college, with one of them attending an Ivy League school, was not cheap. Not to mention the medical bills and his parents’ living expenses.

When she thought about all that Brian had on his shoulders, she really thought the weight of the world was underselling it. Yet he never complained, never put his problems on anyone else, and he was still the first person to offer help to anyone if they needed it.

He really was a prince, he just couldn’t be
her
prince.

Becca got startled as she felt arms surround her. It took her a minute to realize that it was Leah. She hugged her back, even though she wasn’t exactly sure what was happening. Then she saw Blake shaking Jax’s hand and realized that they must have been the couple getting eliminated.

Which meant Brian was still in the running. As she consoled Leah, who was
crying
, her eyes found Brian saying goodbye to Blake and a determination, she’d never had before, filled her with urgency. It was more determination than she’d had when she’d set out to get straight A’s in high school (which she’d done), more than when she’d decided to run the Chicago Marathon (which she’d completed in four hours), more than when she’d decided to start a community outreach program for troubled teens, tutoring them after school and helping them apply to colleges (which she’d done two years ago and six students who had been ready to drop out of high school were now in college).

She was determined to do everything in her power to help Brian walk away with that five hundred grand.

Even if it meant that her heart got chewed up and spit out in the process.

It was Brian. And she’d do
anything
for Brian.