Kiss and Confess (Love Unscripted Book 1) (17 page)

Dr. K. and Bill murmured to each other, which ended with Dr. K. shaking his head. Brooklyn’s eyes went from Marc to Mila and back again. Addie tipped her chin to one side, studying Marc.

Rob turned to the experts. “I see opinions forming. Or maybe questions. I’m not sure which. Bill, tell us what you’re thinking.”

“Unwanted attention is never a good thing,” the marriage counselor said. “Clearly, she was ready to end things. Marc couldn’t accept that.”

Clearly? Charley thought there could be a whole lot here that
wasn’t
clear.

“Wait a minute,” Brooklyn said. “I think he’s telling the truth.”

Mila’s head popped up.

“Based on facts or what you ‘see’?” asked Dr. K. He raised his fingers to put the last word in air quotes.

Pompous ass, thought Charlie.

“Hey,” Addie warned him. “Play nice.”

“Now, now.” Rob’s voice pitched higher as his smile flickered and disappeared. “Each expert is on the panel for a reason.” He made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a snort. “We actually have another guest to help sort this situation out so that Marc can leave it behind for good and move into his ideal relationship.” He gestured toward the door. “Sam, will you now join us, please?”

As the camera moved to record the entrance of yet another woman, a stagehand brought in a chair that he slid next to Marc.

This woman had short blonde hair, long legs barely covered by a too-short dress and the worst resting bitch face Charley had ever seen.

Mila put a hand to her throat. “Sam. You didn’t tell me you’d be here.”

Marc scowled. “Of course she didn’t.”

“Samantha is Mila’s best friend,” Rob said. “The one who told Mila that Marc made a pass at her. That he wanted to sleep with her and wouldn’t stop trying to get her into bed.”

Charley’s jaw dropped. Marc going after this woman? She didn’t see it. At all.

Samantha spoke up. “For a while I tried to brush it off, but I couldn’t
not
tell my best friend what her boyfriend was trying to do. And then, afterward, when he was practically
stalking
her to get her to come back to him…it was pretty clear what he was really like. Mila finally saw what I’d been telling her.” She crossed her legs, grasping her knee. “You weren’t good for Mila,” she said to Marc. “You tried to keep her from her friends.”

Uh-oh, Charley thought. Not looking good for Marc.

“Only one friend,” Marc responded, his voice tight. “You. Because you didn’t want anyone else to have her attention. She had to be available when you snapped your fingers. You’re the one who isn’t good for her.”

Samantha rolled her eyes and shook her head. “That’s pretty low. Mila knows better. Ask her.”

Marc turned to Mila, who had begun fidgeting with the watch on her wrist, turning it first one way and then the other. Charley saw his gaze soften when he looked at her. “How could you believe her over me?”

“We’ve been friends since third grade. I’d known you for less than a year.”

His shoulders slumped. “And she was there for you when you were a kid and your mom died. You told me that and I get it. I think it’s great that you’re so loyal.” He took her hand. She let him.

They were witnessing a tender and personal moment. When Rob interjected, Charley gave a start.

“Marc, the purpose of this session is to help you move past all that happened with Mila, so that you can start over fresh in a new relationship. Do you feel as though you’ve had some resolution of the past today by having one more chance to talk with Mila?”

Marc remained where he was, looking into the eyes of his former girlfriend. “I did not make a pass at Samantha, or anyone else, while we were together,” he said to her. “I hope someday you’ll believe that.”

“I—I don’t know that I can.”

“Don’t let loyalty blind you, Mila. If she did this to you once, she’ll do it again,” he said quietly. “And I want you to be happy.”

Charley caught a glimpse of Mila’s eyes, filled with confusion and pain.

Rob cleared his throat. “You need to be happy, too, Marc.”

Marc let go of Mila’s hand, turning back to Rob. “I’m not sure this changed anything for me. I had already decided to move past this relationship. That’s why I applied to be on the show.”

He may have decided to move on, but there was a difference between deciding to do something and actually doing it. He was still in love with Mila. Charley was sure of it.

Didn’t that just suck. Her perfect match was hung up on someone else.

Charley returned to her room late in the evening. All of the contestants and producers had gone to the rooftop bar after filming the episode with their exes. At first, everyone had been silent, possibly stunned, traumatized, or disgusted. Or all three. Then everything—swearing, accusations, apologies, and tears—had spewed forth at once.

In the uproar, someone had suggested the show be retitled
Make Me a Mess
.

When she’d had enough, Charley had left, claiming a headache. Which wasn’t that far from the truth. She felt as though there had been a massive pileup in her brain, with injuries and emergency vehicles too far away to help. Not even a siren in the distance.

Because of one man. One fucking man who was as far from being her perfect match as possible.

She lay in the four-poster bed with her eyes closed, surrounded by fluffy white bedding and clutching a pillow to her chest in a vain effort to slow her racing heart.

Luke had been her first love. With every subsequent relationship he had lurked in the background, keeping her from moving forward. No one else had been enough to live up to her memories, even after he’d left her and broken her heart.

Idiot.

He hovered at the edges of her consciousness, always present, always a nagging reminder of what might have been. His gorgeous smile, his crooked nose, his stupid, crazy hair. His eyes that beckoned and made promises they couldn’t keep.

The reasons they couldn’t be together far outnumbered the reasons they should. Self-preservation had to be at the top of that list. And now what Brooklyn had said about the show throwing wrenches at the contestants had become a niggling horror Charley couldn’t accept. She didn’t want to believe he’d sleep with her to bump the show’s ratings. But he’d done far worse to her before.

He’d wounded her; cut deep and left a scar. She couldn’t let him do it again.

Luke Dean. She should have put his memory into a dry-cleaning bag and stored it at the back of her closet where it would have yellowed with age, the once-bright colors fading as time passed until she couldn’t think of a reason to bring it back out ever again and donated it to that place in the universe that scattered spent, unused memories into the solar system.

But she hadn’t. And now she was paying the price.

Eventually she’d have to get up and change out of her dress, but for now, the soft knit bodice felt comforting and the long gauze skirt had wrapped around her legs like a semi-transparent shield.

She curled her body into the fetal position, unsurprised when she felt dampness on her arm. She noted it like someone with a clipboard, ticking off symptoms of distress.

Distantly, she heard a knock on her door. It took forever to open her eyes, and when she did, she stared at the nightstand, not moving. Whoever it was would go away.

Whoever it was
didn’t
go away. Another knock. Followed by another, more insistent each time.

Her entire body tensed. When she found her voice to call out, the words scraped against her aching throat. “Leave me alone.” Three words seldom heard in reality TV.

“No,” answered a male voice. “Open the door.”

A familiar voice. Once again, she groaned. “Go away, Nick.”

“I’ll keep knocking until you open the door.” To prove it, he knocked again.

She’d had a lot of reasons to despise Nick Waller, none of them as good as the reason she had now.

Charley rolled off the bed and padded her way to the door, flinging it open. Nick stood on the other side, his hands clasped in front of him and a lock of hair falling over one eye. She jammed a shaky hand on her hip. “What are you doing here?”

“I hoped we could talk.”

“There’s nothing to talk about, Nick.”

“Come on, Charley. I’m sorry I had to catch you off guard like that, but the producer said I couldn’t tell anyone I was coming. Especially not you.”

The producer. As in Luke. He had known. Set her up. Set Marc up. She let her hand drop from the door handle.

Nick took a step forward.

Her attention zeroed back to the asshole standing in the hallway. “Stay right there. You’re not coming in.”

He hesitated. “You didn’t really mean what you said on the show, did you?”

She swatted at the air. “I can’t even remember what I said.”

“That you don’t think I’m good at my job. You’re wrong, you know. They promoted me after you left.”

“Of course they did.” The headache she’d lied about began creeping around the sides of her forehead, threatening to become real. “They wanted to placate you.”

“Do what?”

“Never mind.” She sucked in a breath and crossed her arms over her chest. “Make the most of the chance you have, Nick. Let them see what you can do. If you talk someone else into doing your work, you’re only showing what
they
can do.” She paused. “Be more than pretty. You owe it to yourself.”

Horror spread across his face. “
Pretty
? Are you fucking kidding me?”

She waited a beat, then said, “Be more than good-looking.”

He grunted. “That’s better.”

“Good-bye.” She started to shut the door.

“Wait.”

She stopped the door before it closed.

“Wanted to say, you know, sorry. That you lost your job and everything.”

“Don’t be.” She shook her head. “I have a great life now, thanks to you.”

He looked perplexed but said, “Okay.” He lifted a hand. “’Bye.”

What had she once seen in Narcissistic Nick? Oh yeah. A way to fill loneliness, somebody to make her feel wanted. A means of selling herself short.

She shut the door and leaned against it, pressing her bare shoulders into the wood. The resentment she’d nursed for so long about what happened with Nick seemed to have faded. She’d made mistakes; he’d made mistakes. In the end, she wasn’t sure it mattered anymore.

She heard footsteps in the hall, footsteps that stopped right outside her door. After a moment, a knock. If it was Nick again, she wouldn’t be so nice this time. She wanted to climb back into her bed and think about not thinking.

She pulled open the door ready to do battle.

Luke.

“You,” was the first less-than-brilliant thing she could think of to say. When his gaze fixed on her, her knees sagged and she had to tighten her grasp on the door handle to stay upright.

“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice husky.

He was sorry. For bringing Nick here and not even warning her. For those awful moments that would play out on national TV, showing everyone what a fool she’d been. For abandoning her in college. For—for—what
wasn’t
he sorry about? “You seem to be saying that a lot.”

“I know.” He ducked his head. “Can I come in?”

The armor-clad part of her yelled no. The love-starved part pleaded for yes. She couldn’t decide, so instead she turned, letting her fingers drag across the handle of the door as she walked away.

Luke stepped inside and closed the door behind him. “If it means anything, I was against doing it.”

“It doesn’t.” Charley dropped into a chair and glanced at him before looking away again.

“Yeah.” He ran a finger along the table next to the chair. “I can understand why it wouldn’t.”

She watched the tiny, nearly invisible line he made in the dust that had appeared since the housekeepers were in this morning. “Aren’t you going to tell me this is what I signed up for? That this is what reality TV is all about—you give up any right to privacy and your past isn’t yours alone anymore?”

“I’m still sorry I had to do it.”

Charley looked up at him, held his gaze. Then she picked up a bottle of Merlot. “Wine?”

He shook his head. She poured herself a generous glass.

“Did Nick mean a lot to you?”

“At one time, maybe. Before I lost my job.”

“A high price.” Luke looked away. “I know something about that kind of thing.”

It took a second before the realization of what he meant slammed through her. “Oh. Shit.
That
. I never should have said anything during taping…about, you know, the sex. It just sort of came out.” She put her hands to her face. “I didn’t do it to get you into trouble.”

“Crisis averted. I think.”

Charley peered through her fingers. “Really?”

“We’ll find out soon enough.” He dropped into the chair opposite hers.

So they weren’t out of danger yet. She put her hands in her lap. “What was it that happened with your last job?”

Luke pressed his lips together tight and concentrated on straightening the already-straight lampshade. “Error in judgment.”

“I know something about that kind of thing,” she said softly.