My jaw dropped. “Mebe reasonable?Me? The person who’s been lied to throughout this entire ordeal? The person whose life story has been exploited for your show over and over again? Nope. I’m done. You’ve taken advantage of poor, innocent Calla for the last time. Sorry, you won’t get your big finale out of me.”
Brady assessed me as I held my chin high, staring ahead.
“If it makes you feel any better, I don’t think it’s all been a lie for Eli.”
I snorted and shook my head, not even willing to entertain the possibility.
“I’m serious. When you ran off, Shay and I tried to keep it hush-hush. We only told production you were missing. But Eli sussed out the situation. He was like a bloodhound. He could sense something was off and kept demanding to see you. I thought he might try to break down the door to your room or something.”
“I’m sure he just doesn’t want his perfectly-orchestrated finale ruined.”
Brady sighed. “We finally told him you had a headachefrom dealing with his father. I think the guilt of that finally sent him to his room.”
“Can you just drive me to the airport? I’ll figure out my own flight.”
Brady pinched the bridge of his nose. We sat in silence for another moment before he removed his hand and looked at me with an eager expression—as if a light bulb had just turned on in his head.
“You’re right, Calla. You have suffered enough. This whole thing has been bullshit. I’m furious on your behalf.”
I fought the urge to roll my eyes at his sudden solidarity. Where was he going with this?
“But that’s exactly why you shouldn’t have to suffer anymore. Why should you go broke buying your own flight home, or paying fines? Plus, if you leave, we’ll have to explain it on the show. I’m sure Shay will even insist on filming your ride to the airport. It’d be a total spectacle.”
My heart sank with dread as he described the likely outcome.
“Or, if you don’t want to put yourself through all that, there’s another option.”
I flinched, knowing he was about to hook me. Whatever plan he had just cooked up was probably going to sound a lot more appealing than the current scenario.
“Fine. Just tell me,” I huffed.
“We move the finale filming to first thing in the morning. Shay will go along with it if it means cooperation from you. We’ll tell everyone it’s for scheduling purposes. All you’ll have to do is pretend like everything is fine for a few hours?—”
“I can’t do that,” I insisted, shaking my head. “I can’t interact with Eli like everything is fine.”
“You won’t have to,” Brady continued quickly. “You only have to see him to film the ending where we announce youtwo as the winners. You’ll fake being surprised, of course. All you’ll have to do is just get up there and deliver a short, heartfelt speech. Surely you can read off a piece of paper. Then we’ll call cut, and that will be the end of your obligation. I’ll personally make sure you’re driven straight to the airport after that. You don’t even have to have a real conversation with Eli.”
Chewing on the inside of my lip, I slowly processed my options. Although at this point, I didn’t have many.
“Plus, if you do the finale, you’ll get the prize money. That couldn’t hurt, right?”
In the end, I found myself sitting in the back of the production van, driving back up the road I had sprinted down, sobbing, just hours ago. I was fully ready for this to be finally over, but also nowhere near prepared to face reality.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The next morningwas a frenzy of makeup brushes and sequins. The hair and makeup team were at my door before six a.m. When they saw my puffy, sleepless eyes, they had exchanged panicked looks before getting straight to work.
When they handed me a mirror after nearly two hours of pressing an ice pack to my face in between touches of heavy makeup, I hardly recognized myself. Rose-colored blush dotted my cheeks. My eyelashes were longer than I had ever seen them and a dark mauve color stained my lips. My hair was down, of course, and curled to one side. Objectively, I knew they had done an amazing job, especially considering my starting state.
“It’s great, thank you.”
I felt like a clown. A fraud. You know when you look at yourself in a mirror and you can’t quite reconcile with the idea that the reflection staring back is your own? When something about it looks off, like you’d borrowed your own face? That was how I felt today. And that strange imposter-feeling didn’t improve when the stylist arrived and handed me asparkly white dress. Cringing as I stepped into it, I couldn’t help but notice how bridal it appeared.
By the time Brady came to get me, I almost felt as if I were having an out-of-body experience.
Brady’s mouth hung open as soon as he saw me. “You look stunning.”
“I look like a lie,” I said flatly.
