My breath caught in my throat.
I choose you, the Dylan in my mind said.
But the real one just pulled me close, tucking my head into the curve of his neck. ‘It’s going to be so strange,’ he said. ‘Watching them tell a story about us being only friends, knowing how I feel about you.’
I understood all the reasons why he couldn’t choose me. I told myself that it was all right. That at least I would have these few precious nights with him, a perfect memory, a little treasure all of my own that I’d be able to take out and look at from time to time, something that no one could take away from me.
But every morning, when he hadn’t said it, when I had to leave, my heart fell a little further.
‘You know how whenever you watch this show on TV, the Romeo always talks about how each elimination is harder than the ones before it?’ Dylan said. It was the night that Parisa had arrived at the Convent. She’d been teary, and someof the other women had embraced her, and I’d slipped out through the laundry window before anyone had even gone to bed, hoping that they wouldn’t miss me in the crush.
‘Hmm?’ I said, accepting the cup of chamomile tea he handed to me.
‘It’s one hundred per cent true,’ he said, setting his own tea on the bedside table on his side and then sitting down. ‘This is getting harder every single time.’
I blew across the top of my tea and said nothing.
He started tracing circles on my bare knee with a finger. ‘With every person I eliminate, it means I’m one day closer to not seeing you again.’
The teacup burned against my skin as I clutched it harder.
‘Should I go?’ I asked. ‘It’s only going to get harder, Dylan. Every time I come here, we’re just making it worse.’
‘No!’ he said. ‘Definitely not. Absolutely not.’
He took the tea out of my hands, set it aside, and then kissed me, hard. ‘The thought of losing you,’ he said, the words hot in my mouth, ‘kills me.’
So fuck the show. Be with me, forever, he should have said, but didn’t.
That’s exactly why I should go,I should have said, but didn’t.
I steeled myself. This time, I told myself, we’re going to have a serious conversation. Before we have sex. Before he even kisses me. Before we end up in the cocoon of his bed, wrapped up in each other, with a ticking clock hanging like a sword over our heads.
But then his hands were strong on my waist as he lifted me from the jetty to the boat, and, ‘Hi,’ he said, smiling as he held me against him, several inches off the ground, and, ‘Hi,’ I replied, smiling back, and then his tongue was in my mouth and my legs were round his waist and we were downstairs and tearing each other’s clothes off and stumbling into bed and he was inside me and he was driving every single thought I’d ever had straight out of my head.
And the clock was still ticking.
‘I don’t think we should do this any more,’ Dylan said the next night, his head resting on my belly and his shoulders under my thighs as I played with his hair.
I looked down sharply, my fingers stilling. Panic closed in a vice around my heart.
‘When I put my mouth on you, you scream so loud there’s no way we’re keeping this on the down-low,’ he said, grinning up at me.
The relief was sudden, instant, blissful.
But then, of course, reality sank in again.
Dylan was still dating three women. Tomorrow was the penultimate Necklace Ceremony, where he’d whittle it down to two. We only had four days left before the show ended and we were finally allowed to go home, when Dylan would leave here hand in hand with a woman who wasn’t me.
His girlfriend. The hero nurse. Who had no idea that he’d been fucking my brains out every night for a week.
‘Are you going to sleep with her?’ I blurted out.
He disentangled himself from my legs and sat up. ‘What?’
‘Are you going to sleep with her?’ I repeated, sitting up as well and hugging my knees to my chin. ‘Dylan G?’
‘Cece, we’ve talked about this,’ he said, running the back of one of his fingers down my shin. ‘I told you. I had them put it in my contract way before the season started that I wasn’t going to do any of those overnight sex dates. Or propose to anyone, or—’
