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“I need to make a phone call,” Trenton said once we were inside his house. “Make yourself at home. Help yourself to whatever is in the kitchen.”
He stepped onto his patio and pulled the sliding glass door closed behind him. He must have forgotten that the kitchen window was open a crack, though. I should have gone to another room to give him privacy, but when I heard his first sentence, I couldn’t help but eavesdrop.
“Evan, we’ve got to talk about these new posters… Yeah, I’ve seen them. Apparently, all the contestants have… I don’t know. They got an email or something… The problem is that it puts the focus on me… No, I’m not happy about it. It’s not right. The reveal show is already formatted to highlight the celebrities rather than the contestants.”
I hadn’t heard much about the reveal show, so that was news to me. I wondered how much of the show going forward would be about the celebrities rather than the contestants.What a clusterfuck.This wasn’t what I’d signed up for. Maybe I should have tried forAmerican Idolinstead.
“The focus is all wrong.” Trenton sounded agitated. “I know you don’t control everything, but if you’re going to highlight the celebrities instead of the contestants, at least make it equal. Because what you’re doing right now is blatant favoritism… I know, I know, it’s not your fault. But you get what I’m saying…”
I grabbed a bottle of water out of the fridge and walked down the hall to the sort-of studio. I’d heard enough. That first night at the club, I’d pegged Trenton correctly—he was humble. He didn’t care about the notoriety he would get if he led his partner to victory on the show. I was unhappy, so he’d immediately tried to fix it, even if he didn’t agree with my reasoning. That meant something. More than something—it meant a lot.
A few minutes later, he came into the studio. “Sorry about that,” he said. “I just had to—”
“I overheard,” I blurted. Not only was I a bad actress, but I was also horrible at keeping secrets. I didn’t want to keep anything from him, though. He was my partner, and we were in this together.
He raised his eyebrows. “You did?”
“I wasn’t eavesdropping.” My cheeks heated as I spewed the blatant lie. “Well, I guess I was, technically speaking, but the window in the kitchen was already open. It was an accident.” At first, anyway. I could have walked away once I realized I could hear him.
“Ah…” A bashful expression washed over his face. “I don’t know if my phone call will do any good, but Evan said he’d see what he could do about the posters. I obviously can’t go back and undoThe Nightly Show.″
“I know, and I wouldn’t want you to. You should get something out of this too.”
He stared at me, his eyes boring into mine. “I’m getting a lot out of it.”
I looked away. His career stood to benefit from the show, but somehow, I didn’t think that was what he meant. “Thank you,” I said, “for listening to me, for understanding.”
He frowned. “Well, yeah. We’re partners. Ali, you have what it takes to win this thing, and when you do, I don’t want you wondering if you earned it.”
With the current show format, there was no way around that, but I wasn’t going to harp on the issue any longer. His phone rang, and I gestured for him to answer it.
“Yeah? Uh-huh… That’s great. Thanks. I appreciate it… Hell no, this doesn’t make us even.” He hung up the phone and looked at me. “That was Evan. They already had another version of the poster, so they’re pulling the one you saw. I’ll be the first celebrity pictured, but we’ll all be the same size.”
Overwhelmed, I launched myself at him, wrapping my arms around him in a bear hug. “Thank you. I know you think I need to take every advantage I can get, but—”
His arms went around my waist to steady me. “Whoa… that’s just my advice, but what the hell do I know about making it today? Things were different ten years ago.”
I pulled myself away from him but paused before fully unwrapping my arms from his neck. My gaze raked over his face—from his hazel eyes to his regal nose to the stubble on his cheeks, finally landing on his full mouth. I bit my lip.
I wanted to kiss him, to give in to my feelings. And if I wasn’t mistaken, he did too.
“This is a bad idea,” he murmured, his eyes locked on my mouth. “You said so yourself.”
“Uh-huh,” I agreed. But neither of us made any move to separate.
Then he kissed me, gently at first with just his lips. My mouth parted, allowing entrance to his tongue, which swept against mine. This kiss was sweeter than any of our previous ones because it meant more—we knew one another. He wasn’t some random hookup I never expected to see again.
My belly tightened with need. It would have been so easy to continue. I knew where that path led, and I desperately wanted to go there again. Though I knew we should stop, I couldn’t bring myself to pull away.
And I was disappointed when he could. He broke the kiss and pressed his forehead against mine. “This is a bad idea.”
“You said that already.” Hell, he was echoing what I’d said the other night. Part of me didn’t care. Part of me wanted to throw caution to the wind and see where this took us.
“If you’re worried about people thinking you have an unfair advantage and they find out we’re involved when I already have a strong connection to Evan, then…”
I reluctantly pulled away, stepping backward until my back was against the wall, putting several feet between us. “You’re right.” People would speculate, and the shame of it was that they wouldn’t know that Trenton had actually used his connection to make the competition more fair instead of slanted in my favor.
“I wish I wasn’t,” he said earnestly. “I wish… well, it doesn’t matter what I wish.”
I wanted to tell him that it mattered to me. But I couldn’t. I feared what he would say, that it would be enough to make me jeopardize my dream, just like my mother had.
“We should rehearse,” I said. “We still need to send in some rehearsal footage, too, so we better record that today.”
He nodded. “Let me get my tripod.” As he turned away, it might have been my imagination, but I thought I saw sadness in his eyes. Or perhaps it was simply my own disappointment reflected back at me.
