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Chapter Two
Ryan
If there was one person I was thankful for, right here, right now, right this second...
It was Jackson Slate.
For six weeks, I’d been holed up at his father’s hunting cabin in Colorado Springs, as I waited for The Rose to finish airing.
Because I made it to the final two, I was under contract to not be seen out in public. It had been, God, ten, twelve years? Since I’d been at this cabin with my best friend and her family, but it was the first place I thought of when I found out I had to be in seclusion until I was due back to film the finale episode.
Spoiler alert, I won the damn thing.
Another spoiler?
I told Bella no.
How the hell could I go through with a relationship with her—hell, a marriage—when I constantly saw someone else when I looked at her?
It wasn’t Bella’s red hair I watched my hands sift through.
It wasn’t Bella’s green eyes I focused on.
I mean, yeah, sure, in the physical, yes, it was Bella.
But it wasn’t Bella I was seeing.
It was a spunky brunette with brown eyes, who’d had my heart since I was fucking ten years old. Talk about a piss-poor moment to realize the love you had for your best friend wasn’t going anywhere, no matter how hard you tried.
On a television show that had the highest ratings of any reality show.
A show that I’d hoped would shake the feelings that Savannah Slate inspired.
So, not only did I have to go basically underground while the show finished airing, because it wouldn’t do the show any favors for one of their top contenders to be seen around town, but also because I was the first guy in the show’s history to say “no” when all was said and done.
I’d told the producers my intentions before they set me up on the Hawaiian shore, and they tried to convince me to say yes.
To try.
To put on another media circus for a couple of months.
But all I could think, all I could remember, all I could see, was the morning after Savannah’s twenty-first birthday, and the look of absolute pain on her face as she told me we were a mistake.
Basically, that I was a lapse in judgement.
That she’d been too drunk to know better.
As if I didn’t know her better than that.
But I let her have her thoughts.
I let her push me away.
I gave her her space and eventually, took back her friendship.
We never truly got back to what we were, but it wasn’t for my lack of trying. If I had to guess, it was the whirlwind of thoughts that had a habit of taking over Savannah’s mind.
Knowing that that one night—one of the best nights of my life—was the reason our friendship faltered...
