“I…have so many questions, but first: How did he shower?”
“Huh. I hadn’t thought of that…and I think I don’t really want to.”
His laugh fades into the quiet darkness, and for a moment it’s just the sounds of bugs and breathing.
“Henry?” I ask.
“Cindy.”
“Do you regret coming on this show?”
He’s quiet at first. “I think…I think going back to real life and constantly wondering if people actually take me seriously or if I’ll just always be that guy who went on a reality TV show and then let his mother’s company flop…And when I was on my way here, I thought I was already regretting this whole thing. But now, no matter what happens, I don’t think I’ll ever regret this. That flight. You being here. I wonder if maybe it’s all fate.”
“You don’t actually believe in fate, do you?”
“I don’t know. I think I just might. What else do you call being on the same flight and then the same television show?”
“Coincidence,” I offer.
“Oh, come on,” he says.
“It’s…hard for me to believe that something is orchestrating all of these specific moments so that our lives end up just as they were always meant to. I can’t help but think that if the universe is playing by the rules of fate, my parents died for a reason. And ovarian cancer…a car accident. There’s no sense in things like that.” I pause, thinking about what he said. “But…I don’t know. Something about this whole experience does sort of feel…meant to be. Then again I don’t even know what we are, so maybe this was all just for nothing.” There. I said it. The impossible thing. The one thing I don’t know.
“Cindy—”
“I have to tell you something,” I say. “I need you to know.”
“Cindy, whatever it is, it’s okay. I want to be the person you need me to be, but I just—I can’t promise you anything. Not right now. I know that’s not fair, and I wish—”
“I’m here for the money,” I blurt. “Or I was here for the money. And the exposure for my career. I mean, I won’t lie. Winning the money would still be nice, but I—I didn’t come here looking for this. I didn’t come here expecting to find you.”
“I guess we both surprised each other, then, didn’t we?”
“And you hate surprises,” I remind him.
“This one wasn’t all bad. Cindy—”
“Shoot,” I whisper under my breath.
“What?” he asks, just a hint of worry in his voice.
“It’s nothing. I just left my towel on my bed.”
“I can get it,” he answers quickly.
I can already hear him standing. “Oh—okay.”
“No peeking,” he promises.
I nod, even though he can’t see me. “Okay.”
As I listen to him walk around to the front of my villa, I sink down even lower into the tub so that my chin is dipping below the water.
The glass door slides open. “Eyes closed, I swear. What I was trying to say is—” He steps forward and immediately trips on the lip of the door.
“Oh, be careful,” I tell him.
Tonight, he wears dark navy shorts with a fitted, purposefully rumpled–looking white Oxford with the sleeves rolled up and brown leather sandals. His eyes squeeze shut as he swallows a curse.
“You okay?”
He nods. “Maybe less talking while I’m walking with my eyes shut.”
“Okay, one step forward, and then one step down,” I tell him.
He follows my instructions cautiously.
“And then two steps forward. Follow my voice.”
“Gladly,” he says, and suddenly he’s looming over me, eyes still shut, with a fluffy towel spread out for me.
“I don’t want to get you wet,” I say.
His voice is gravelly. “I won’t melt.”
I hoist myself out of the tub carefully, feeling deeply vulnerable as I stand completely naked before him.
“I’m not looking,” he reminds me as though he can read my thoughts.
I wrap the towel around me, and of course, it barely covers anything, and suddenly I’m wishing for the very large, very luxurious towels at our New York hotel.
But my thudding heart begins to slow, and the queasiness in my stomach isn’t a result of being so nearly naked with him only inches away, but instead at the thought of him leaving.
“You can open your eyes,” I whisper.
He does so, and there’s something immediately heavy about his deep brown eyes as they linger on my wet, bare shoulder and then down the length of my body. “Hi.”
“Hi.”
“Would it be completely crude of me to say that I love your outfit?” he asks.
I lick my lower lip before biting down on it as heat spreads down my chest and into my abdomen.
He holds a hand out for me as I step out of the tub, but the drop down is higher than I expect and I stumble forward.
In a second decision, I decide to hold my towel rather than break my fall.
“Whoa, there,” Henry says as he catches me by the elbow. “We can’t have two clumsy people in one relationship.”
I let out a breathless laugh. “With a shoe collection like mine, I can’t afford to be clumsy, so I’ll leave that title to you.”
“I’d walk into a brick wall for you,” he tells me. “Fall into a manhole. My accidental tendencies are at your service.”
I look up to him, his broad hands still bracing my forearms. “Was that a pledge of allegiance?” I ask.
He tilts his head farther down as his arms snake around my waist.
I stand on my toes, my towel thankfully staying in place as I wrap my arms around his neck and playfully nip at his lip.
He groans into my mouth, and my entire body melts into his.
“Stay,” I plead.
He devours me with a kiss as he slides one hand down the length of my hip and pulls my thigh up, hooking it around his.
An urgency I have no intention of saying no to consumes me, as I pull Henry back inside my villa, the door shutting softly behind us, sealing us in our own private bubble. Neither of us is in the position to promise each other much of anything, but we have tonight.
The next morning, I wake up in a half-made bed with a pink hibiscus on the pillow next to me and a note written on a scrap of paper in scraggly handwriting that definitely does not match all the various notes we received from Henry at the château.
Couldn’t bear to wake you. See you soon. xH.
Last night, I fell asleep to the sight of his chest rising and falling as he slept soundly beside me with his arm pulling me to his side. I was scared to fall asleep, because I knew in the morning, he would be gone. Unless we wanted our secret hookup on national television.
Today is my villa date. One last chance for Henry and me to have “alone” time before I leave for home the moment our date is through. I’ll be sent back to LA to wait and find out if I’m in the final three. If so, I’ll be invited back to the château for the season finale.
I’m thankful to be going on the second date night, because even though this place is a slice of heaven, I don’t think I’d survive watching Henry go out with a new girl every night. I walk outside to find the cleaning crew descending on Sara Claire’s room, and my chest twinges with regret as I realize she’s gone and I didn’t even get to say bye.