Total pages in book: 118
Estimated words: 112961 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 565(@200wpm)___ 452(@250wpm)___ 377(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112961 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 565(@200wpm)___ 452(@250wpm)___ 377(@300wpm)
“I fucked up, didn’t I?” I say quietly. “Leaving you last night blew the whole thing up.”
He inhales deeply and slowly. “I told you from the start,” he says to his lap, “that I didn’t want something if it was only sex.”
“I know.”
When he turns his eyes up to me, the distance in his gaze sends a chill down my arms.
“What we shared felt much deeper than sex, Felicity, but at the first sign of trouble you fled. I’ve spent the last twenty-four hours feeling angry and hurt and incredibly stupid for trusting you. It makes it very hard for me to believe you now.”
Mortification isn’t a swift punch to the gut; it is a slow seeping of ice-cold water into my veins. I can’t imagine what Connor thinks about me right now—I wonder if he’s regretting putting the Heroes’ hearts in my hands, let alone putting his own precious heart there. I agreed to do this show in the middle of my worst and deepest writer’s block, and I justified it by saying I was doing it for the audience. And now I’m telling him to date me in secret, putting his job and his life here in jeopardy after I fled the hotel room like a panicked idiot the first time he confessed that he might not be a perfect human. It was supposed to be us against the world, and I blew it all up.
I have never in my life felt like such a profound failure.
thirty-nine CONNOR
This time when Fizzy leaves, I only feel blank inside. I’d wanted to hold on to this anger—had spent the day going from indignant to hurt to disappointed and back again—but as I watched the excited flush drain from her face, breathless hope replaced by grim understanding, my anger slipped away, and I just felt… tired. Now there’s only the silence of my thoughts, and the flat bleakness of the door firmly shut, literally and metaphorically.
I should feel relief that it’s finally over and I can get back to focusing on what got me here in the first place, namely my job and my family, but I don’t. I feel like absolute shit.
And she told me she’s in love with me.
* * *
Blaine is the last person I want to see Monday morning, but he barges into my office just as I’m packing up to leave for the set.
“I can tell you’re on your way out, but we need to talk first,” he says, closing my office door.
“Did the final numbers come in?” Brenna’s text from about six this morning showed numbers up over week one, on track to break another record.
“Fuck the numbers right now,” he says. “Just tell me I’m not going to have to deal with any fucking drama on your crew.”
I go still, setting my car keys down on my desk. The possibility of photos of Fizzy and me together… “What’s this about?”
“Social media is raking Trent’s crew and Smash Course over the coals because of this doping bullshit.”
My first reaction is relief. And then I frown, leaning in like I need to be closer to his words to process them. I was so wrapped up in the drama with Fizzy this weekend that I feel completely disconnected from anything beyond her, and us, and The True Love Experiment. “What doping bullshit? Trent wouldn’t do anything like that.” The man used to make library documentaries and low-budget sitcoms, for fuck’s sake.
“What dope—?” Blaine asks, cutting off in abrupt disbelief. “Connor, he’s been dealing with lawyers for weeks. As of this morning it’s all over the goddamn Internet.”
I look past him, remembering. Trent came back to San Diego for meetings with lawyers. It didn’t even occur to me to ask why. “I haven’t been online yet,” I tell him. “I came straight here before heading to set.”
Blaine gives me the brief rundown: a facilities manager at one of the venues used for Trent’s show came forward with video proof that two of the other producers on the show were giving performance-enhancing drugs to a contestant.
“Okay, this is bleak, this is shit,” I say. “But it’s entertainment television, not the Olympics.”
“Yeah? Not the Olympics? Well, what do we tell the execs at SuperHuman and Rocket Fuel? Should I call our biggest sponsors and explain why we’re taking obscene ad money to promo their workout formulas during commercial breaks, but letting the contestants dope off camera? Oh, is that not enough for you?” He doesn’t let me answer this rhetorical question, not that I’d bother. “Well, how about this: one of the producers was also fucking this contestant in the tour bus bathroom, so you tell me if it still doesn’t matter.”
My stomach drops. “Jesus.”
“You’re the juggernaut, Conn, but Trent’s show also has the highest ratings in his time slot. You see now how the audience treats these things like their fucking lifeline. They get invested, and when you give them the power of a vote? They feel ownership. Let them have that kind of power and you’re finished the second you step out of line. We put everything we’ve got into this goddamn show and cannot lose our viewers because Trent’s team was breaking the law and banging the stars.”