Page 58 of The Baking Games

Rhett will go back to his side of the house. I'll go back to mine. We'll continue our snarky comments at each other. And then, hopefully, I'll beat him in the sixth week. He'll go home to wherever he lives, on a yacht somewhere with celebrities, and I'll go back to my little apartment, hopefully with a $200,000 check in my hand. This is what I'm planning, anyway.

Right now, I feel very out of control. I don't know what's happening in my mind, in my heart, and why are there butterflies in my stomach all of a sudden?

We both lie down in the beds. Maggie is over in her bed, still snoring away happily, occasionally kicking a leg or punching something on her side table. I really think she needs to get checked out for some sort of REM sleep disorder. We both lay there staring at the ceiling again, just like we were before we went downstairs to take our little run.

I'm not getting out of this bed again. If I have to pretend to sleep, just so we don't have to talk about anything, I definitely will.

"Should we talk?" Rhett suddenly says.

"About?"

"About whatever that was that just happened."

"You mean the one where my ex-boyfriend flipped on the lights in the courtyard and then acted like a jerk? Is that what you mean?"

I'm hoping that's what he wants to talk about.

"No, I mean, what happened before the jerk came down there."

"We were talking. What are you referring to?"

He turns and looks at me.

"Savannah, come on."

“I really don't understand, Rhett.” I can't make eye contact with him. There's no way. If I make eye contact, I will completely give away the thoughts popping through my little redheaded brain. I have a terrible poker face.

"You know exactly what I'm talking about. We were leaning."

I turn onto my left shoulder.

"We were leaning? You want to talk about us leaning?"

"You know what I mean."

He's trying to whisper as if the microphones attached to our bodies and all over the room will not pick up what we're saying. Right now, people are sitting in their homes staring at their computers, watching the livestream because they don't have anything better to do with their lives. They want to see what we're doing. And maybe Rhett is right. Maybe they're sitting there hoping there's some sort of romance happening between us, and we just gave them exactly what they wanted. Or maybe I'm just making it all up.

"Fine. It was just a moment. Nothing happened. Nothing's going to happen. Nothing has to happen."

Now, I'm just blabbering away.

"What if it's something that should happen?" he says.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, what if we had continued leaning?"

"Then maybe we would've fallen over," I say dryly. "Look, nothing happened, and we don't need to discuss it. It was just a silly little moment where we both felt a little vulnerable. And thankfully, my idiot ex-boyfriend flipped on the light and ruined everything."

"See? You said ruined everything. You wanted it to happen, too," he says, sitting up on one of his elbows. "I'm just trying to figure out what this is all about."

"What do you mean, what it's all about? We're probably just lonely," I finally say.

"I'm lonely all the time, Savannah. All the time, even when I'm around people. But why don’t I feel lonely when I'm around you?"

He looks like he would rather have said anything else but that. His mouth clamps shut as if his brain doesn't want any other words to escape.

"What did you say?"

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