Page 51 of Glamour & Gumballs

Lots of eyes.

And there were probably even more ears. Everyone would know exactly where I stood on the issue of reverse-harem-style dating.

Kyle grinned and smacked Harker on the back. “I’ll leave you to it, then.” He strode off, putting Harker in a delightfully awkward situation.

Admit to being too scared of a target landing on him and turn me down… or go with me and embrace the target.

His expression grew slightly nervous, but he forced a smile. “Even better. Shall we?” He offered his elbow like an old-school gentleman.

Though the last thing I wanted to do was touch him, I reluctantly stood and took his elbow.

He led me down the jungle path that led to our water well. “It’s nice that it stopped raining, right?” he asked, his voice coming off falsely cheerful. I didn’t call him out for it.

“Yeah, finally,” I agreed.

We chatted about the weather as we walked. It wasn’t fun, but it could’ve been worse.

When we stopped at the well, he refilled the water bottles slowly, still going on about the rain.

I hated it as much as the next girl, but there was plenty more to talk about. He could’ve asked me about my job, my hobbies, or my family. Or something.

When he screwed the lid on the final water bottle, he offered me his elbow again. “Should we head back?”

I nodded, feigning hesitation.

He frowned, studying me.

“It’s just that… you’ve been nice to me. No one’s been nice to me since I got here,” I confessed. Surging forward before he had time to react, I wrapped my arms around him and hugged him tightly. “Thank you so much. It’s been really lonely here.”

He slowly wrapped his arms around me and hugged me back. I bit back a grin at his obvious reluctance.

When I let go and stepped away, I took his elbow without waiting for him to offer it, and we headed back to camp together.

He brought up the weather again, and stumbled over the words a little. I felt kind of bad for catching him so off guard, but a girl had to do what she had to do to marry the man she wanted.

He’d signed up for the game. Now, he was going to play or be played.

Not long after we got back to camp, another guy asked me for a walk.

Colt.

I held his arm when he offered it, but didn’t hug him. I needed to make sure everyone had a different story about their walk with me.

I went on a walk with Ev after that, and didn’t touch him at all.

After walks with Chris and Ian, separately of course, Julian finally asked me to go with him.

The plan would kick off, then.

He didn’t offer his elbow when we headed into the forest together, but I took it anyway.

Unlike some of the other guys, he asked about my life back home. Not wanting to share anything personal, I gave vague answers about my shitty job and the way I’d been sidelined because of my impending game show stint. He acted apologetic about that, but I didn’t know if I believed him.

It didn’t really matter if I did, because I wasn’t risking him staying in the game to wreck Rhett’s shot.

When he was ready to turn around and go back to the shelters, I put my plan into action.

To make Julian the target, I needed him to spend extra time in the jungle with me. And I needed him to smell like me even more than the other guys I’d touched.

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