Page 29 of The Billionaire Love Match

TEN

Casey had been dreadingthe live viewing of the show for a week. Now she felt self-conscious and fearful, sitting on a tall barstool. The other fourteen women were around her in a semi-circle, similar to the setup a week before. Where Colt had chosen someone else and sent her home. Her hands felt shaky, but it wasn’t low blood sugar this time.

Mark the intern had stopped by her room earlier that day with a bag of Chinese takeout. “So you don’t pass out again. You like lo mein, right?”

“How’d you know?” she had asked, already digging into the noodles.

“Remember all those personality tests and interviews? I know it all.” He tapped a finger to his temple.

She’d laughed, then stopped eating and looked seriously at him. “Do you know...” She trailed off and then shook her head.

“What?” he asked. “Just ask.”

Her eyes felt like they were going to betray her and spill over. “Nothing,” she had said. What she wanted to ask was, Do you know if Colt’s going to pick me?

Other than Lucas, Casey’s other boyfriends had all been the ones to dump her. Choosing other women or cheating on her with other women, or just deciding for whatever reason she wasn’t enough. The anxiety from those rejections was high, especially after Colt didn’t choose her at first. The thought of it made her eyes sting. She clasped her hands together and forced her thoughts elsewhere.

Tessa waved from the other side of the stage. The producers seemed to be intentionally separating the two of them on everything from the group date to seating arrangements tonight. Everything was so intentional. Casey needed to remember that. Nothing was personal. It was just the show.

She needed to keep repeating that as mantra to get through this night. As much as she was terrified of rejection (again), Casey was perhaps more nervous to see the way the producers were spinning the show. She didn’t want to watch herself on the screen. Not alone, not with a bunch of women and a studio audience. She knew she was sitting too stiffly in her chair, but it was hard to relax.

“And here’s our bachelor!” Chris Haversham said into the mic. The room burst into applause.

Casey tried to show excitement, something that came easily to the other women around her, who were wiggling on their stools or squealing or clapping their hands. Inside, her heart felt like it was squeezing into a too-tight sweater. But the sight of Colt’s face filled her with a sense of relief. As though this whole thing was all going to be okay as long as he was with nearby.

“So how was your first week, Colt?”

Colt smiled widely, then looked out over the girls, making sure to stop briefly at each one. Casey hoped secretly for a longer moment, but his gaze moved past her as quickly as everyone else. Mr. Casual in full effect.

“I’ve had some quality time and some fun time with this group of amazing women. It’s been both hard and easy, Chris. Easy because I’m spending time with these fifteen beauties. But hard because I know that it can’t last. Not with all of them. It’s hard to say goodbye. I hate hurting people,” he finished.

His eyes did rest on Casey then. Was this some kind of signal? Was he trying to warn her that she was going to be one of the ones hurt? Was she totally paranoid and slightly insane? She sucked in her breath.

That’s when she noticed Colt’s fingers tapping out a pattern on his knee: four short taps, then two short taps. She had that one: H-I. But then he kept going.

Casey ran through the list in her head, trying to visualize. She’d gotten better at Morse. But she wasn’t a quick study. Or, was just slow to think in the moment. She’d only taken high-school Spanish and remembered her teacher saying that you knew you were fluent when you dreamed in a language. Could you dream in Morse code?

H-I G-O-R-G-E-O-U-S

A smile lit her face. He was talking to Chris Haversham again, but seemed to notice her smile and stopped the tapping.

“Well, now that we have the pleasantries out of the way, we’re going to watch the episode together, along with the rest of the world. And then: a dramatic live ceremony where Colton will send home five women.”

Casey’s stomach tightened. She couldn’t imagine a world where Colt would use a secret language to use in plain sight with her and then send her home. But she barely knew him and he was a great actor. He could be doing the same thing to every girl in the room. She sighed and tried to get comfortable in the seat for the viewing. It was going to be a long night.

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AN HOUR LATER, CASEYwas still reeling when Chris Haversham asked all the women to line up in front of the chairs. Maybe because of the small fire the week before, this time Colt was giving out single unlit matches, the kind that Casey’s father had always kept near the fireplace in a long tube. They were over six inches long and each had a tiny bow somehow affixed to it. Again, Casey missed Amanda to have someone to roll her eyes with at these cheesy touches.

Compared to watching the episode, waiting to see if she got to stay or go was anticlimactic. Casey was still replaying the scenes in her mind as she stood. So much of the episode felt like it was fixated on her. Not usually in a good way. The girls in the house clearly hated her and felt like Casey faked passing out to get attention from Colt.

During the scene where Colt came to her apartment, they’d cut some of the conversation there, or at least somehow in the angles made her seem like she was petulant or bitter about coming back, not that she had just been making him work. Then there were actual gasps when Colt kissed the corner of her mouth. The angles and the music playing made the intimate moment seem like so much more. Casey could practically feel the heat and anger radiating from the other women.

The awkward silences in her conversation with Colt at the first cocktail party were edited to seem like they were just staring longingly into each other’s eyes. Then, of course, she had fallen in the pool. Several of the girls in their confessional interviews said they knew she had planned this too. That and the faint were too coincidental.

The worst, though, was watching Colt kiss her in the pool. The audience whistled and gave catcalls while the girls seated around Casey were largely silent. A few hissed their disapproval or made strangling noises. That moment had been incredibly intimate, where she felt like Colt was the only other person in the world.

But in the editing, it simply looked inappropriate. Way too intimate and rude, even. To be kissing so deeply and passionately in the middle of a pool full of people. She definitely wasn’t looking like the good Christian girl people often teased her about being.

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