Page 79 of The Billionaire Love Match

He was silent again.

“Colt?”

“I’m here.”

“I’m sorry if that made it seem like I could be bought.” She started to cry then. It didn’t matter. She’d already broken her promise not to cry on the show. And the cameras were gone. She had a feeling she would be doing a lot of crying.

“What I don’t understand,” she said, feeling an anger come alongside her sadness, “is that you and your mother planned this whole show out. You’re an executive producer, she said. What parts did you plan exactly? Sending me on a date where I almost drowned? Bringing Lucas on?”

“Casey, no. I never would have put you in that position. I didn’t know most of the details of the show. My mom ran everything, told me who to pick—everything.”

“Everything was fake then. Run by your mother. I understand now, I think.”

“No, that’s not how it was!”

“Why don’t you tell me how it was, Colt. Because from where I stand, I put everything on the line for you. Publicly. Over and over again. I don’t know what part of you is real. What part of us was. And you humiliated and insulted me publicly in return. That’s how it was for me. I loved you, Colt. As crazy and stupid as it sounds and even though live TV is the last place I would want to be proposed to, I would have said yes. For you.”

She wept into the door, her legs shaking. She leaned against it for support, trying not to think about his arms, just on the other side.

“Casey, look through the peep hole.”

“Why?”

“Just look.”

She sighed and looked through. Through the distorted view, she could see something small and black.

“What am I looking at?”

“A ring box,” he said. “Inside is the ring that I picked and paid for myself. For you. My mom didn’t know. And I wasn’t going to do it in front of the cameras, but in private. Just for you. I hoped to tell you that in Morse while the cameras were rolling. To ask you to wait for me. I wanted it to be special. To be real and off camera. So you’d know. But then I found out about the money. Casey, please open up. Let me ask you now. Please.”

“Just like that? You show up after all that and want me to marry you?”

“I want nothing more.”

“Colt, you’re an idiot. I’m sorry. But I’m not opening this door. No matter how much I want to. I’ve got emotional whiplash as it is. I feel like a fool. I look like a fool. The whole world is laughing at me, Basket Casey. Because of you and your mother and your show. Now you come here and want to secretly propose? As much as I hate the cameras and everything public, no. You can’t humiliate me in front of the world and then quietly come make it better.”

The sound of his voice, ragged and raw, crushed her. But she would not open the door. “Casey, what can I do? How can I fix this?”

Casey ran her hand down the door, wishing she could stroke his face. To breathe him in and feel the warmth of his skin on hers, the smell of him as he held her. But she could not do that now.

“Colt, my parents even watched. I just got off the phone with them. My mother and father were crying—that’s how hurt and angry they were for me. Do you see how I can’t just call them up and say, ‘Oh, it’s okay. He didn’t mean it and came and apologized in the hallway of my apartment. Now we’re getting married!’ It doesn’t work like that.”

“Tell me what to do. I’ll do anything, Casey. I—I love you. I know it’s soon. I know it’s crazy, but I know it’s also true. I love you and I want to marry you. For real. No cameras, nothing fake, not even my mother jumping in the middle of everything trying to manipulate me.”

He loved her.

She loved him and he loved her. It was so tempting. Casey rested her hand on the doorknob. Two inches of door was the only thing that separated them. But she couldn’t do it like this. Her trust had been totally shattered.

“Hold on,” she said. She found her purse and pulled out the single sheet of paper Grace had given her when she signed the contract. She pushed it under the door.

“If you want to understand why I can’t open the door, this is why.”

There was a pause and a rustle as he unfolded it. “Oh, Casey. Where did you get this?”

“Where do you think?”

“Look, Casey, this is the first time I’ve seen this.”

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