Page 146 of Between the Lines

I stroke up and down her back. “Why wouldn’t it be? Time doesn’t heal all wounds.”

“I’ve been avoiding it, too.” She leans her forehead against my chest and takes a deep breath. “Fine. All right. He started calling me Sugar Puff.”

“Sugar Puff?”

She groans a little. “Yes. And I will kill you if you ever call me that, just for your information.”

“I won’t. I prefer Chaos. Or sweetheart.”

“At the time, I thought it was cute. He told me that it was this fun, common endearment in England. It’s some kind of cereal, or was, at least. Puffed rice.”

I frown. “Oh.”

“Yeah.Oh.But I was young, and I thought it was… I thought I was in love. We sailed through the first few challenges on the show. I saw the others getting into drama, and how some of the girls were looking at Blake, but I thought we were golden. We were in love.”

I press my lips to her forehead. “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t know what’s going to come.”

“No. But I think I could guess.”

“There was a producer on set.” Charlotte lies back, her head resting right next to mine. She looks straight up at the ceiling. “There were many, but there was one who was assigned to me. You know, to help…massagemy storyline. But really, to influence me.”

I run a hand over my face. “Fuck. Was it Jeff?”

“It was,” she says. “Production knows everything, you know. They know what all the cast is saying—but we don’t. I didn’t. He asked me all these questions in the confessionals. Got me to say thesesillylittle fantasies on camera, about how Blake and I wanted to get married one day.”

I close my eyes. “I’m sure they did.”

“I was a virgin when I went on the show.” Her voice wavers, just a little. But she keeps going with the force I’ve come to expect from her, and my hands clench into tight fists. “I was in love with Blake, of course. Or I thought I was. Now, I think I was just… blinded. Like someone who looked at the sun. Dazzled.”

“Charlotte,” I murmur.

She shakes her head a little. “I have to keep going. Or I won’t… The cameras were always rolling. We were promised that nothing would be salacious.”

I grit my teeth.The Gambleis known for being deeply salacious. In the seasons since Charlotte was on, it’s built a reputation for being just that.

Sure. It’s never porn. But it’s hints of sex, the sounds of it, movements under covers or behind opaque shower doors.

“We had to share beds, right? You know the premise. One night, he… went down on me.”

I turn to look at her. She smiles faintly, but it doesn’t look happy. “Yeah.That.Everyone spoke about it the next day, but not in front of me. I saw it later when I watched the aired episodes. And the next night, we had sex.”

I feel myself going rigid. Every muscle in my body coils, entirely without my control. “Fucking Blake.”

“I was into it,” she says, and her voice is almost thoughtful.Almost.If the undercurrent of shame wasn’t there, too. “I thought I was in love, and experiencing this wonderful thing… Of course, it was under the covers, but all of it was filmed.”

A coldness sweeps through me. “They didn’t air it.”

“Of course they did. Not all of it. But enough.” She looks up at the ceiling, her jaw clenched. “I don’t think I’ll ever live down that shame. Of knowing that my parents, my friends, people I went to high school with, teachers, and parents of friends…”

“I’m so sorry.”

She closes her eyes. “The production team assured me that things would be cut. But they didn’t put it on paper, of course. And I wasn’t knowledgeable enough about the contracts to realize what I’d signed. They told me this would be fun and wholesome, but the whole time alcohol was flowing. I was nineteen, but we were in Mexico, you know? And Blake made it seem so fun. I got swept up in the whole thing.”

“Fuck. Nothing about that is okay.”

She sits up and looks away from me, to the large windows overlooking the yard. “Oh, we haven’t even gotten to the worst part, yet.”

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