Page 103 of The Love Rematch
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“I, um…” Emily glances about the room and draws in a deep breath. She looks back to Nina, sure the producer must see her heart pounding against her thin camisole. “I had a question I wanted to ask him about the guys. It’s no big deal, I was just wondering if maybe you’d seen him. Or could, I don’t know, send him over here…maybe?”
“He was a no-show for our meeting with Trish this morning,” Nina comments with a shrug.
Emily’s heart literally stops beating. Pain flares across her chest from the lack of oxygen as her body shuts down. A single word spills airily from her lips. “What?”
“I wouldn’t sweat it,” the producer hurries to say. “He probably overslept or something. I only meant I haven’t seen him. But I’ll send him over if I do.”
A knock interrupts.
“That’s makeup!”
Nina runs to the door. Emily is glued to the spot.
He probably overslept.
Except he didn’t. Emily knows he didn’t. If he overslept, she would have woken up still wrapped in his arms, warm and cozy and blissfully happy. Instead, her breath comes in short spurts as a panic attack begins to wreak havoc on her system. If he’d left to keep what happened between them a secret, he would have been at that meeting. Nothing would have stopped him from being at that meeting.
But he wasn’t.
You’re everything, Em.The deep rasp of his voice fills the back of her mind, even now sending a shiver down her spine.Every. Fucking. Thing. I mean it.
He said that less than eight hours ago.
How can he be gone?
He isn’t.
He can’t be.
Emily holds on to that flimsy thought as she’s guided to a chair. The makeup artist works brushes and sponges across her skin, but she hardly feels them. As if caught in Medusa’s trap, her insides slowly turn to stone, growing harder, colder, number with each passing moment.
“We should review the schedule,” Nina says from over her shoulder, unaware that Emily is slowly shutting down. “Your sister’s flight got delayed. It’s not landing for another hour and a half, then it’ll take her another two hours to get her bags and get here on the boat, plus another forty-five minutes for hair and makeup. Long story short, we’re filming Cooper’s scene without her. Your parents will be here in about half an hour—they’re getting their makeup done now—so we’ll film the reunion and give you guys a little time to catch up before Cooper arrives. Then he’ll come here, chat with your folks, ask for your dad’s permission to propose, yada yada. Before you know it, the two of you will be off on your final date night of the season. Sound good?”
Emily doesn’t react.
Nina finds her gaze in the mirror. “I said, sound good?”
“Sure.”
A look of concern passes briefly over Nina’s face. She opens her mouth as if to say something, then closes it. After a final prolonged glance, she turns and walks away. Emily hears her mumbling something into her comms as she disappears around the corner, but she doesn’t have the energy to ask what it is.
Instead, she sits there and spirals.
When Emily’s parents arrive, her father immediately senses something is wrong. It’s hard to get anything past the chief of police. But with the cameras in their faces, he’s uncertain. He waits for her move. Emily hugs them fiercely and feigns ignorance, putting on a fake smile. The sound of her voice is comically high pitched as she does her best to cover the knot sitting at the back of her throat. She must be a terrible actress because after only two minutes, her mother’s expression also shifts to one of concern.
“Honey?” she murmurs.
Emily swallows and fights down the sobs threatening to spill over. She opens her mouth to respond, but her lips tremble. Nothing emerges. She pushes for any sound, any reaction. An almost maniacal laugh bursts out, so far beyond the edge of reason she may as well be drowning in the deep end of the crazy pool. Nina offers a probing glance while Phil peeks over the rim of his camera with a question in his gaze.
Alarms flash in her mother’s eyes. She immediately reaches across the distance to curl her warm fingers around Emily’s ice-cold ones. “Honey, what’s wrong?”
Emily doesn’t trust herself to speak. She just shakes her head. Phil’s camera hums quietly as he zooms the lens in. Her mother must hear it, because she glances nervously to the side. But as history proves, the attention of millions isn’t enough to sway Tina Peters when it comes to her daughter’s well-being. She shoos her husband away and scoots over on the couch to peer closely at Emily’s face, trying to discern the reason for her turmoil.
It’s too much.
