Page 82 of The Love Dare
“Tyler!” Yetta pulls him in for a hug. He glances at Winnie over her mom’s shoulder. Those big hazel eyes stare up at him from the ground, apologetic and alarmed.
“Tyler,” comes Alexandru’s deep voice. The older man grabs his hand for a firm shake. Tyler stands there like an idiot, letting his arm flop like a dead fish, too much to process at once.
“Come in, come in,” Yetta urges, first to him, then to the film crew behind him. “We’re so excited to have you here, and to talk about Tyler. He’s like a son to us. Such a good boy.”
She gently guides him inside to make way for the others. Tyler glances around in a panic, unsure what to do. The cameraman is no help. His lips are folded together in barely contained mirth as the lens hums, focusing in on the sheer terror probably painted across Tyler’s face. Footsteps thunder as Alex comes barreling down the stairs, and all of a sudden, he’s surrounded by all three Rusus with no girlfriend, no backup, and no clue what the hell to say. Everyone starts talking, moving. The words are nothing but a buzz in his ears as his heart races. The world begins to spin.
This is wrong. So wrong.
He needs Winnie.
He needs to be honest.
He needs everyone to just?—
“Stop!”
Yetta glances at him curiously.
Alexandru frowns. “Is everything okay?”
“Yeah.” He shakes his head, trying to find his sense. “I mean, yes. Everything is great. I just, um, I forgot something outside. Give me one sec.”
He rushes out the door, slams it closed behind him, and collapses against the wood. There’s a second camera out here, so production doesn’t even try to interfere as he looks down overthe edge of the stoop to where Winnie is still cowering behind a bush, a handful of green leaves stuck in her black hair.
“What the fuck?” he whisper-shouts.
“I’m sorry!” She buries her face in her hands, then looks up at him. “I panicked.”
“No shit.”
“I don’t even know what happened,” she whines. “I just saw the knob turning, and the next thing I knew, I was in the bush and there was my mom and you were inside and I just— I don’t know. I freaked out. I don’t know, Ty!”
His blood runs cold.
“Don’t know what?” he asks slowly, his fear from thirty seconds ago like nothing compared to the sudden terror enveloping his insides. “Don’t know about…me?”
“No,” she rushes to say, standing back up in alarm. “Not you. Never you.”
“Then what?”
He’s trying to be patient.
He’s trying to understand.
But she just bolted at the thought of seeing her parents, and it’s really fucking difficult to not take that personally.
He reaches out his hand, the warmth of her skin an instant relief to the tightness in his lungs as she grabs his fingers and he pulls. When she’s back on the stoop, he settles his palms on her small waist and meets her gaze, willing her to explain. Her eyes turn imploring. She grips his jacket and pulls herself up onto her tippy-toes.
“They’re going to know I lied,” she whispers.
And he doesn’t know why—maybe it’s the earnestness in her eyes or the sudden lightness of a weight lifting free or just the simple fact that she looks so adorably innocent—but he laughs. Right in her face. An obnoxious, loud, barking laugh that he just can’t contain.
Winnie immediately frowns and slaps him softly on the arm. “Shut up.”
He can’t.
His relief is too potent. It’s turned him too giddy. He can’t stop.
