Chapter Twenty-Five
Troy
“You have to admit, this has all been worth it, if just for this exact moment.”
I turned and looked at Eden as we basked in the warm Caribbean sun, and she gave me a lazy smile and pushed her sunglasses back up her face from where they’d fallen down her nose a little. “It is nice to have a few minutes off to just lie around in the sun,” she replied. “Although it’ll be work, work, work all over again in just a couple of hours.”
Now that Blair had been arrested and subsequently removed from the show, there were only two contestants left—Anya and Hayley. Cailin would’ve made a third, but she’d quit after the peanut incident last week and threatened to sue. Luckily for the show creators, she couldn’t do that (something to do with some clause in the contract she’d signed), but it’d made her mad enough to refuse to return to even shoot a goodbye scene. Never one to give up on creating dramatic content even when it seemed like there wasn’t any available, Glenn had made a montage of her using past unused footage and sad music, and that’d made up the last five minutes of the most recent episode.
After all the Blair drama, of course.
Now we were up to the final episode, which was taking place on a luxury cruise ship in the Caribbean. The entire crew had been flown down to Aruba, as well as me and the contestants, and our ship had left the main port there this morning. No filming was currently taking place—the crew had already obtained their requisite shots of Anya and Hayley oiling themselves up and playing in the cruise ship’s swimming pool—so everyone was hanging out on the sun deck, reading or working on their tans.
Filming was due to start again upon the arrival of a famous R&B singer, Tay Drake, who would be performing a private concert for everyone in the early evening during the beautiful Caribbean sunset. Apparently he’d been caught up with something back in the States, so he hadn’t departed on the ship with us earlier, and he’d be arriving from Aruba on a smaller speed boat fairly soon.
During the concert, I was supposed to join Tay on stage and accompany him in some sort of duet—a sappy romantic song which Anya and Hayley would apparently sigh and swoon over—and after that, I was meant to give a big speech which would culminate in me picking the winner to ‘propose to’ with the big fake diamond ring the show had provided me with.
I wasn’t sure who I was going to pick yet. Obviously, I didn’t want to pick either of them, because the only woman I wanted to make loving speeches to was Eden, but I had to pick one so we could get this show over and done with. Then I could finally be with her out in the open without her risking her job.
Glenn had been heavily hinting that he wanted me to pick Hayley, because she was seen by viewers as the typical sweet girl next door type of woman, and Anya was viewed as the nasty alpha bitch who was mean to everyone. To be honest, though, I was leaning towards picking Anya to win—she was one of the only women on the show who’d always been honest and upfront about her intentions, and she wasn’t really a nasty person at all; it was all just a show she put on for the cameras.
As for Hayley, she seemed sweet when the cameras were rolling, but I’d heard her making nasty comments about other people on multiple occasions, and I’d heard her bragging to her producer about how she ‘had this competition in the bag’, which would then help her swimsuit modeling career. I didn’t want to pick her, but I also didn’t want to piss off Glenn too much, because that man could be an absolute prick when he didn’t get his own way, and I had a feeling he’d probably try to engineer a situation where I had to pick Hayley anyway.
I guess I’d found out in about four hours.
“Tay’s boat is coming,” Candice called out from over by the edge of the ship. “Where’s the landing deck? I want to be the one to greet him, he’s sooo hot. Eden, want to come?”
“Yeah, Eden, do you want to meet the hot singer?” I teased, arching a playful eyebrow.
She laughed and shook her head. “I just want to soak up a few more minutes of sun before we have to start work again,” she said. “Why don’t you go down and meet him, Troy? You’ll need to be introduced to him anyway.”
“I definitely won’t say no to meeting a hot man,” I joked with a wink. “All right. See you later.”
I put a shirt on and followed Candice down the stairs from the sun deck to the lower deck, and she quickly consulted a cruise ship staff member to find out exactly where the landing deck was situated. When she found out, she led us down to it, and I squinted my eyes in the hot afternoon sun as I saw a large silver speed boat approaching the ship in the distance.
“Nice boat,” I said, letting out a low whistle as waited for it to arrive. “Teammate of mine has one of them. The thing is worth something like fifty grand.”
“Wow,” Candice said. “Maybe I should take up NFL so I can afford to spend that much on a speed boat.”
I chuckled. “All right, I’ll help you train.”
“You’re on,” she replied, laughing as well. Then she lowered her voice. “By the way, I think it’s cool about you and Eden.”
My pulse began to race, and my voice stiffened. “What?”
She gave me a funny look. “Oh, nothing. Never mind.”
“No, what is it?”
“I...er…I just meant it’s cool how you guys can just act like friends. If I dated some dude in high school who turned out to be one of the most famous athletes in the country, then there’s no way I’d be able to act all cool and professional around him if he came on the show. I’d totally be trying to rekindle something and become a WAG,” she said with a grin. “No, just kidding. But really, you guys seem to get on great. I think that’s cool.”
I breathed a quiet sigh of relief; for a second I thought she’d known about me and Eden secretly being together. “Yeah, it is cool,” I replied. I wasn’t exactly lying; Eden and I were friends as well as lovers, and friendship was one of the most important aspects of a relationship, in my opinion. Still, I felt a twinge of guilt in my guts. I was sick to fucking death of deceiving everyone and not being able to crow my true feelings about Eden from the rooftops.
“They’re almost here,” Candice said.
Tay Drake’s boat was pulling up now, and droplets of salty water sprayed up in the air as it slowed down and maneuvered into the landing deck area. The driver of the boat turned the key off in the ignition and swung a rope over to the deck to hold it in place, and Tay himself stepped out a few seconds later. He was a tall, muscular man with close-cropped black hair and smooth mocha-toned skin, and his pale green eyes sparkled in the bright sun. Christ, no wonder all the ladies liked him so much—he was a handsome dude.
“Tay, hi!” Candice gushed as he came closer. “My name is Candice McClure. I’m a producer on The Stud. Thanks so much for coming, it’s a real pleasure to meet you.”
“It’s a pleasure to be here,” he replied, extending a friendly hand to each of us in turn. “Gotta admit, The Stud is one of my guilty pleasure shows. I couldn’t say no to coming.”
“You really watch it?” Candice said, fluttering her eyelashes.
“Of course. That twist in the last double episode really got me. Who would’ve seen that coming from Blair? She seemed so nice.”
Candice was practically salivating at this stage, and I grinned and let her chat to Tay for a while. Hey, maybe she’d get lucky with him later in the evening.
My smile grew wider as I thought about tonight and all it would entail. After the concert and the picking of the winner, that would be it—my contractual obligations would be finished, and we’d only have to film a couple of lovey-dovey filler scenes to use in show finale TV teasers. Then I’d be free to be with Eden out in the open. Of course, we wouldn’t tell everyone at her work right away (because then we’d just be rubbing it in their faces that we’d lied and got away with it) but still, it felt great knowing that Eden wouldn’t be in danger of losing her job over me anytime soon.
I couldn’t wait for the night to end.
***
Raucous cheering erupted from the other side of the velvety blue curtains near me, and I heard Tay Drake thanking the audience for their appreciation before launching into another song.
The sun was just beginning to dip over the ocean in the beginnings of a glorious sunset, and Tay had been singing and rapping for about ten minutes now on a stage on the upper deck of the ship. It seemed like the crowd was loving it—the showrunners wouldn’t even have to get fake footage of people screaming and cheering like they often did with other events.
Seeing as The Stud execs had booked the luxury ship out privately, the crowd was entirely made up of crew members, paid extras, and the two final contestants. That didn’t make it any less nerve-wracking that I had to go out and there and perform with Tay in fifteen minutes, though. I was used to huge crowds at games with thousands of people watching my every move, but that was okay because I was actually good at football. As for singing…eh, I was only halfway decent. I was totally gonna embarrass myself out there on that stage, but hey, if it was what Glenn wanted to finally finish this shit-show, then I’d do it. Hell, I’d act like a dancing monkey if that’s what it would take to hurry the end of the show along.
I’d decided that I would pick Anya as the winner, because earlier when I’d been chatting to Tay and getting to know the lyrics to our duet song, I overheard Hayley making even more bitchy comments. She’d been standing nearby and chatting to her producer about how much she ‘hated’ one of the interns for being overweight, and when that very intern approached her to give her a drink a moment later, she’d smiled sweetly and thanked her effusively. It’d be funny to see if that two-faced bitchery came out in full force when I picked Anya over her, and surely Glenn would appreciate that sort of drama for the finale. He’d always loved capturing contestant tantrums on camera.
“Boo.”
Two hands covered my eyes from behind, and I smiled as I recognized Eden’s voice.
“Hey, what are you doing back here?” I asked, turning around and slipping my arms around her.
“I came to make sure you aren’t too nervous,” she said. “It must suck waiting back here in the wings and twiddling your thumbs.”
“Waiting to be embarrassed, you mean,” I replied with a good-natured grin.
She smiled. “You’ll do fine, don’t worry, and even if you’re a terrible singer, the editing team will make you sound like Pavarotti before it’s ever shown on TV,” she said, before looking around. “Where’s your producer? Wasn’t he meant to wait back here with you to tell you exactly when to go on?”
I shrugged. To be honest, the guy responsible for producing all my scenes this season (a senior producer named Wren) had barely been around for most of it—he’d usually tell me what to do and then disappear back to his trailer. Now that we were on the ship, he didn’t have that trailer haven to disappear into, but he still had a cabin below decks, and as soon as he’d made sure I knew what time to go on stage with Tay, he’d patted me on the back, said ‘good luck’ and then vanished.
“No idea. In his room, probably. Or at the bar,” I said.
Eden rolled her eyes. “No wonder there’s a position opening up for senior producer soon. Glenn’s probably sick of Wren’s crap and wants to fire him, but he can’t because he’s still doing the minimum work necessary for his contract. Barely, though.”
“No shit. You’ve helped to direct me through this season way more than he has,” I said, tightening my grip around her waist. “You’ve got that promotion in the bag, babe.”
Eden smiled and thanked me, but she began to squirm out of my grip at the same time.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
She glanced around nervously again. “It’s still not over,” she replied. “We can’t do this yet; not here.”
I leaned closer and planted a kiss on her forehead. “No one’s around,” I said. “They’re all out there screaming for Tay Drake. I’m not due on stage for what…twelve minutes now? I think that’s enough time for a proper make-out session, like we used to do back in high school. How about it, huh?”
Eden giggled, but she continued to push me away. “Someone might still come in here and see us. It’s already happened before. Remember when Blair walked in and caught us? And also the time when Glenn nearly caught us in the locker room.”
“That was different. We weren’t in a dark room behind a stage on either of those occasions,” I murmured, desperate to taste those sweet lips of hers for just a moment.
She looked at her watch and finally relented. “One kiss. A quick kiss,” she said, holding up her index finger. “And then I’m going back out there.”
“Good enough for me,” I replied.
I wrapped my arms around her again, sliding one hand to the small of her back as she tilted her beautiful face up, and then I leaned in to kiss her. My mouth closed over her hot lips, and our tongues battled in a clash for domination as we furiously tasted each other like it was the last time. Eden moaned softly into my mouth as I squeezed her harder, and my cock stiffened in my pants at the sound. I loved how easy it was to turn her on, like our bodies were simply made for each other, and I could only dream of moving my mouth further down her body right now. As much as I would love to flick my tongue over her clit until she came, it would have to wait.
Eden took in a big gulp of air when my mouth finally broke the seal over hers, and she touched her lips with her fingers. “Maybe just one more,” she whispered before tilting her chin upwards again.
I kissed her again, and this time it was sweeter, gentler than before. From outside the curtains to our far right, I could still hear the roar of the audience as Tay performed for them, but I was so wrapped up in Eden that I didn’t realize he’d stopped singing and was now speaking until it was far too late.
“I was meant to wait for this, but screw it…let’s bring on our main man right now! You ladies are gonna go wild when you hear him sing with me! So let’s do this…”
The curtains dropped and crumpled to the floor instead of parting slowly like I’d assumed they would, and Eden and I sprang apart like scalded cats.
It was too late.
A collective gasp went up in the audience, and Tay stopped talking mid-sentence and turned to stare at us with wide eyes. For once, even Glenn was completely speechless as everyone registered what they’d seen as the curtains dropped, and Eden let out a low whimper next to me.
Fuck.