“So why kick Courtney off?” Milo asks after a few long tense minutes of silence. “If she was on their team all along, why not keep her in play?”
“I guarantee there was no way to keep her if you all voted her off.”
“The meeting,” Lennon states. “They had to know we all agreed to send her home. There was no way for them to let her stay.”
“You guys had a meeting?” Bella asks. She’s been quiet since arriving, soaking it all in.
Lennon and Milo share a look before nodding in unison.
“Here’s my question,” I start, knowing that once I say the words, I can’t take them back. “If Courtney was a plant for the girls, who was a plant for the guys?”
The room falls silent. You could cut the tension with a knife. If it’s Milo or Lennon I’m going to flip my shit.
What if it was Jace, though? That would be worse. Our entire relationship would be based on a lie.
“If I tell you who I think it was, will you promise to keep an open mind?” Lennon finally asks, looking directly at me.
The way he asks sends a shiver up my spine, but I nod anyway.
“I think it was Gage. Jace swore he saw him when he arrived. Thought he was one of the guards by the front door. Said he recognized him by his red hair. I didn’t give it much thought until right now. My arrival was held up by almost thirty minutes, and they wouldn’t tell me why. Gage is the only one besides Jace that arrived before me. It would make sense if they had to pull him at the last minute.”
“And Courtney arrived right after me I think,” I add, attempting to piece everything together.
“They said I was going to be delayed, but then they were rushing me to the house,” Milo notes, pushing himself out of the chair he’s been sitting in and then pacing the length of the living room. “It would make sense. He was pissed from the get-go. He didn’t want to be here. If he was replacing someone, he would want to be kicked off.”
“He got his wish,” I mutter to no one in particular.
“You know, I voted Courtney off every week,” Lennon says. “I thought she was conniving from the beginning. Her actions seemed planned, and her acting skills were less than convincing. She’d care too much one minute and not at all the next. And her story never added up to me. She started off as a bubbly blonde that didn’t seem to be all that smart, and then she suddenly was manipulating some of the other girls and plotting against you for no reason at all. That was a big leap. I never understood how she kept surviving.”
Thinking back, her and Gage seemed at odds most of the time, but then again, we only saw what they wanted us to. It was all probably an act.
“What do we do?” Bella asks, finally moving from where she’s been standing next to the door and taking a seat beside Lennon on the sofa.
“Nothing,” I state firmly. “We do nothing. There’s nothing we can do. We get through the rest of the week and finish the show.”
“We could manipulate who wins,” Milo suggests.
“Honestly, I don’t think they’d let that happen at this point. If Claudia was looking for me, she already knows I heard her and Courtney talking. Whatever they have planned won’t change.”
“So let’s change it,” Lennon suggests. “They may be able to manipulate the results, but if they don’t make sense, it will be obvious. They can’t control how we act.”
“They control what they show. How things are pieced together,” Bella counters, her voice low and uncertain.
“Let’s give them a show,” I state, a plan formulating in my mind. Making eye contact with Lennon, I spill my idea. “You and I need to heat things up for the cameras. We need to make it look like we are going to choose each other. Milo and Bella will do the same. Then, when it comes time to vote, you choose Bella and she chooses you. We reveal our votes live. There’s no manipulating the results this time.”
For as little as I pay attention to how things are going to go each week, the one thing I do remember reading is the way the finale is set up. Each of us will be taken into an interview room before the show starts and asked a series of questions. They’ll broadcast it during the finale. Then, when we’re asked to vote, we announce our choice individually by holding up a card for the camera to see. The only way to win is if two people choose each other.
Bella and Lennon have to pick each other.
Game over.
We win.
Well, Bella and Lennon win, actually. I lost last week when Jace was sent home, but that’s fine. My prize is waiting for me in Miami.
“I like it,” Milo finally says.
After we all agree, we finalize the details of the plan and sneak back out of Gage’s villa and into our own. Lennon and I have a hot date tonight, but before that happens, I have to text Jace. We swore not to tell anyone what we were up to, but I’m afraid what he’s about to see will break his heart if he’s not warned.