Fairytale Love - Becca & Brian (34 page)

The applause track began playing and Becca jumped, startled. Her palms grew damp as the AD counted them back from the commercial break. This was the segment when the first elimination would take place.

Breathe
.

“Welcome back! I’m your host, Lance Sparrow, and this is the live finale of
Fairytale Love
. I am sitting here with the remaining three couples on their journey to fairytale love, but in a few moments, only two couples will remain.”

There was a dramatic pause, which Becca had learned from seeing snippets of the show on YouTube were usually when they did close-ups of the couples. Becca tried her best to keep her face looking even and pleasant even though, inside, she was freaking out.

“Brian and Brooklyn…you did not get the majority of the votes…”

No!
Becca knew that she didn’t want to see them playing kissy face for a year, but until this moment, she hadn’t known just how badly she’d wanted Brian to win, no matter what that cost her. Her eyes flew to his and he looked totally self-contained and self-assured as he waited for Lance to continue.

How did he do that?

He needed to win this. So much depended on him winning this, but he looked like the poster child for calm, cool, and collected.

“…But you did earn enough to be safe. Yes, Brian and Brooklyn have earned enough votes in this portion to earn a spot in the final elimination round,” Lance finished, and the track of clapping and yelling played.

Becca breathed a sigh of relief. She saw a brief flash of disappointment flitter across Brian’s golden eyes. She smiled when their eyes met, and he grinned, but it was not the grin of someone who’d just been saved from elimination on a show he desperately needed to win.

Lance continued. “Jax and Madison…” Again, Lance paused.

Becca’s heart was beating so fast that she wasn’t sure it was taking breaks in between. It felt like it was just holding in the pound position. She had no idea if Lance was going to say that Jax and Madison were safe, like he had with Brian and Brooklyn, or if he was going to flip the script and announce that they were eliminated.

She was on the edge of her seat, and she was sure that that was where they wanted the audience to be too.

“…Are
not
safe,” Lance finally said. “Jax and Madison did not earn enough votes to move on. Their road to happily ever after has come to an end.”

Becca felt like there was a very real possibility that she was going to be sick. This was more than an emotional roller coaster. This was an emotional car-driving-off-the-edge-of-a-cliff.

As everyone stood and hugged Jax and Madison, saying their goodbyes, Becca realized that, just like she hadn’t known how much she’d wanted Brian to win until she’d thought he was going to lose, she also hadn’t known how much she’d held on to a secret hope, buried deep down, that Jax and Madison would walk away with this and she and Brian would be free to be together.

She knew it was selfish. Totally selfish. She hadn’t even known she was capable of being
that
selfish, but she guessed that was just one more thing she’d learned about herself.

“Remember folks, keep those votes coming in, we’ll be tallying them up until the very last minute. Who is your favorite Fairytale Couple? Let us know. Every. Vote. Counts.” Lance spoke with a particularly dramatic flair directly into the camera.

Everyone took their seats again, excluding Jax and Madison, who’d left the stage, and Brooklyn nudged Becca. When she turned, Brooklyn was giving her the I-told-you-so look-slash-gloat. Becca just smiled sweetly with a blank look in her eyes, acting completely oblivious to what Brooklyn was ‘saying’ beneath her look. Becca’s ignorance had the intended effect. Brooklyn looked away, irritated.

Becca knew that it was petty, but she just didn’t want to give Brooklyn the satisfaction of acknowledging that she’d been right.

So, in the last ten minutes, she’d been both selfish and petty. Wow. This show was really bringing out the best in her. She looked back at Lance as he read the teleprompter, which was filled with puns and corny jokes.

As Becca sat waiting to find out what her future held, she tried to put her life into perspective. That morning, she’d received a call from the woman she’d met on the plane—Stella. She’d called Becca to say that she was finished with her treatment and that, right now, things looked good but she would keep her updated.

Cancer was a
real
problem. Losing your house was a
real
problem. Not having money for medical bills was a
real
problem.

Having to wait a year to be with a man that loved you and that you loved with all your heart and soul was
not
a real problem. It was just a bump in the road. And they could handle bumps because their love was the ‘sticking kind’.

With a new resolution in her heart, Becca became present once again and turned her attention to Lance.

“You’ve seen a lot from our couples, from challenges to adventures, fights to romantic overnights. But let’s take a look at what you haven’t seen in a segment we call
Fairytale Fun: The Unseen Footage
.”

The stage lights dimmed and a large screen behind them started playing a montage of funny moments. Brooklyn tripping when she tried to take her luggage in the house the first day. Brian doing a bunch of impressions, entertaining the guys while they all played basketball, Jax lifting the fridge because Madison thought she’d lost her contact, Leah doing a belly flop as she tried to gracefully dive into the lake, Blake running into a wall. Colton giving Becca a piggy-back ride on the beach and almost stepping on a sunbather.

Becca found herself laughing at all the things that she’d never seen. All the moments she’d had no idea had been captured. Her laughter was short-lived, though, when she heard Lance’s voice-over say, “And now, let’s take an up-close look at our remaining couples.”

A still shot of Brian and Brooklyn kissing in the pool filled the screen, and it was followed by a slideshow of more kissing, more PDA, dancing, laughing… Basically, it was like her nightmare montage set to music.

She swallowed over a lump the size of a baseball that was in her throat and made sure to keep her eyes on the large screen. If she didn’t, then she knew she’d look over at Brian, and she abso-
freaking
-lutely could not do that. If she looked at Brian, she would not be able to keep the tears, that were threatening at the backs of her eyes, at bay.

Finally, after what seemed like twenty hours but was probably more like two minutes, the music changed and Becca and Colton’s picture replaced Brian and Brooklyn. Which turned out to not be any easier to watch. As picture after picture flashed on the screen set to music, Becca felt guilty. Really guilty.

No, it didn’t make sense for her to feel that way, but it seemed like her emotions weren’t running their game plan past logic. So here she was, sitting across from the love of her life, the man she’d spent every night this past week making love to, while a montage of intimate, loving pictures of her with the man sitting beside him played and they all watched.

This was not fun. Not fun at all.

After an excruciatingly long period of time, the melodic notes of the love song faded out and the screen went black. Becca’s heart pounded as the stage lights came back up. Lance started talking but there was so much pressure in her head his voice sounded muffled like her sisters’ voices used to sound when she was little and she would put her fingers in her ears if she didn’t want to hear them, usually because they were bossing her around.

Her eyes were working just fine though, and they immediately shot to Brian. He sat perfectly still, looking calm on the surface, but in his eyes she could see the simmering of something. It wasn’t anger. It wasn’t hurt. But, it was something. And that something wasn’t good.

“But there are more than just those two couples sitting up on this stage.”

Becca heard Lance announce and snapped her head to look at him.

“That’s right, there is a third couple sitting right beside me.” He smiled with a knowing smile leaning into the camera.

Oh my God
. They know. Somehow, they’d found out about her and Brian. What was that going to mean? Did that mean that they would be disqualified? Would they not even get the money that they’d been promised? They had blatantly violated their contract by ‘engaging in inappropriate relations’.

Becca couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t feel her hands. She couldn’t feel her legs.

“There is a couple that has been together almost their whole life.”

No, no, no.

“A couple of best friends…”

Oh, thank God
. Becca’s shoulders slumped in relief.

“They came on this journey together, supporting each other through this process. Becca and Brian arrived together, and their bond of love and support was apparent throughout the filming of the show. Let’s take a look.”

Becca felt Brian’s stare on her, but she was scared that, if she looked at him, her face would give something away, so instead she turned to look up at the screen as the lights once again dimmed.

The video started with pictures of them arriving and their voices playing the conversation they’d had in the Jeep when she’d asked Brian what he thought the chances were of one or both of them finding their fairytale love and then him saying, “Good. Very good.” It continued showing them talking in the dining hall, and sitting out over the bluff the night Brian was considering going home. Then it showed the pictures that Becca’s mom had found in the attic and given to Becca of Becca and Brian growing up. There were shots of them at dances together, in Halloween costumes, first and last days of school.

She felt tears forming in her eyes as the montage continued and picture after picture of Brian hugging Becca, his hand threaded in her hair as he cradled her head against his chest, flashed on the screen. She hadn’t realized just how often he did that. And now, it would probably be a year before she would feel that again.

Then the music lowered and it showed her sitting in the confessional booth when Gavin had asked her about Brian. Becca saw her own face transform as she talked about him.

“Brian is the kind of guy who not only opens doors and makes sure you wear a jacket if it’s cold outside, he also knows exactly what to do to make you laugh when laughing is the last thing you want to do. He knows what really matters and what doesn’t. He can rebuild your car engine, put a complicated desk together in under an hour after your dad throws the instructions out from frustration, fix your computer when it crashes, and also, notices when you buy a new skirt.

“He has a smile that makes you do things you would never do in a million years. I call it his bad-boy smile. When he flashes that smile, people—myself included—just follow him blindly. Because even if, technically, it’s something you know you shouldn’t be doing, you also know that, whatever happens, Brian will take care of it. He’ll take care of you.

“If you are lucky enough to be someone Brian loves, then you know that, no matter what happens, he will always be there for you. He would do anything, sacrifice anything, for the people he loves.”

She hadn’t even remembered saying those things, but that was exactly the point that she’d been trying to make to Brian last night.

After her video, Brian’s face popped up on the screen from one of his confessionals, one Becca hadn’t seen. His eyes were filled with so much emotion as he spoke.

“No, Becca’s not just my friend. She’s part of me. As much a part of me as my limbs, because she’s the strength I stand on. My lungs, because she’s the air I breathe. My heart, because she’s the love I feel. My brain, because she’s my sanity.” He let out a puff of a laugh. “My conscience, because she tells me when I’m screwing up.

“Becca’s not just my friend. She’s my…everything.”

Tears were now flowing down Becca’s face like Niagara Falls as the lights came back on, and even though she knew she shouldn’t, she looked over at Brian. When she did, she didn’t find him crying like she was. He didn’t look hurt, upset, or mad. Nope.

What she saw was a thousand times worse than any of those things. He sat staring right at her wearing the smile that told her he was about to do something he shouldn’t. His face was turned up in the biggest “bad-boy smile” she’d ever seen.

Uh oh
.

* * *

Clarity, like Brian hadn’t known for the past year, filled him. He knew exactly what he was going to do and what he was not going to do. He was going to ask Becca to marry him and he was not going to ‘date’ Brooklyn or have Becca ‘date’ Colton for a year.

Brian didn’t care about anything except those two certainties. Everything else was just going to have to work itself out. He wasn’t going to let his parents lose their house. If Brian couldn’t make enough at the shop to make the payments on the first, second and third mortgages, then he’d have to look into selling it to see if he could get enough out of it that his parents would have a cushion, a nest egg. As far as his brother and sister were concerned, he’d work and figure out how to cover their tuitions; but, if they needed to get jobs so they could handle their living expenses, well… There were worse things.