Stuck With You

by Sara Cate

  When he leans in for a kiss, I inch backward. My mind is reeling. Is this for real?

  The worst part is that for a moment when Eli confessed this, my heart lept. I had a moment of elation, like I had somehow won. Just on the other side of the door is a man who didn’t need to date twenty other women to compare me and second guess his feelings for me. He’s honest and passionate. And he cares about me. Maybe even more.

  “Alice, say something.”

  My mouth is still hanging open and I realize that this is one of the only times Eli and I have been together wthout a camera in our face. Is this the real him or is this just a spokesperson for teh real guy who laughed in my face when I told him I was a virgin.

  Just then, his eyes catch sight of something behind me. I turn my head and see the aftermath of my very passionate morning with Sam. His pants and underwear are on the floor next to my dress and a torn red foil wrapper.

  Eli doesn’t say anything for a moment, but Deb pipes up, taking her attention away from her phone for a moment. “Where the hell is Sam? I’ve been texting him all morning. I need to get this moment on camera.”

  “He’s in the bathroom,” I whisper. The room grows awkward and silent as Eli and I avoid each other’s eyes and Deb puts two and two together.

  Sam must have heard his name because he steps out of the bathroom a second later, dressed in a pair of jeans and a tight-fitting T-shirt, looking too good at the moment while I’m trying to focus on telling Eli to fuck off.

  I mostly expect him to stand next to me while I explain to Eli that he might as well go crawling back to Katrina. Then, I expect Deb and Eli will leave so Sam and I can get back to what we were doing a minute ago.

  What I don’t expect is Eli to launch himself at Sam, landing a punch on his jaw as the tumble to the floor.

  Sam

  Well ain't this unexpected.

  Not Eli socking me. That I expected.

  But him changing his mind on Katrina and running back to Alice...did not see that coming.

  Deb and Alice eventually break us apart, and I brace myself for the worst part. When the truth comes out, and I should know better. It always does.

  “I should have known!” he yells, pointing his finger in my face. “I should have known you were trying to bang her this whole time. You were always trying to convince me to pick Katrina. Just the other night, you told me Alice had second thoughts. That was a lie, wasn’t it?”

  I feel Alice’s eyes on me from beside me, and it kills me to feel the confusion coursing through her stare. She trusted me, and now she’s learning just how much I worked to keep her out of Eli’s future—and into mine.

  When Eli kissed her, I was the one who told Katrina lies that left her bawling in the hot tub. It was me who pulled Eli away on his last night with Alice to let him know that I overheard her telling the other girls that her feelings for Eli weren’t genuine.

  My guilt is my own, but I don’t regret it. Alice would have faked her way through their entire relationship for a man who would never truly appreciate her. To him, she was a trophy, one he didn’t deserve.

  “What is he talking about?” she whispers to me.

  Ignoring Eli and Deb who are both standing there with faces madder than I’ve ever seen, I turn toward Alice. “I told you how I felt Alice. You deserve better than this guy, and I didn’t want him picking you and seeing you settle for a guy who didn’t hesitate to break your heart. I would never…”

  “I trusted you.” Tears pool in her eyes, and it kills me.

  “I’m sorry. I truly am…” It feels pointless to even apologize, and for the record, I’m not sorry for what I did. I’m sorry she had to be betrayed in the process.

  When he reaches for her, I fight back the urge to break his arm. Eli is shorter and lighter than me, and I won’t hesitate to toss him out of this room if he touches my girl again.

  She was always mine. Even when she was vying for his heart in front of the cameras, it was always my eyes she found at the end of every shot.

  “Come on, Alice,” he says, resting his hand on her lower back. She’s still in nothing but a towel, but with the way her eyes are calculating this new information, she couldn’t care less about her outfit. There’s a heavy weight in my chest when I think about what we did last night. Does she regret it? Will she ever forgive me?

  As Eli closes in on her, she finally snaps out of it, spinning away from him. “Don’t touch me!”

  He pulls back looking sincerely shocked.

  “I kept thinking that you were the prize, Eli. That if I played by the rules and did exactly what you wanted, then I would win. But now I realize...I’m the prize. And you lost. Sam may have been wrong to meddle in the show, but he’s made me realize that it’s nothing more than a show at all. What we had wasn’t real, Eli. If you loved me the way you said you did, you wouldn’t have left me broken-hearted yesterday. So I suggest you go crawling back to your other ex-girlfriend and pray she takes you back.”

  That’s my girl.

  Eli looks struck for a moment until he glances at Deb as if she can fix this for him. Glancing up from her phone, she looks at her watch and says, “If we’re fast, we can get back before Katrina is done at the spa. Pretend this whole fiasco never happened.”

  Both of our jaws drop. I speak up first. “So you mean you came here before telling Katrina you changed your mind?”

  “I couldn’t take my chances,” Eli says with a smug look on his face.

  “You’re a pig. Get out!” Alice pushes Eli and Deb out of her room, dropping her towel in the process, but she doesn’t even look fazed. It’s a far cry from the weeping girl in a ball gown I found yesterday.

  Once the door closes us in, I wait patiently, ready to get down on my knees and beg if I have to. What I did was wrong but only for the show. It wasn’t wrong for Alice.

  She spins on her heels and walks up to me, still not bothering to hide herself. I figure at this point that if she’s about to dump me, at least she’s doing it naked. Could be worse.

  The look on her face says she’s angry, and if there was any doubt, the piercing slap across my face makes it very clear. Still, I stand tall. When she’s ready to listen, I will defend myself, and I will get her back.

  “And you,” she says, jabbing a finger against my chest. “If it wasn’t for you, I would be engaged to…” Her voice fades as she realizes what I just saved her from.

  “Why did you do it?” she asks, the anger in her face fading.

  Stepping up to her so that her body is flush with mine, I cup her face in my hands, tilting her head up so that I can stare into those perfect brown eyes. “I knew Eli was an idiot, but I knew if he had any brains in his head he’d pick you, and I couldn’t let that happen. You don’t belong with him, Alice. You belong with me.”

  Her lips part as she melts in my arms.

  “You had no right…” she breathes, trying to hold onto her anger as she clings to my arms.

  “Yes, I did.” I scoop her up in my arms, and she doesn’t fight me. “You’re mine, Alice, and I don’t play games. I’ll never put anyone else first, and you don’t need a rose from me to know that my heart belongs to you.”

  Her arms wrap around my neck as she pulls her face closer. “Fuck roses,” she mumbles as she crushes her lips against mine.

  With that I carry her into the bedroom, fully intending to put the rest of those red foil packages in the side table drawer to good use.

  Epilogue

  Alice

  “It’s on!” I call from the couch, curled up under a soft blanket and a big bowl of popcorn.

  Sam crawls in next to me, pulling my legs over his lap. “Say goodbye, Aaron,” he mutters as he takes a handful of popcorn.

  “I like Aaron!” I whine, but he’s right. He’s not a good choice for Katrina.

  “Aaron the virgin? Katrina would eat him alive,” Sam says, pulling me closer.

  “That’s true.”

  I laugh to myself, thinkin
g of the feisty blonde and the way she reacted when I revealed on the live airing of the reunion show that her new fiance showed up to my beach suite begging me to take him back only hours after he proposed to her. Just as we suspected, she was none the wiser to his little trip back to Wicked while she was getting her mani-pedi.

  It was the first time the show ever had to employ the security guards Jerry Springer style, and it shortly became a viral sensation. When they made Katrina next season’s America's Girlfriend, Sam and I became the show’s biggest fans. We spend every Tuesday night on the couch, watching her pass out roses followed by a traditional couch romp, and on very special occasions, a bubble bath together.

  Sam quit his job as the cameraman—well, before he was fired for admitting to meddling in the show. Since then, we decided to find a nice apartment on Wicked. Since this is where it all started, we figured it was the best place to start our new lives together. I remember thinking on that day that it was like the end of my life—who would have thought it would have been the exact opposite?

  “She’s in that damn hot tub again,” Sam mutters as his hands skate up my legs under the blanket.

  “She loves that thing,” I laugh, letting my knees fall apart as his fingers find a sweet spot to rest under my panties.

  “We already know how this ends,” he whispers, creeping over me and replacing the blanket with his body.

  Making it through an entire episode seems to get harder and harder.

  Speaking of harder...Sam moves between my legs, shifting my underwear to the side and sliding in easily as he kisses me deeply. I cling onto his hips as he pulls off my T-shirt, trailing his lips down my neck to my chest. Our heavy pants and moans fill the room, overpowering the sound of Katrina calling names one-by-one on the TV.

  Just as the intensity on the show intensifies and she’s left choosing between the last two boyfriends, Sam picks up speed, making my toes curl. Keeping my eyes on the TV, I watch as Sam’s body slams into mine. My core erupts in pleasure just as the camera pans to the loser who just realized he’s not getting a rose. My favorite part.

  Also by Sara Cate

  Wicked Hearts Series

  Delicate

  Dangerous

  About the Author

  Sara Cate writes contemporary romance about bikers, bad boys, hunks, and softies--all rolled into one. She has a soft spot for redemption stories and forbidden romance.

  You can find more information about her at

  www.saracatebooks.com