by Lisa Suzanne
Just as they slide into the room, a timer starts beeping. “Don’t worry, that isn’t a bomb. It’s just the five-minute mark,” Brody says, eliciting a small laugh from the rest of us.
It’s forced, though. I’m too damn tired and way too hungover to push forth a real laugh.
“As some of you know,” Dax begins, “life on the road is tough and often you have to perform under less than ideal circumstances. Nausea, vomiting, headaches...it’s all par for the course. We didn’t push drinks on you last night to get you wasted for last night’s challenge. We did it so we could test your stamina this morning, too.”
He pauses, and a few groans fill the air as we realize what’s coming.
“Many of you are hungover, and as I look around, I think some of you might still be drunk. Last night was a late night of drinking, followed by a challenge, our deliberation, and sending someone home. At best, you might’ve gotten three or four hours of sleep, and now you’re going to perform for us. This challenge will mirror last night’s. It’s exactly the same except group two will go first, and you’ll play different songs. Tyler, Tim, Decker, and Blaze, you’re up. Go!”
Thankfully I have a few minutes to gather my wits. I guess four of us got the short end of the stick last night, and the other four get it this morning. I focus on the bassline in the song for the first challenge, and I mentally play, my fingers moving involuntarily where they rest on my thighs.
I can do this.
I can do this.
Oh, God, I’m gonna vomit.
I draw in a deep breath. Why the fuck did I think it was a good idea to get so drunk last night?
Lexi shifts on the couch beside me.
Oh, right.
Because of her.
I can sleep later. I can vomit later. Right now, I have to perform.
The first group finishes, and Dax yells, “Group two, go!”
We all scramble over to the cases, and my fingers work much more deftly this morning than they did last night. I get my bass guitar out first, and I rush over to the closest space so the others have to travel just a little further which shaves some time off their clock. Every second matters.
This is where Lexi played last night.
I think I still smell coconuts and sunshine where she stood.
I force the thought away.
I focus on the song. I focus on my fingers. I focus on letting the music wash over me. I’ve heard this song before. I’d call myself a casual fan of MFB, but my ex, Stacy, was rabid over them. This one was never released as a single, and it’s off one of their earlier albums. My only hope is that the other guys and Lexi don’t know it.
We finish the competition and we’re released upstairs while the men deliberate. I’m feeling slightly less drunk at this point, and I head for the fridge and grab myself a Mountain Dew. I may want to collapse back in my bed, but we all need to stay awake to find out who’s going home.
Besides, it’s not like I can sleep while I’m waiting to hear our fate.
I spot Kat as she walks through the hallway leading to the family room, where I’m currently sprawled on a couch beside Decker. I glance over at one of the other couches and spot Lexi, who’s sitting quietly beside Tyler. They’re both zoned out, likely fairly hungover, and a tiny glimmer of an idea from last night seeps through my current haze.
Kat glances around the room, and her eyes land on me. She crooks her finger in the come here signal, and I make a big show of standing as I smile broadly, my eyes laser focused on her and certainly not on Lexi even though I feel her eyes on me.
“So glad you’re here,” I say, and I toss my arm around her, stopping right in front of Lexi.
She glances at me and gives me a look that plainly asks me why I’m acting so weird, but I ride the lie anyway. She’s facing me, not Lex, so that look goes undetected by the one I don’t want to see it.
“Tell me it’s confessional time.” I use my husky voice I normally reserve for the bedroom. “You know how I love getting in that private room with you where I can tell you everything.”
She shakes my arm off from around her shoulders. “You smell like old whiskey,” she mutters, and I laugh even though on the inside I send up a silent prayer that Lexi didn’t catch what she said.
So maybe it was a stupid idea.
Unless I can get her on board.
I wish I didn’t smell like old whiskey for this part of the plan.
I follow her into the confessional room, and I sit in the chair across from her.
“You look tired,” I say.
She glares at me. “Thanks. So do you.”
“Is everything okay?”
She nods. “Fine. Just an early morning after a late night.”
I narrow my eyes at her. “Were you out drinking?”
She chuckles but doesn’t laugh. “This is your confessional, not mine.”
“It can be both. Talk to me, Kat.”
She rolls her eyes. “Stop using me to make her jealous.”
I laugh. “Wow.”
“You think I don’t see you eyeballing her every single time she’s in your line of view? Forget it, Hoffman. Not gonna happen.” She chuckles again. “At least not when you’re so hung up on her.”
I laugh. “So you wouldn’t even help me out by pretending?”
“Why would I do that?”
I lift a shoulder. “Because you want to see me win?”
She shakes her head. “I’m not allowed to say who I want to see win. I’m supposed to be impartial.”
“Supposed to be,” I repeat. “But what if you were helping me out because she’s with Tyler now and she broke my heart twice?”
“Then maybe,” she concedes. “But only because it’s shitty she moved on so fast.”
“You think it’s for real?” I ask.
She shrugs. “Let me level with you, Gage. I haven’t watched any of their footage together. I simply haven’t had time.”
“But you have access to it.”
She nods. “I do. But it wouldn’t be fair for me to tell you about her private conversations with Tyler, just like it wouldn’t be fair for me to tell her about your private conversations with Decker.”
I blow out a breath, but I have to admit defeat here. She’s right. “Fine. Sorry for even mentioning it.”
“I’m sorry I can’t. But, just so we’re clear, after this competition is over...it’s not a no.”
I raise a brow. “It’s not a no, huh?”
She smiles, and then she starts asking me about how I feel after that last challenge.
It’s not a no.
My wheels are definitely turning. If it’s not a no later...then there has to be a way to get a yes out of her now.
CHAPTER 31: LEXI
“What was that?” I ask.
Tyler shrugs like he doesn’t really care, and he probably doesn’t.
But was Gage just flirting with Kat?
You see it all the time, really. These reality show producers and the contestants falling for one another. It’s not really all that far-fetched.
The egotistical side of me can’t help but wonder whether it was genuine or if he was just doing it to get back at me. I probably deserve it after flaunting my “relationship” with Tyler in front of him, but I can’t help feeling a little...
Sad? No.
Angry? Not really.
Vengeful? Yeah. That’s the word.
And so, when he walks out of the confessional smoothing down the front of his shirt like he just put it back on, instead of clenching my jaw and tossing words at him, I turn toward Tyler.
I lean in, and I press a kiss to his lips.
He’s not expecting me, but he still grabs the back of my head and pulls me into him.
He doesn’t open his mouth to mine—probably a good thing given my hangover breath—but holy heck, he’s a good kisser. Butterflies zip through my belly as his scruffy beard tickles my mouth, and I can’t help when my mind bends toward other places he
could tickle with that beard.
He doesn’t light me up like the Fourth of July the same way Gage did with his kisses, but this is still good. Dang good.
Cheers and hoots from the men in the room break up our kiss. Tyler looks at me with unmasked lust in his eyes, and I can’t help but wonder whether he’s just a really good actor or if there’s maybe something a little more there.
“Lexi?”
I hear my name from across the room, and it’s Kat.
Great.
My turn for a confessional right after she did whatever she just did with my ex in the same confessional room. Can I call him an ex? Does he qualify after we only hooked up for three days?
Maybe not.
So same confessional right after she did whatever she did with my fling.
She presses her lips into a fake smile, and I do the same back to her as I slide into the chair.
“How are you feeling after that last challenge?” she asks, and some of the bubbliness I was met with on the first day is gone.
“I think I nailed the bassline, but I wasn’t the first to plug in, so I’m just hoping I gave enough for them to judge.”
“It looks like you and Tyler are a thing,” she says, and her tone is flat. No emotion either way...and it’s got my wheels turning. Is she bringing it up because she wants to know whether I’m over Gage?
I’m not.
Is she bringing it up because she wants to know whether I might still want to be with Gage?
I don’t.
At least...I don’t think I do.
Maybe I do.
There are a lot of emotions where he’s concerned, and right in this moment, just because I’m not sure I want to be with him doesn’t mean I want to give another woman permission to.
God, just the thought of him with her has me sweating.
Tyler was right. Him and me flaunting it in front of Gage was the perfect distraction for this competition...unless Gage found Kat, which in turn would be the perfect way for him to distract me.
“I’m sorry, do you have a question?” I finally ask.
“Are you and Tyler in a relationship?”
I lift a shoulder. I’m a bad liar...but I’m pretty sure I need to keep this act up in front of her. Surely she’ll find out whether Tyler and I are faking it when she watches back the footage from the food room, but telling Gage about that would have to be against some rules. Wouldn’t it? “Tyler and I have gotten to know each other really well over the last few days,” I say, hedging around the truth.
She nods. “How well?” Her tone drips with sexual undertones.
“He’s a great kisser,” I say—a truth I only know because I planted one on him a few minutes ago. “He’s really sexy, too. Isn’t he?” I gush.
She shoots me a cursory smile. “Anything else?”
I shake my head.
“Fine. How are you feeling about the competition?”
“I feel like I have a good shot to win this as long as I can keep distractions at bay,” I say. I’m trying to get across the point that I won’t let whatever she and Gage are doing bother me, but I think it comes off a different way.
“Yet you’re getting involved with another contestant?” she asks, and it feels less like she’s being impartial and more like she’s judging.
I shrug and smile sweetly. It’s not really in my nature to be this rude, but she’s bringing out my talons. I’m not ready to see Gage moving on, just as he probably isn’t ready to see me moving on, either—a realization that comes far, far too late. “I guess so.”
“Right,” she says. “Mums the word on that.”
Camille’s voice comes over the intercom system. “The results are in. Everyone please meet in the family room.”
Kat raises her brows. “Talk to you soon.”
I shoot her a fake smile and head out the door, feeling a little bothered by that entire exchange. She knows Gage and I slept together, and now the one person in this house who’s supposed to be my ally seems to have turned on me.
Thank goodness I have Tyler.
Maybe I can ask to be reassigned to another producer.
I can’t confess my true thoughts about everything in this competition to a woman who might be attempting to hook up with Gage. Not when my feelings for him run so deep regardless of the fact that we are over.
We meet in the family room and line up the way we do before every goodbye ceremony, and Dax begins talking once we’re all assembled.
“This was another difficult decision, but there was one thing Brody, Adam, and I all agree on. Some of you play better drunk and hungover than not.”
We all laugh, but it’s nervous laughter. One of us is going home, and the pool of choices keeps shrinking. It makes our chances of winning that much better, which in turn also makes our chances of being sent packing that much greater, too.
“It was a tight competition,” Dax continues, “and we were all incredibly impressed with your skill level considering how wasted some of you got last night.” Brody and Adam laugh. “Let this serve as a reminder that competitions can happen at any time. Keep your head in the game and stay focused.”
It’s a reminder I need—one I take to heart given the circumstances. I can’t let Gage distract me. I’m lucky I passed through to the next round after getting drunk last night...and I just hope that I’m still in it after Dax announces who’s going home this morning.
“With all that said,” Dax says, “we’re sorry to say that Tim, you lost this battle. You won’t be MFB’s replacement bassist.”
I let out a breath of relief.
We all say goodbye to Tim, and then Dax says, “You’ll be paired with someone else for your next challenge. We’re giving you a break for recovery, but after the next challenge, we’ll be sending two of you home.”
With those as their parting words, the three of them leave.
Two people are going home at the next challenge. There are only six of us left.
That’ll narrow the pool to four. One third of us will leave this room.
This competition is flying by. They weren’t kidding about making their decision quickly...I just didn’t think it would happen quite this fast.
Once they’re gone, the producers descend upon us to pull us into confessionals to gauge our reaction to the news that Tim is gone. Camille beelines for Tyler, Blaze is pulled back by Ben, and Decker heads out with Miles.
And then there’s Kat. She spots me, and then her eyes flick over to Gage. She moves in his direction. She slings her arm around his waist.
He looks down at her like they share a secret, and my stomach feels sick as they start walking to one of the confessional booths.
I can’t watch them together...just like he probably can’t watch me with Tyler.
It all feels so wrong. I pushed him right into her open arms by flaunting my fake relationship with Tyler in front of his face.
He leans down and whispers something in her ear, and I force my eyes away before I stalk over there and rip her off him.
He’s not mine anymore.
He was for one weekend, for one sweet fleeting moment in time, but it’s over now.
And I will no longer feel guilty for what I’m doing with Tyler. In fact, maybe we should take it to another level. I like him, he seems to like me...so maybe we should stop faking it and see what happens when it becomes something real.
CHAPTER 32: GAGE
“I’m in.”
My brows furrow in confusion as I stare at Kat in the tiny confessional room. “You’re in?”
“I’ll fake with you. I’ll pretend we’re dating,” Kat says.
“Why?”
She shakes her head a little and shrugs. “It’s probably a terrible idea, but in my last interview with her, I just got a weird sense. Something’s going on with her. She’s doing you dirty, Gage, and you deserve better than that.”
I lift a shoulder. “I don’t know about all that, but I’ll take whatever help I can get when
it comes to the art of distraction.”
She chuckles, but she’s all business. “First things first, I’m going to have Ben take over my duties with Lexi.”
“But then you won’t get insider information from her,” I point out.
She shakes her head. “Ah, my sweet fake boyfriend, don’t you think I’ve already thought of that? Ben will tell me anything I need to know at our daily recap meetings, and certainly she won’t open up to me if she thinks you and I are together.”
I nod, and I tap my temple. “Okay, smart move.”
She chuckles. “Besides, if she’s switching producers in the middle of this thing, that’ll be even more evidence that something’s going on between the two of us.”
“Okay. I like where your head’s at.” Except a little feeling in my gut is starting to tell me this isn’t right.
“Let’s do our interview so I can go talk to Ben, okay?” She moves toward the camera, which I assume is currently off. She sits in the little director’s stool next to the camera where she always sits when she asks me questions in this room. I sit in my usual chair, too, my face in front of the camera.
“So Tim was just sent packing,” Kat says. “Were you two close?”
“Tim was a nice guy but quiet. It was hard to get him to talk. He’s incredibly talented, but in my opinion he was too shy to handle the kinds of venues MFB plays. He’s been in a studio for his entire career, and just because you can play for a crowd of ten or twenty people doesn’t mean you can handle big stages.”
“But you can handle them?”
I shrug. “Yeah. Tim didn’t have stage presence. I’m not saying I do, but there’s something about being on stage that’s electrifying. It’s a feeling in my bones I can’t even describe. Performing for a live crowd is one of the most exciting, thrilling, and terrifying experiences in the world.”
“Have you ever performed on a stage as big as MFB’s?” she asks.
I shake my head. “The biggest stage I’ve done is a small festival in Vegas. I think maybe seven or eight thousand people were there. My band, Sin City Crue, was the opener.”
