Page 92 of Alice Chen's Reality Check

“Ooh, I’m so sorry, but it’s curtains for the two of you,” Dawn Taylor says.

“Wait,no!” Brittany cries, but the plank drops out from under her. She plummets into the water below, with Jaxon just behind her. We hear Brittany’s shriek as she hits the water.

“Jaxon and Brittany,” Dawn Taylor says, even though they can’t hear her from where they’re treading water, “your time in my inferno is over. Get the hell out of here!”

A boat whisks Brittany and Jaxon away, and all that’s left of them is a lone cowboy hat bobbing along in the ocean.

“Now let’s heat things up,” Dawn Taylor says, doing a shimmy.“Gentlemen, what’s the hottest part of your partner’s body?”

What part of my body does Daniel find the hottest? Oh, god, just kill me now. It doesn’t help that I’ve racked up three mistakes at this point.

“Eyes,” I write, praying that it’s a generic enough answer to work.

We flip our boards.

Daniel has written “brain.”

“Because you’re so smart,” he explains weakly.

“Brains aren’t a body part, they’re an internal organ! That doesn’t even make sense!”

The plank beneath me gives away, and suddenly I’m plummeting into the water like a cartoon roadrunner, my legs and arms flailing frantically. I make a little squeaking sound as I smack against the surface butt first.

The ocean water is deceptively cold and sharp, and I flounder for a moment before I break the surface. I paddle over to the platform and pull myself up alongside Daniel.

“You okay?” I ask, my hand going to the now-soaked bandages.

Daniel places his hand over mine. “I’m fine.You’refreezing.”

He puts his arm around me and pulls me close. As always, he’s warm, and the heat of him starts seeping into me almost immediately. I press closer to him, and not just for the cameras.

“Good effort, Slayer,” he says, and offers me a fist bump.

“We live to fight another day,” I say. I hate losing, but with Daniel, somehow, he takes the sting out of it.

Chase and Selena drop into the water after us, so we all end up on the losers’ bench together.

“Hey, secret alliance is back at it again,” Chase says cheerfully, completely missing the fact that we’re united in being at the bottom of the competition.

“Speaking of secrets, I’ve got some hot goss,” Selena says, leaning in. “Mikayla said that she heard Peter Dixon and Dawn Taylor really going at it, screaming at each other. But last night I saw Peter Dixon walking by with a fancy box of French pastries. Like croissants andmadeleines and stuff. I think he was headed to Dawn Taylor’s suite, so I guess they made up?”

At that point, we hear a scream, followed by a splash. It looks like Mikayla and Trevor were dropped into the water. That makes Ava and Noah the winners. They’ve won a romantic night toasting s’mores and getting cozy by the fire pit at Villa Paradiso, plus the dignity of not getting dunked in the ocean.

The temporary break in the storm ends sooner than expected, and we end up cresting over choppy waves that make our speedboat shudder and shake. My fingers are wrapped so tight around the safety bar of the seat in front of me that my knuckles have gone white. After a particularly brutal jolt, I nearly lose my grip, but then Daniel wraps an arm around me, his hand covering mine.

“Can’t lose my partner to the ocean just yet,” he tells me.

I smile up at Daniel, but then my heart catches in my throat. Behind us, over Daniel’s shoulder, I spot Trevor glaring at us. He’s mad, and I’m not sure why—until I realize that he’s sitting alone. Mikayla has opted to sit with her producer, Seth, and with the boat being tossed around violently the way it is, the two of them are clinging to the safety bar and each other. They’re arguing about something, but I can’t quite make out what. Anton’s messy scrawl pops up in my mind’s eye.

Mikayla—cheater, hounds the crew members…

The boat fights another wave, shuddering and breaking my train of thought.

“We’ll have to stop the boat up over here,” the speedboat driver shouts back to us. He drops us off over by the labyrinth. As the rain picks up, we make our way across the beach toward the villa.

I glance back at the labyrinth. Despite the storm, several members of the crew are working to dismantle it.

“They’re taking the labyrinth down already?” I ask Leah.

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