Page 31 of The Love Rematch
He’s not.
“Get the fuck out,” she says again, this time presenting her back so he won’t see the tears gathering in her eyes. “I don’t owe you any answers.”
“You’re right,” he says softly. “You don’t.”
It takes everything for her to keep her voice even, to keep the heave rattling up her lungs at bay. “You wanted to pretend we were strangers earlier. Let’s be strangers. Don’t talk to me unless it’s about the show. Don’t look at me unless it’s through a camera. And don’t crawl into my bedroom in the middle of the night to dole out unsolicited advice.”
“Okay.”
In the fogged-up mirror, she watches him roll his shoulders and resettle into this new arrangement, a phantom from another life ready to meld back into the shadows. But she knows him well enough to know he’s not quite done. And she knows herself well enough to know that if she opens her mouth to stop him, she’ll lose all tenuous grip on her emotions—and deep down, she wants to know what a goodbye sounds like from him. If this can help make up for the one she never got before.
He’s careful not to touch her as he squeezes by and walks out the door, but it’s almost worse that way, every point of her body acutely aware of his tantalizingly close warmth, and the sudden cold as he slips into the dark. He gets as far as the window before he stops, the way she knew he would. Emily doesn’t turn to meet the gaze she can feel roving up her legs, along her spine, over her profile.
“America will love you, if you give them the chance.”
The floorboards creak as he climbs onto the sill.
“Give them that chance, Em. Let them in, and they’ll fall. Trust me. It’s impossible not to.”
CHAPTEREIGHT
jake
Strangers,Jake thinks as he arrives on location the next day.I can do this. I don’t know her. We’re strangers.
Security leads his team through the underground hallways of SoFi Stadium into the heart of the football field. Seventy thousand empty seats surround them. Light floods in through the glass canopy overhead. And plastered across the jumbotron in eighty million high-definition pixels is Emily, mocking him with that perfect smile.
I can’t fucking do this.
Strangers don’t go into cardiac arrest at the sight of one another.
Strangers don’t sleep in one another’s old T-shirts.
Strangers don’t lie awake in a cold sweat all night picturing one another naked.
Okay, two of those things might only apply to Jake—but one is entirely Emily’s fault.Why the hell does she still have that shirt anyway?
The image is burned in his brain. Emily’s ass. The sliver of her flat stomach as she tugged on the edge ofhisshirt. The barely there strip of cream fabric across her hipbone. Her ass, again, because really it’s a perfect ass, and the moment his gaze landed on her exposed left cheek, his brain jumped back to a time when he was allowed to cross that distance, dig his fingers into her soft flesh, and lay claim.
I sound like a fucking barbarian.
He feels like a fucking barbarian, like some sort of starved, feral cat. He’s jealous of a T-shirt for god’s sake! He thought he got her out of his mind after he left Georgia, but it had all been a giant lie, a trick his heart played on him. Thoughts of her had been festering under the surface, out of sight, out of mind, growing and growing. Now with her suddenly back in his life, they’ve become one of those horrible, ingrown pimples that he knows is there but he can’t figure out how to pop, so it just gets redder and redder, more painful and more obvious. He may as well have a sign on his face that reads:I love her. I’ll always love her. And we will never EVER be strangers.
Her mom can bedazzle it for him.
“Jake.”
He turns to find Nina. “Yeah?”
“Let’s talk logistics.”
Together, they divide the twenty remaining suitors into two teams—selected for optimal drama, with every brimming feud from the first night in mind. The assistants are already conducting the pre-group-date interviews, each carefully determined question meant to bring prior arguments up to the forefront. Between the competition for Emily, the very loosely regulated “tag” football, and the fact that most of the men were clearly selected for brawn over brains, some shit is definitely about to go down. And Fred will surely capture every glorious moment of it. There’s only one problem as Jake sees it.
“You’ll never get Emily into a cheerleading outfit.”
Nina frowns. “What do you mean?”
“She just…” He bites his tongue and shrugs. “She doesn’t seem the type.”
