Page 46 of Heart to Heart
CHAPTER 25
AVERY
I couldn’t sleep.Instead I was only lying in bed, surrounded by the soft breathing of my roommates. In the bed next to mine, Sasha racked out after returning from her date with Tristan and having been swarmed by the others as soon as she’d set foot inside the door. Listening from the sidelines, I’d gathered precisely two things from the date: 1) they’d gone on a hike, stopping to have a picnic near a stream, and 2) there wasn’t a bathroom for miles, which after a couple of glasses of wine, had made for an uncomfortable, bumpy horseback ride back. Although bathroom fiasco and all, I was still as jealous as the rest of the women in the house.
In the far corner of the room, Bianca lay sleeping in Hadley’s old bed, which she had claimed as her own as that bed was positioned with the headboard facing south—because feng shui and shit. Of course, she kept her other bed, too, because she had more luggage than the rest of us, so it only made sense in Bianca math.
Even with Bianca being Bianca, I’d been bothered by our fight in the van. She had avoided me all evening, which I can’t say wasn’t like a breath of fresh air. She thoroughly deserved tohave someone put her in her place for once. Yet, it wasn’t like me to lose my temper and play into her little game and, maybe, even get the best of her. What with the surprised expression she’d made before all the commotion in the van had died down, leaving Jay to actually try making small talk to break the tension. In doing so, he’d stolen glances at the both of us in his mirror as though expecting one of us to jump over the seat and body slam the other like we were in the WWE.
But mostly, I just wanted to go home. The humiliation. The heartbreak. Was it really worth prize money if I had to walk down the street with a bag over my head for the rest of my life when I could quit school, get a job closer to home, and help my parents that way? That was crazy, but so was being right here right now, making a fool out of myself while my mental health took a dive every time the thought of Tristan being with any of the other women here entered my mind. I was afraid of losing something I didn’t have and couldn’t have because that’s not why I was here.
I couldn’t stay in bed anymore when sleep was nowhere near close to claiming me. As quietly as I could, I slid my legs out of the covers, slipping on my slippers as I scooted off the bed and made my way from the room. The hall was sparsely lit by sconces spaced evenly down the wall on one side. On the other side were the open banisters leading downstairs, and I was just about to take a step down one of the steps, when a flashlight from below startled me, and I ducked behind a wall, listening to the footsteps of the security guard.
Of course, there would be security here. They wouldn’t just leave a bunch of strangers alone to fend for themselves. It wouldn’t take a law student to determine what kind of liability that would be. Defeated, I crept back inside our bedroom, ducking into our shared bathroom and closing the door so slowly, it was a good thirty seconds before I heard the soft clickof the latch. Our bathroom was about a third the size of Kiki’s and my apartment, and padding through the dark, I made my way to the bathtub and sat on the edge of it, allowing the breeze from the open window to wash over me. All I wanted to do was take a walk, and I couldn’t even do that, instead being held captive in a mansion, as insane as that sounded. Now I knew what the phrase "money can’t buy happiness " meant because the opulence of my surroundings and all the lovely gowns in the world had done nothing for me.
Despite the breeze, I still felt a slight sheen of sweat across my forehead. Standing up, I wiped the back of my arm across my face and walked over to the window, fitting my hands underneath it and pushing it up to open it wider. Surprised that there were no screens or any other types of safety precautions. Flushed, I stuck my head out as another breeze caressed my skin. The freedom of the outside beckoned me like a siren song, but being on the second floor of this impossibly large house made it difficult to follow. If only I could grow hair like Rapunzel and repel down to the ground, or, better yet, had a ladder I could climb or…lattice.
There was lattice secured to the side of the mansion.
Lattice with ivy growing on and through it so that the white panels were barely noticeable. Lattice with gaps in between its crisscross hatch pattern, big enough for my feet to fit, that would allow me to climb down quite handedly. I looked down the length of the wall to the ground below, mentally calculating how far of a climb I would have to reach the bottom and how crazy I would have to be to make it. At worst, I may only sprain an ankle, and that’s only if I couldn’t make it at least part of the way down before falling. Odds I was willing to take.
One more push upward and the window opened with enough room for me to crawl through it. Carefully, I stepped up on the side of the tub, maneuvering my foot outside to straddle thesill. Before I could change my mind, I inched that same foot downward along the frame of the lattice, until I found a space where I could squeeze my foot.
Without moving the rest of my body from the sill, I put as much weight as possible on the structure, testing its strength to ensure it could hold my weight. When it didn’t collapse into a heap on the ground below, I tightened my grip on the sill and flung my other leg over, running along the lattice until I found another space to step into.
Standing entirely on the structure, I slowly began climbing down, until I was scaling the side of the mansion like a far less cool version of Spider-Man. Little by little, I made progress, met with only slight creaks and groans from the lattice under my weight. I’d just about reached the final stretch when a voice from below sent chills through me, and I stopped dead still.
Wait. I knew that voice. I’d know it anywhere. Though replacing the quiet confidence of Houston Dark from his action movies was a less decisive side of Tristan. A defeated side, even.
“I know it’s best for my career, but I just don’t know how much longer I can keep living this lie.”
Living a lie?
Tristan had positioned himself just underneath me, his head a couple of feet from where I clung to the lattice, afraid to move yet also craning my neck as though doing so would let me hear him better. If not for it being the middle of the night, he would surely have seen me up here hanging on for dear life.
“I’ve thought about quitting the show, being that it’s not fair to any of these women here. When it’s all fake and I can’t really fall in love with any of them. But Wanda has pulled so many strings. It took her months to get a network to agree to have me associated with them, and if I quit now, I’ll never work again.”
What?My stomach dropped as though I thought I’d actually had a chance with Tristan, or that I wasn’t faking things here, too.
I shifted my weight on the lattice as a sharp crack echoed underneath my slipper, prompting me to hang on for dear life as I prayed to the gods of whoever made lattices that Tristan would walk away before it collapsed beneath me. I tumbled down on top of him, giving him a good reason to quit the show in the form of a broken neck.
“I know, Rach. Thanks for letting me vent to you. Yeah. I love you, too. Bye.”
I love you, too? Was Tristan seeing someone? If so, how hadn’t Kiki found that out and included that in her Tristan Tate portfolio she had me study?
Sighing, Tristan leaned against the lattice, disturbing it just enough that I briefly lost my grip on it, forcing me to shift my foot once again on the damaged portion, which caused two things to happen: 1) the section underneath my foot cracked the rest of the way through, and 2) my life flashed before my eyes, recapping the many times I’d fallen before.
My hands flew up, struggling to grasp any part of the lattice I could find as one of my legs dangled while the other struggled to support the rest of my body.
“It’s okay. Go ahead and let go. I’ll catch you,” Tristan said from below.
There goes my time on the show.
I hardly had any time to mourn my brief stint in reality television superstardom as the wood below my other foot began to crack, and I was forced to launch myself off the wall before I brought it down with me. I fell maybe a foot before a pair of arms caught me mid-air, and both Tristan and I came crashing down onto the ground below, harder—at least me—than I would have liked. My arm struck the landscaping stones spread underneaththe window, and I didn’t need to see it to know it was bleeding when a trickle of warmth ran down the length of it from an obvious cut to my forearm.
“Avery?” Tristan asked, the light from his phone’s flashlight app blinding me. Despite having fallen on the man, knocking him to the ground, and having heard him admit that this whole show was one big sham, I couldn’t help but feel butterflies in my stomach with the deep, throaty growl he used when he said my name.
“We really need to quit meeting like this,” I said, because what the hell else was there to say, really?
