One To Watch (43 page)

“Asher,” Bea whispered, and she pulled him into her arms, unable to hold back any longer. He tensed at first, but then he exhaled and let her hold him.

“Where is she now?” Bea asked, gently smoothing his hair. “Do the kids ever see her?”

“Last I heard, she was working as a diving instructor in Thailand, but we’ve barely talked since the divorce was finalized. I used to send her these emails, begging her to come home and see the kids, or at least call on their birthdays. Now I think it’s better that she doesn’t. It only gets their hopes up—it’s not fair to them.”

“Or to you,” Bea added.

“I only hope—” His voice broke. “I hope Gwen and Linus will be able to forgive me.”

“Hey, hey, no, for what?” Bea’s heart was cracking open. “You stayed, okay? You didn’t leave them. There was nothing you could do to control Vanessa, she made her own choices. You do everything you can for your kids, you came on this show for them, and I promise you, they know that. They adore you.”

Asher looked into Bea’s eyes; there was something desperate in his expression.

“Was this too much?” he asked. “Should I not have told you?”

“No,” Bea said fervently. “I’m so glad you did—it helps me understand you so much better.”

Asher looked at her sheepishly. “Like why I had a meltdown when I thought you’d spent the night with Luc?”

“Yeah, for one.” Bea laughed kindly. “And why you’re so fiercely protective. Of your heart, of your kids. Of me.”

“I wish I could protect you from ever getting hurt,” Asher said, his voice tinged with emotion. “If you want to talk about—what happened to you last year, I mean. You can. I’m listening.”

Bea sighed; she’d barely talked about this at all, let alone on television. But Asher had been so vulnerable with her, and she knew she owed him the same honesty. The same bravery.

“I’ve never had much luck with dating,” she started, her heart beating quickly. “Sometimes I tell myself that’s about my size, but of course I know that’s ridiculous, there are plenty of women who look like me in wonderful relationships. That’s just never been the case for me.

“But then there was—a man,” Bea stopped herself before she said his name. She couldn’t do that on camera; it wouldn’t be fair to Sarah. “We were best friends for years; he had this way of making me feel like I was the smartest, funniest, most interesting person in the room. And even though we were just friends, even after he moved across the country, I was so in love with him. He was kind of my escape, you know? A place where I retreated from how terrified I was of dating anyone else. For years, I compared every new man I met to him, which wasn’t fair to anyone. I had no real reason to believe it could actually work out between us, but I just kept holding out hope. Anyway, it’s not like anyone else was beating down my door for a chance to be with me. It’s not like I gave anyone the chance.”

Bea exhaled deeply, and Asher rubbed her palm with the inside of his thumb.

“Last summer, he came to visit me, and I don’t know why, but everything was different. It was like we were together, like we had always been together, like it was suddenly so obvious that there was nothing platonic about us. We had this one perfect night, and it felt like my whole life made sense. Like all the years of loneliness were finally going to be over. Except.”

Asher squeezed her hand. “Except what?”

“He left. He left before I even woke up, and then he was just gone. He wouldn’t respond to my texts or emails, ignored my calls. He wasn’t my friend anymore, he wasn’t my anything. I was despondent. I felt so weak that one night could destroy me like that, but to have dreamed my whole life of finding love, to experience it for a few hours only to have it snatched away …”

“Why did he disappear like that?” Asher demanded. “You two had all this history, how could he just abandon you without an explanation?”

He didn’t need to explain—he was engaged to someone else.
But she couldn’t tell Asher that, not right after he’d told her how devastated he’d been by Vanessa cheating on him. So Bea shrugged.

“He never told me,” she said. “I guess I wasn’t what he wanted.”

“He didn’t deserve you.” Asher pulled Bea close, and she felt so good to be with him, so relieved to have told him about Ray, so guilty not to have revealed the whole truth about his engagement. But, Bea reasoned, disclosing too many specific details with the cameras rolling would be as bad as saying Ray’s name outright—it was only right that she should keep the story vague.

“So what do you think?” Asher asked. “Can we move past our ghosts?”

Bea looked up at him—was he asking her to spend the night together? She felt a surge of hope, and of certainty.

“I should tell you,” she said, “I haven’t been with anyone since him, since last summer. But I want to—I mean, we don’t have to actually—I’m sorry, I’m so flustered. What I’m saying is, I want us to share a room tonight, if you do.”

To Bea’s horror, Asher’s whole expression changed—he looked embarrassed and awkward, like he had no idea what to say.

“Oh God,” Bea mumbled. “How did I read this so wrong?”

“Bea,” Asher sputtered, “I want to spend the night with you; believe me, I want that. Do you believe me?”

Bea forced a nod, but she felt sick.

“I have to think about my kids. This is going to be on TV in a few days, and they
just
met you—it’s too fast. I can’t throw caution to the wind. I have to show them I’m being more careful than that with their future. I’m so sorry, I should have brought it up much sooner that sharing a room was never an option for me.”

“But …” Bea couldn’t get a clean breath. “I thought it went so well with them.”

“It
did,
” Asher entreated. “Bea, it was better than I could have hoped. But we have time, right? We don’t have to do this tonight. We have all the time in the world.”

He hugged her tightly, and she wanted to feel comfort, but the gnawing, ragged emptiness tore through her a pit, like a whisper:
First Sam, now Asher. He doesn’t love you. None of them do.

After they wrapped their shoot, Bea had to walk alone across the entire property to her secluded, romantic suite, the one where she and Asher had been meant to stay together. Asher had offered to walk with her, but somehow, that felt worse. When she got to the room, she closed the door and turned off all the lights, hoping that, if she could make the space quiet enough, the voices in her head would stop screaming.

For so long, Bea’s recollection of her night with Ray had felt like a movie on loop, playing over and over in her mind’s eye, more vivid and alive than any other memory she had—the colors more intense, the sensations more acute. These past few weeks, though, Bea had started to feel the movie fading—after all these months, it was like she finally had the ability to change the channel. Tonight, though, after hours of tossing, restless and alone, Bea gave in. She let the movie wash over her, bright and gripping, and imagined Ray beside her, subsisting for one more night on the memory of how it had felt to fall asleep in his arms.

Bea woke feeling groggy, her head pounding with exhaustion and dehydration and general wretchedness. She wanted to be excited for her final date of the week—a day with Luc at her favorite château—but after all the pain and rejection of her nights with Sam and Asher, she found herself wishing she’d kept Wyatt around after all. She just wanted some part of this to feel easy.

“Hey.” Lauren approached her on the little propeller plane they’d chartered. “This seat taken?”

“All yours,” Bea said glumly, and Lauren strapped in beside her.

“Shitty week, huh?” Lauren looked like she genuinely felt for Bea.

“Not the greatest,” Bea said quietly. “Any chance I can skip today and just go home?”

“Sadly, no,” Lauren sighed. “I wish I could tell you that this was all for show, that I’m the one who made the guys decide to spend the night on their own for ratings, for a twist. I told you this would get a lot harder if real feelings got involved.”

“Congrats.” Bea rolled her eyes. “You nailed it.”

“No, come on, Bea, that’s not what I mean.”

“What, then?”

“A couple of things, because I know you’re going through hell right now, and I have a lot of information you don’t—I’m the one interviewing these guys ad infinitum when you’re not in the room, okay?”

Bea looked up at Lauren. “What do you know?”

“First, that Sam and Asher both really care about you. I know Jefferson got in your head, flared up all the doubts you’ve been having since day one. And I know how badly it hurt to have two guys in a row refuse to spend the night with you—but neither of them knew the other was going to do that. You’ve worked so hard to trust them—don’t stop now.”

“Because it would be bad for the show?”

Lauren exhaled in frustration. “Bea, we’ve been through this—at this point, what’s bad for the show is also bad for you. You want to spend your last two weeks here moping and feeling sorry for yourself and end up alone? Have at it. But I also want to remind you that there’s an exceptionally attractive man waiting for you in Amboise, who frankly hasn’t fucking shut up for weeks about how badly he wants to get you in bed.”

“Really?” Luc had said as much to Bea, but somehow hearing it from Lauren made it seem like it could actually be true.

“Yes.” Lauren sighed. “Really. So maybe we can put this week in a different perspective? You had
great dates
with Sam and Asher. You opened up to each other and got closer, and they both told you in no uncertain terms that they want to stick with you for a long time. So you didn’t spend the night with them? Fine. You have a fresh start with Luc today—and I have something really special planned for you guys. Don’t waste it. Don’t let every fear and bad thought you have about yourself stop you from having the fabulous fantasy with him that you deserve.”

Bea knew Lauren wanted what was best for the show—to avoid another depressing episode on the order of the boat catastrophe. But she also couldn’t help feeling that Lauren had grown attached to her, had begun to root for her success. And she was right, in any case, about their goals at this stage being aligned. It wasn’t Luc’s fault that Sam and Asher had rejected her—there was no sense in punishing him for it.

“Okay,” Bea told Lauren. “I’ll do my best.”

Bea wasn’t sure what Lauren meant by “something special,” but when they got to the hotel in Amboise and began filming, she saw Johnny lounging beside a full-on Cinderella horse-drawn carriage. It was painted gold, driven by a man in fancy pantaloons and a white powdered wig, and drawn by four white horses with elaborately curled manes.

“What is all this?” Bea laughed, somewhere between giddiness and horror.

“I have an invitation that explains everything,” Johnny pronounced, then handed her a scroll that was tied with red ribbon. Bea unfurled it and read aloud:

“
Dear Bea, you’ve spent the whole season planning such amazing dates for me and the other men here.
” This was hardly true, she noted internally—Lauren and the producers did most of the planning. But she read on anyway: “
So today, I wanted to plan something special for you. Will you join me for a royal ball at the Château de Chenonceau? I’ll see you there when the clock strikes five.
Oh, Jesus,” she added despite herself.

“Do you accept the invitation?” Johnny asked.

“Who would say no to a royal ball?” Bea laughed, giving in to the ridiculousness of it all.

“Excellent.” Johnny held open the door of the carriage, and Bea climbed in.

When they arrived at the Château de Chenonceau, they couldn’t see the castle itself—just a small building for buying tickets and an elaborate tree-lined avenue that ran through the immaculate gardens before it reached the palace beyond. The little ticket building had a space that was usually a gift shop, but today, it had been remade into a dressing area for Bea.

“Just wait until you see.” Alison grinned. “Christian Siriano asked if he could make something for you.”

She led Bea to a room filled with light, where a spectacular ball gown was waiting on a dress form. The corseted bodice was a rich forest green with a wide portrait neckline and bracelet sleeves, and the full princess skirt was hand embroidered with thousands upon thousands of swirls of crinkled tulle, deepening in an ombré from the palest mint green at the skirt’s waistline to a green as dark as the bodice at the hem. This wasn’t just a custom gown—this was couture, worthy of the cover of
Vogue,
of any runway in the world. Made personally and especially for Bea.

“I know it’s not exactly your style,” Alison was saying, “but when Christian called, I knew right away that this would be the perfect occasion. What do you think?”

Bea could barely raise her voice above a whisper. “It’s the most beautiful dress I’ve ever seen.”

As Bea’s team put the finishing touches on her hair and makeup, Bea thought back to her interview with
People—
could it really have been just seven weeks ago?—when she’d told the interviewer she’d never heard of a fairy tale featuring a fat princess. Now, here she was, feeling more beautiful than she ever had in her life, on her way to attend a ball with a man handsome enough to be cast as a prince in any movie, a man who’d spent the better part of their time together working to convince her how strongly he felt about her. It was going to be a big, special moment on television—but even more than that, it felt to Bea like she had reached a real turning point in her own life. Last winter, alone and missing Ray so intensely, she’d fervently wished for her life to change; today, she couldn’t deny that it had. That she was becoming someone new. That she was believing, despite all the mess of the week so far, that she was on a path toward something better.