by Emily Bishop
The screen flashes inexplicably to nighttime traffic, some road all lit up with glowing red break lights, no longer a picture. It’s a moving shot. It’s live. What’s going on?
“Likely in an effort to rehabilitate that classic bad boy, party boy image, Berringer accepted a starring role in the popular reality television show My Billionaire Bachelor, the fun-loving dating show featuring a new exotic location and gorgeous billionaire every season.”
My own face flashes across the screen at me, though I look wildly different than I do now. The picture they show is a candid, colorful image of me sitting outside of the women’s trailer, holding the very same guitar dangling from my hand now. In spite of the guitar, though, I do look different. I’m just a shade thicker in that picture, and my hair is thick and shoulder-length, black.
Even though I’m wearing the protective halo of a blonde wig right now, I still press my lips together and feel blood rush in my cheeks. I wish this topsy-turvy public life would be over, but I guess it never will, now that Blake and I will be together soon. This is his entire world. This is his life from front to back, cameras and questions outside his window, outside his car, outside his lunches and dates, and even outside of the hospital.
No wonder he snapped.
“Roxanne Meriweather, the My Billionaire Bachelor chief makeup artist, reportedly filled in for a contestant with salmonella in an episode called ‘Waterfalls,’ which created just a storm of curiosity about this couple.” Another image scrolls onto the screen: the background shot of us, showing just my legs and him on his hands and knees in front of me. “Followed by allegations of pregnancy. This is actually livestreaming video from a fan who is following the would-be suitor after he said, quote, ‘I’m about to introduce you to the winner of season six, everybody,’ end quote.”
Footage of My Billionaire Bachelor airs on the screen. It’s Blake with a girl, and even though I’m carrying his unborn child and I know he’s contracted to go on these dates, my gut still boils at the sight. She says something to him about being alone and being pregnant.
“They appear to be caught in gridlock traffic,” the anchor announces, and the camera flips back to her. Ugh. It’s Ellie K.K. I hate this bitch. She tweeted that I lied about being pregnant—which is how it looks, I guess. But I still don’t want people tweeting about my business. I’m lying about not-lying because of them to begin with. “This might be a significant development, considering the total disappearance of aforementioned Meriweather.”
A clip of Candace and Blake standing together pops up on the screen. I’ve already seen this clip a few times. Blake basically denies my pregnancy, and Candace tells them that I’ve been moved to another studio because the show isn’t about me.
The feed switches to the livestreaming video and some fan desperately chasing after Blake. It looks like he climbed out of the backseat of his taxi and is bolting down the bottlenecked street now. A cameraman runs behind him as fast as he can. The camera jostles so hard that it’s unbearable to watch. Cars flash around at odd angles, and the feed changes to huffing and puffing and pavement swishing in and out of view.
“The possibility that this is a total meltdown has been overlooked,” Ellie shrills excitedly, the camera changing back to her. “After all, Blake Berringer has always seemed, for lack of a better word, “tender” in front of the camera. Overly sensitive.” She smirks. “Maybe it’s finally time that Britain’s bad boy broke down. Before attacking Delago outside of an Essex hospital in early 2017, he was reportedly in the treatment center for opioid withdrawal.”
Several pictures of Blake in his party phase—eighteen through thirty-two, respectively—cross over the screen.
“Berringer himself declined to comment.”
He looks exhausted and too pale in many of the pictures, and an almost maternal instinct to cuddle with the former Blake comes yawning out of me.
Not that the old Blake would have cuddled with me.
Reformed Blake got me in bed so fast, I shudder to think of how quickly old Blake would have moved.
But I feel a funny little wiggle in my chest, and I think I might know where he’s headed.
I think I might know who is going to win season six.
For a moment, a chill hand clutches at my heart, and I think about the repercussions of this broadcast. I hope that the livestreaming fan can’t keep up with Blake; they sounded like they were really struggling. I pray that they lose the feed so the location of Fancy’s won’t be revealed, in case he actually is coming here.
I wouldn’t be able to stand having one more home infiltrated by some alien force.
I need to have somewhere I can call my own, after all.
My own home.
The fingers on my free hand move by sheer habit to my sternum, where Blake’s brass key has been resting for the past five years, give or take a few weeks.
I swallow as my fingertips brush bare skin. I still haven’t put it back on.
I guess a part of me is scared to believe in him.
“And it does appear that our loyal fangirl, right on Blake Berringer’s heels, has lost him in the traffic. Aw!” Ellie K.K. snaps her fingers without a trace of remorse and grins at the camera with dead eyes. “I guess we’ll have to tune in to tomorrow’s episode of My Billionaire Bachelor to figure out if Blake Berringer is really in love with anyone at all… or just high as balls!”
I gaze over at Rudy, and he shrugs, lifting bushy golden-reddish eyebrows at me. “You think he’s coming here?”
“Uh…” Every time I want to believe in something now, there’s this little voice inside me just begging me to hold back and not believe. “Um—I don’t know,” I say.
The front door crashes open, and I whirl with a gasp. The disinterested regulars watch the scene play out like it’s a television show they’re entering halfway through, if they watch at all. One of them mumbles that it’s Blake Berringer.
Blake shambles through the bar’s entry hall, gasping for breath and sweating profusely. He’s wearing a deep, royal blue suit and a black tie, of course. He reaches up and wrenches the tie loose around his neck, then kicks off his ruined Italian leather loafers.
He pulls in a deep, cleansing breath and draws himself tall again, proud in spite of what a mess he is. His hair is everywhere. He smells pungently of man. His muscles pull and tug on that poor silk shirt, threatening its life with every gesture.
“Blake,” comes soaring out of my mouth.
His eyes find mine across the room, and we’re moving toward each other like two magnetized particles. I pick my way between chairs while he shoves through them like this is a brawl, overcoming my delicate progress easily and sweeping me up into his arms.
His scent and his textures all swim over me immediately, immersing me like a forest, a night sky, a waterfall. I love him so much. He smells strongly of sweat and intoxicating botanical cologne. Wisps of his golden hair fall over my face as he embraces me, and I exhale into his hair, then smell his shampoo when I inhale. I can’t identify anything about it except that it’s his. That’s all I need for it to make my body ache.
He bends me backward, and his strong hands run down my back and hold me pressed to him. His fingers travel up and the weight of my wig disappears, the annoying, fake feeling hair sliding down my back and tumbling to the ground. I don’t even notice. I don’t even care right now. I haven’t seen him in weeks. My heart feels like it’s breaking, I’m so full of gratitude for his presence.
“Blake,” I breathe, peering up at him wonderingly. “What are you doing here?”
Blake steadies himself and pulls upright, as if he’s been drinking. It doesn’t even seriously occur to me, though, that Ellie K.K. might have been right about him being inebriated.
“I was just on a date,” Blake says.
“Always a turn-on,” I inform him smilingly.
“Shut up. I was with a girl named Roz, and we were heading toward this jazzy little coffeehouse where poets perform.”
“Trademark Americana,” I quip, unable to stop because I’m nervous.
Blake’s azure eyes crinkle. “Not really,” he tells me with a doting smile, “but it’s all right. A pregnant girl got up there, and I was watching her. I saw how small she was, how precious and vulnerable. And I thought about you.” His palm comes down and smooths over my lower abdomen, giving me butterflies. “With this new life inside you.”
I loosen under his touch, and everything slows down long enough for us to kiss. We luxuriate in it like this isn’t public, my hands sliding up into his thick hair and then down over the beastly muscles of his back. His tongue parts my lips, and then he lets me go, and we break for air, but do not break the embrace.
My whole body tingles. I know he feels it. I’m starting to think he has a psychic awareness of all seven of my erogenous zones.
“I can’t let the cameras control my life anymore,” Blake breathes against my ear.
He pulls away like he’s tormented, which is good, because I wouldn’t have paid attention to a damn word if he’d stayed on my ear like that. His hair is wilder now that my hands have been in it. His eyes are wild, too.
“A man is measured by his decisions,” Blake tells me, pointing.
“I didn’t say he isn’t,” I defend myself softly.
“And I’m a sovereign man. I know that Candace asked us to wait, and I almost made it.” He offers a lopsided grin. “I really almost made it, but I can’t wait one more goddamn day.” His fingers go over my body, from my stomach to my hips and up my back, remembering me. “How long has it been since I’ve been inside you?”
“Twenty-three days,” I answer solemnly.
“That ends tonight,” he promises me. “I need to be a man now more than ever. This is my calling. And I won’t allow my demons to make the decisions anymore. I got so used to handing my life over to other people… but no more. Not anymore.”
He hooks a hand lovingly around my neck and pulls me harder against him. I finger his tie and hunger for him.
“Now it’s just the two of us,” Blake says.
“The three of us,” I interject, beaming up at him.
“The three of us,” Blake corrects, gazing down at my tummy for an instant. He smiles back up at me. “Just the three of us, and no one else.”
“Unless we have more,” I add in a whisper.
“This is the way it should be,” Blake says, wrapping his arms around me and swaying. “Just you and me and our babies.”
He sweeps his arms up into the air, indicating the rest of the bar.
“And all of you fine people.”
“So, what are you saying?” I ask, giggling nervously. My heart feels too full to even comprehend what I think this is. “You’re quitting the show?”
Blake smiles wolfishly. “To be honest, I’m kind of winging it,” he confesses. “But I know that being here right now has nothing to do with that piece-of-shit show. Let’s get that one thing perfectly clear.”
He takes one of his cleansing breaths, pausing, then opens his eyes again.
“I don’t just want you to be my girlfriend,” he says. “I don’t want you to just be the mother of my child, either. Or children.”
He pauses, and we share a slow, knowing smile together.
His eyebrows jump a little. Maybe he’s realizing something. His blue eyes are back on me, and he descends to one knee.
“I want you to be my wife. I’m in love with you, Roxanne.”
My throat closes up instantly. I swallow because I’m about to start crying if I don’t swallow right now.
Someone barges into Fancy’s behind us, but I can’t be bothered to look. My eyes are fastened on Blake, even though everything is really blurry. I can feel the heat in my beet-red face. Thank god this isn’t happening in front of a camera…though, by now, maybe it is.
I wipe at my face, which feels wet and hot. Oh, I’m already crying. That’s why. Fantastic. I thought I was playing it moderately cool.
“You don’t mean that,” I blurt, subconsciously shaking my head, as if the answer is no.
“I do mean that,” Blake promises, coming up onto his feet. “You’re the only woman I want. I look at you, and the rest of the world just…” He spreads his fingers in the air. “Poof.”
I drag a gross breath through my clotted nostrils. “Come on now.”
“I want you like this,” he says, clenching his teeth and rubbing into me, like I’m being sexy right now. “Yeah. I want you with crazy hair all over the place, like it is when you first wake up.” He leans closer and growls against my lips, “The way it is when you come.” He pulls in a shuddering breath and gazes deep into my eyes. “I want you raw,” he explains. “I want you real. Because that’s what I am to you, too. That’s what we are when we’re together. I want to marry you, Roxanne.”
He gets back down on one knee and raises his eyebrows at me hopefully. “I want to fucking marry you. For real. Marry me.”
I laugh and look down at the ground. My teeth sink into my lower lip, and I can’t hide my giddiness. The answer is written all over my face.
I’m so brimming with happiness that I see the cameraman from My Billionaire Bachelor, but I don’t even think anything about it. I don’t even really see him.
I only see Blake.
I cover my hands with my mouth, like I’m still scared, yet I yell the word, “Yes!” I jump up and down. “Okay, yes!”
“Yes?” Blake repeats for confirmation, coming to a full stand and sweeping me into his arms immediately. I’m still trying to jump up and down, but now I hit against his body like it’s a warm, soft mountain. “Yes?!”
I slow to a stop and gaze up at him.
He’s looking back down at me.
“Yes,” I repeat gently. “Yes.”
He takes me in his arms again, and I still haven’t logically thought about that cameraman filming everything. Every little thing, from the marquee out in front of Fancy’s to the specials board with the name emblazoned on the front.
I love my new husband so much. Nothing could possibly stop me now.
The room around us breaks out into a light smattering of honestly half-hearted applause, but someone does offer up a “Woo, Sheila!”
“Mm. Who’s Sheila?” Blake wonders dreamily. I curl into him and inhale him, and my entire body calms, like I’m the baby now.
Chapter 15
Blake
It’s almost impossible for me to pry my lips away from the future Roxanne Berringer. Oh, god, even the name is a huge turn-on. My wife. The mother of my children. A fantasy reel of her in a 1950s housewife dress, then nothing but heels and an apron, lets me know that I can get as thick as a bratwurst for domesticity.
“You have to come home with me,” I murmur against Roxanne’s lips.
Most of the patrons have cleared out by now. It’s sometime near two in the morning, and they’re closing up. There has to be some bed we can tumble into, and I have the perfect idea.
We’ve been avoiding the ugly truth of the scene with the My Billionaire Bachelor crew, the way I bolted on the episode, but there’s nothing we can do about it. They can let her in, or I walk. She’s my bride-to-be. They should have known that something like this might happen when they wanted to sign me up.
“I can’t come back to the set with you,” Roxanne says.
“Then go to the chateau and wait for me. It’ll only be another week. We can even say fuck it and both go. Or France?” I raise my eyebrows at her hopefully. “What do you think?”
Roxanne furrows her brow and breaks eye contact with me. She doesn’t look back. “I can’t just hop on a jet like that,” she says.
“Why? Because of your commitment to The Cabbage Splat Dolls?” I demand.
“Hey,” Rudy reminds us gruffly from behind the bar. “The proposal thing was nice. But keep it down.”
I grumble in agreement and look back at Roxanne. I hadn’t noticed that I was raising my voice, but she’s been holed u
p in the middle of nowhere, wearing wigs, getting called Sheila. What is all this? To me, it looks scared and sad. To me, it looks like no way to live. “Where are you staying right now?”
Roxanne swallows and nods once, then flicks her eyes toward the back of the bar.
“Here?!” I ask.
“It’s not so bad,” she defends herself hotly. “I got away from the constant cameras, and I’ll go back to The Lofts when this all dies down.”
“Go back to The Lofts?” I echo incredulously. “What are you talking about? You just agreed to marry me.”
“But…” Roxanne takes a deep, shuddering breath, and her eyes cloud with sudden tears. Mine bulge in alarm. It is insane to think of the way exposure to Jared’s torture has changed her. She was so strong at the chateau. But when I first met her, and after we returned, she went back into her shell. A fragile, deeply cracked shell. “Come with me,” she whispers.
I follow Roxanne to her tiny bedroom, and she flicks on the lamp crowded up against her mattress. I shut the door and settle down onto her bed like a giant in a dollhouse. My legs can’t fully extend when I sit, but I do what I can with the space. This is fine. “What’s going on, Roxanne? I want you to be my wife. And you said yes. My home is that chateau.”
“I know. It’s just so sudden. You just ask, and I disappear onto a plane, never to be seen again? What about the engagement period?” she wonders hysterically.
I bristle, but then I breathe. I know she’s always quick to fold when something reminds her of her experience with Jared on the outside. I place my hand on her knee and squeeze. I can be patient.
“When Jared and I got married…I’m sorry.” She blinks at me and shakes her head lightly. Her hands cover her eyes. “I shouldn’t.”
“Please,” I say instead. I don’t want it to be like this between us. I want to know her fully, and for her to know me. “Talk to me.”
“Before Jared and I got married,” she begins again, taking her hand down, “he seemed so calm and collected. A lot like you do, Blake. That appealed to me. It was so strong. So stable. But the transition was swift.” She swallows and won’t look at me again. “He changed as soon as we moved in together, right after the wedding. Once I was within his four walls, I was his slave, and the object of this furious, irrational jealousy.” She presses her lips together. “I couldn’t leave the house. He controlled everything. And that was my problem. I couldn’t get back out once I was in.” She shakes her head. She still hasn’t looked back at me. “You wouldn’t understand unless you’d been there.”