Total pages in book: 118
Estimated words: 112961 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 565(@200wpm)___ 452(@250wpm)___ 377(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112961 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 565(@200wpm)___ 452(@250wpm)___ 377(@300wpm)
With a quiet groan, Connor tilts his head, deepening the contact into a decadent slide, sending a hungry hand down my body, cupping the curve of my ass, and pulling me tightly against him. The other threads fingers into my hair until he’s holding the back of my head and pouring everything he has into the kiss. It is the perfect balance of soft and hard, wet with teasing licks and sucks. He catches my bottom lip between his teeth, drags slowly away, and I chase the contact, but he stops me, pressing his thumb over my lips.
He stares at his finger, conflicted, before sliding it away for a final, lingering kiss.
“Connor.”
“You’re right,” he says.
“About what?”
But applause breaks out in a blast of sound behind me. We are back from commercial and that’s my light cue illuminating overhead.
Connor turns me bodily, gently pushing me forward, and in a daze, I walk onstage—hair mussed, lipstick gone—to find out who I’m meant to spend the rest of my life with.
fifty FIZZY
The roar of the audience feels like a hive of bees inside my head. I glance out, trying to gauge how many people are here, but the stage lights are blinding. I can’t see anything.
What just happened?
Did Connor just kiss me goodbye?
The set has been restructured, with a love seat inserted beside Lanelle’s chair, and the two sofas with all the Heroes put off to the side, one next to what I presume is my love seat, and the other behind, on a riser so they sit in two rows of four. I presume whoever wins the audience vote will come sit beside me, but the moment I sit down alone on the two-seater, I feel weirdly exposed and self-conscious.
My lips still tingle from the fever of Connor’s mouth.
I have a couple of minutes to get myself together as the video montage of my life plays; in the darkness, a SWAT team of hair and makeup artists rushes in to fix the damage. On-screen, I’m shown writing (LOL), jogging (there’s a lone cackle from the front row; I’ll discuss that with you later, Jessica Marie Peña), and body surfing in Pacific Beach (welp, that’s quite a wedgie). God, in hindsight, why didn’t I say no to any of these ideas! An accurate portrayal of my life would be me double-dipping tortilla chips into a giant bowl of guacamole with Crash Landing on You playing on the television for the seventieth time and my laptop gathering dust in the corner. But I guess that doesn’t scream Heroine material.
When the video ends, we cover what we already know: that I previously dated Evan and hated his tattoo; that Arjun and I had no chemistry; that Tex and Jude rubbed me the wrong way; that Dax and I looked like we wanted to eat each other but didn’t actually have that much in common; and that I had great chemistry with Nick, Isaac, and Evan.
We all banter, we all bicker playfully. We break for commercial, and while everyone is joking and chatting, I feel my pulse start to climb. We’re almost there. Almost there. Odds are good I’m going to puke on live television.
I want to be done with this, but also never want it to end. I don’t know how to maintain a relationship with Connor after the show is over, or even whether I should. It’s weird to be thirty-seven but only now learning how to do this: confess my feelings, go after who and what I want in my romantic life, manage rejection. I never expected to be the kind of person to have a hard time letting go.
The lights rise, signaling we’re back. My palms are sweaty and I resist the urge to wipe them on my dress because I’m sure it would be very obvious that I’m freaking the hell out right now. We’re going to find out the audience vote. We’re going to find out our scores. We’re going to find out the name of my soulmate.
But then Lanelle surprises me.
“Well, the eight of you weren’t the only Heroes with ardent fans,” she says. “There was also the surprise fan favorite; isn’t that right, Fizzy?”
The crowd goes insane.
I blink, caught off guard, but manage to recover. “I assume you’re talking about the hot producer, Connor Prince III?”
Lanelle laughs. “That’s exactly who I mean. Before we get to the big reveals, let’s spend a little time with the mastermind behind this show. Connor, come on out.”
If I thought the audience was loud before, it’s nothing compared to the greeting he gets. The reaction to the Heroes was cheering; this is cheering mixed with pockets of outright screaming, the kind of high-pitched hysteria I last heard at the Wonderland concert.
Connor steps onstage with a shy smile, all six foot five of him managing to look humble, and I am a real idiot because only now do I realize the other spot on this love seat is for him.