Royal Chase

I flashed back to our first night on the show. He had told me then that he planned on paying me back. Had this been it?

My brain whirled with furious thoughts, not able to concentrate or make sense of anything.

“Lemon, I’m Rafe.”

He stood in my doorway. Like I hadn’t heard a million stories about all the times they’d switched places to fool people. Did he really think I was dumb enough to fall for it? It wasn’t me, it was my evil twin? Not likely.

“Where are your glasses, Rafe?”

“I’m wearing contacts. Look! I can prove it to you.” I kept packing while he fished around in his eye.

He let out a groan of frustration. “I dropped it.”

Of course. I let out a laugh of disbelief. “I’m not going to stay here and listen to any more lies from a cheater.”

Taylor came running into the room, shoving past Dante. “You can’t leave,” she said with big eyes. “The finale is in three days. You heard Matthew, you have to stay. You know what he’ll do.”

Not even that gave me pause. I would go into another line of work before I’d spend another minute in this house. I didn’t care about the contract, the job opportunities, or the ruination of my career. None of it mattered. Nothing mattered.

Let him do his worst. “Tell him to stick it where the sun don’t shine.”

“Lemon, you don’t know . . .”

Dante interrupted her. “Make her stay here. I’ll be right back.” He turned to me. “I will prove it to you.” He ran off down the hallway. What was he going to do, go and get changed into his suit to keep up the façade? They had tricked so many people over the years, and I wasn’t about to be added to that list.

I was so, so done. I started for the door, but Taylor grabbed my suitcase out of my hand. “You need to calm down and . . .”

“Shut up!” I told her through clenched teeth. My hand balled up into a fist, and I only just stopped myself from punching her. “I don’t have to do anything but get out of this house.”

Screw the clothes and shoes. She could keep them. I had my purse, and that was all I needed to get home.

I ran out into the hall and down the stairs. A cameraman got right up in my face, and I shoved the lens away. The car Dante had reserved for me was still sitting in the driveway, and the driver was texting on his phone.

I came around to his window and knocked. He rolled it down. “I will give you five hundred dollars if you drive me to the airport right now.”

“Done!” he said. I got into the back, and just as he pulled out, I heard the muffled sound of Dante calling my name.

I didn’t look back. I got played like a grand piano, and it would never happen again.

Ever.

I found the first flight out, which was headed to Salt Lake City. It was scheduled to depart about twenty minutes after I arrived, and from there I would get a flight back to Atlanta. I just had to leave Los Angeles. I couldn’t be sitting in the airport waiting for a plane when he showed up with a camera crew to tell me more lies. Because the TSA would probably arrest me after I killed him.

The plane was somewhere over the Dakotas when my anger finally subsided. Then there was just an overwhelming sadness and a pain so acute that it hurt to breathe or to move. My heart physically ached. Like, really, seriously ached. I shivered and started to cry, curled up in a ball in my seat. I had the row to myself, and I turned sideways to pull my legs up to my chest, wrapping my arms around them.

I cried the whole way back to Georgia. When we landed, I had a taxi take me to a nearby hotel. I didn’t want to wake my parents up. I would explain everything to them in the morning. I looked through my purse for my cell phone and realized it was another thing I had left in California, along with my dignity and my heart.

The crying didn’t stop, no matter how often I told myself that it was dumb to be crying over a man who obviously cared so little for me. It was hours before I finally fell asleep.

My constant crying had apparently exhausted me, and when I finally woke up, the sun was setting. I had been asleep for hours, and the hotel charged me for an extra day since I’d missed checkout. They called a cab to take me home.