Burning Rivalry (Trevor's Harem #2) (13 page)

“Did you do anything yesterday, when Kat and Kylie and I went with Trevor?”
 

“Hung out. Fucked.”
 

“Do you think it means anything? The date?”
 

“I know that Ivy wouldn’t shut up about you. Why he chose
you
, of all people. So at least Ivy thinks it means something, like you’re a favorite.”
 

“But I’m not doing anything.” I’m not, either. I haven’t so much as had my tits out in public, and around here that makes me an insufferable prude.
 

“Who knows? Are you changing your mind or something?”
 

“About Trevor?”
 

“Sure. Trevor.”
 

“I don’t want to be Trevor’s wife, Jess. No worries.”
 

“Good. Because I need you to have my back.”
 

“Through the first elimination, anyway. Then you two will have to have each other’s backs.”
 

Jessica runs a slow finger down Erin’s back, giving the thought a double meaning.

“What was that all about in there, anyway?” I ask, nodding toward the deserted theater room. “Why is it all bullshit? I mean, a guy in a gorilla suit? Are we just supposed to accept that there was one?”
 

“There was,” Jessica says.
 

“No, there wasn’t.”
 

“Sure there was. He walks in just as that tall guy with the big nose almost trips. Remember that pass? He takes eight steps, faces the camera, and then stands there like Frank the Rabbit.”
 

“Frank the Rabbit?”
 

“From that movie
Donnie Darko.”
 

“I don’t know Frank the Rabbit,” I say.
 

“When number fifteen passes to number twenty-one, the ball goes right by him. Then Frank walks off just as the girl in the second row spills her drink on her feet.”
 

“You’re full of shit.”
 

“Go back in there, if you don’t believe me,” she says. “I’ll bet the DVD or whatever is still in the machine.”
 

But what’s the point? I’m tired of playing. Tired of being screwed with. The feeling of being constantly pre-guessed is like a constant cloud over this place. Every single thing I do, I keep waiting for some dickhead to jump out and yell, “A-ha! I
knew
you were going to do that!”
 

There’s movement below, and I look down to see that the girls are holding hands. Erin gives me that blue stare of hers and says, “You sure you don’t want to come with?”
 

Is it terrible that I’d kind of like to, just to watch? But it’s not like that’s something I’ll admit. Besides, I have a date. Not with a person, but rather a task.
 

I tell them no, but that they should have fun, and tingle a bit at the thought as they walk away.

Who the hell am I these days? And what have I become?

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

We had a few minutes, Daniel and I. Before we heard those voices coming up the path to the cliff’s top, we lay on our backs, completely naked, my arm draped across his broad chest, my fingers idly outlining the crevice between his collarbone and prominent shoulder muscles. He’s built enough and lean enough that I could count the individual muscle fibers. I ran my fingers across them like the wheels of a car riding over a washboard shoulder.
 

“It’s my fault you’re here,” he said.
 

I turned my head. We’d been quietly staring looking up at the cerulean sky. Hearing him speak — just
speak
like he did, without his usual intensity, was disarming.
 

“I made a mistake, and I’m sorry.”
 

“What are you sorry for? I’m a big girl. I can take care of myself.”
 

“I know you can. But … it’s complicated. But by the time I changed my mind … ”
 

“Changed your mind and decided you didn’t want me here?”

“That’s just it. There’s no way to say.”
 

I came up on one elbow. He turned to face me, those soulful eyes meeting mine.
 

“There’s no way to say whether you wanted me here or not?”
 

“It’s complicated,” he repeated.
 

“I could go, if you want.”
 

“You need the money. For your mother.”
 

“She’s handled. Someone handled her situation for me.” Then, without knowing what I was doing, I kissed him, softly. Not like what we shared before.
 

“Then you need the money for you.”
 

“I don’t
need
it.”
 

“You
want
it, then. For your studio.”
 

“How do you know so much about me?”
 

“It’s my job.”
 

“You said I was a wild card. That I wasn’t supposed to be here, like the others.”
 

“Then I guess I know because I’m obsessed. Because I’ve always wanted to have you. And if I couldn’t have you, I’d do the next best thing.”
 

“Stalking?”
 

“Maybe a little.” And he smiled.
 

“You act like we’re old friends.”
 

“No, Bridget. Definitely not old friends.” He turned his head against the ground, looking up again. “I don’t want you participating. It won’t count against you, in terms of elimination, I promise. You’ll be tempted. I know you will. But I didn’t like it when you put your hand on Trevor’s leg. And I barely contained myself when he put his hand on yours.”
 

“It was nothing.”
 

“Maybe. But maybe not. I don’t mean to be patronizing, Bridget, but you don’t know what you’ve gotten yourself into. You can’t.”
 

“Then tell me.”
 

“I
can’t.”
 

I thought of Trevor, the billionaire. Daniel obviously has money, seeing as he just sent my sister thousands of dollars without a thought. But that money comes from Trevor and Trevor’s company … and who knows what kind of blacklist sabotage a company like Eros might keep under wraps for people like Daniel when they say too much.
 

This time, Daniel came up on his elbow, looking at me earnestly, making me melt all over again.
 

“It’s all just games. That’s what you need to understand. It isn’t real.”
 

“What do you mean, ‘It isn’t real’? I don’t even know what to do with that.”
 

“Just keep telling yourself that everything here is a game. Don’t take anything at face value.”
 

“So mysterious.”
 

“I’m sorry. I can’t say more.”
 

I nodded. “Okay.”

“Everything is designed to provoke a response. But that means you can’t just accept it as meaning what it normally would. Like Trevor.”
 

“What about Trevor?”
 

“I think he likes you.”
 

“It’s nice to be liked.”
 

“I’m serious, Bridget. Don’t let him get close.”
 

“I think I can resist, even if he gives me his best moves.” I smiled, but Daniel was straight faced.
 

“Everyone thinks they have free will, but in the end, we don’t choose things the way we like to think. Not really.”
 

That struck me as unnecessarily glib, so I laughed it off. “I chose you,” I told him.
 

But Daniel just said, “Did you?”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

There are a few video confessional rooms along the gallery hallway. Every day, ideally twice or more, contestants are supposed to visit one and record that day’s thoughts. I’ve reviewed some of them myself — Kylie and Jessica for sure, given how they’ve lined up with Bridget — and had assistants review the rest. I get a voyeuristic thrill from Jessica’s confessions because she has a little bisexual crush on Bridget and sometimes talks about her in terms I appreciate. Kylie’s confessions, I watch mostly for analysis. But it’s armchair analysis, and all the biometrics are dumping into the database along with everything else we’ve collected. Everything that, as an undifferentiated mass of data, might make sense when it meets what Caspian White will be bringing. But it’s not like he’s coming to help. His GameStorming (and now LiveLyfe) dataset makes ours look microscopic. Alexa, as she’s started some bigger thinking, has been drooling over the possibilities for months.
 

Jessica is along for a ride. Exactly the kind of girl this Trevor, if this were what we’re pretending, would want. She’s a good time, neither overly fazed by our freak show nor indifferent. She’s a good friend to Bridget, and I like that, too. And I like that I like it. Once upon a time, I was sure I’d enjoy Kylie’s opinions more.
 

Now, I watch Kylie’s confessions with an unwanted chip on my shoulder. All she says about Bridget — things I anticipated agreeing with before this began, pumping my fist and silently telling Kylie to
Go, girl
in the good fight against her rival, now make me angry. I intended to hate our wild card. I figured she’d be ground through the gears of this machine whether she took it at face value or sensed the underlying purpose. It barely made a difference. It only mattered that she was humiliated, coerced, bent until she broke. But now, those are all things I fear.
 

The same pressures I was so sure would weigh on Bridget, I’m
still
sure will weigh on her.
 

She’s barely been humiliated, coerced, or bent toward breaking. But it can still happen.
 

If Trevor has his eye on her, then I’ve got a problem. Because I can’t intervene the way I want to without showing my true thoughts and intentions, or argue for the exclusion of someone I fought so hard to include back when I hated her guts.
 

Things would be so much easier if I could still loathe her.
 

I’ve watched Bridget’s video confessions, alongside the others. But they’re unsatisfying. I watch them like a needy fool, hoping to hear my name. Hoping she’ll fall under the spell and truly confess. I want to hear the other side of what we’re doing. When I take her, I want to hear her tell the camera how she felt being taken. When I touch her, I want to hear her tell the nonjudgmental lens how it all felt. I watch her confessions on the edge of my seat, waiting to hear of some transgression or another that I missed because I’m not constantly manning the cameras. I sit with clenched fists, waiting to hear that she’s surrendered to what everyone else — everyone but me — wants them all to succumb to.
 

Dear diary: Today, Trevor kissed me.
 

Dear diary: Today, I touched Trevor’s cock, just to see how it felt. I laughed when I did it, but it felt good, too, and later I masturbated thinking of having it inside me.
 

Dear diary: Today I gave in. I had Trevor behind me, his dick in my ass because I just had to have it, even though I’ve never done that before. Tony in front of me, coming on my tongue in great hot spurts.
 

Every video I watch, I’m irrationally sure I’ll hear her confess to something in the spirit of the contest. Something that, thanks to the experiment’s design, she wasn’t asked to do … and yet felt compelled to do anyway.

I watch her videos, from her room. She goes to great lengths not to expose herself to the cameras. It’s probably not that she’s shy. It’s because she wants to fuck with us, and not let us see what we shouldn’t.
 

Up on the cliff yesterday, Bridget came so hard and so fast, it’s clear she’s been pent up. Holding it in like a champion abstainer. There are no blind spots in Bridget’s room, and I somehow doubt she’s heading into the kitchen or onto the lawn to spread her legs and rub herself. So she’s simply waiting it out.

I watch her confessionals, simultaneously dreading some horrid admission as much as I’m eagerly anticipating the exact same thing. I’m my own test subject, torturing myself by waiting for Bridget to tell the camera she fucked this person, wants this other person. But she never does. Instead, I hear the most mundane things — all she’ll admit to the camera. Nothing about me; nothing about what she suspects. So mostly I hear about her friends and enemies.
 

She’s convinced Kylie is angry at her anew, and of course she is.
 

From Kylie’s confessions, I know that Kylie thinks the rock climbing date was deliberately chosen to favor Bridget and punish her. Which, again, is totally true.
 

Like how Bridget thinks someone broke into her room.