Walk of Shame (41 page)

"All right, guys. You two
know the drill," Troy said as we stood inside the entrance to the suite,
with the cameras catching their last glimpses of us for the day. "The
kitchenette is stocked, and you have full use of the suite granted to you. Movies,
internet, the whole gamut, but don't fall into the trap of wasting this time,
use it wisely. Once the crew and I leave, no one gets in or comes out for
twenty-four hours, unless it's because one of you has decided that a marriage
between the two of you won't work. In which case, the gentleman will go
directly to the airport to go home, no exceptions."

Liam and I nodded our
understanding.

Troy turned to me and spoke in an
aside that he seemed confident in thinking production would edit out. "Are
you okay with this, are you ready?"

I took a deep breath and blocked
the cameras out for a moment, focusing on Troy. "Yes."

"Okay. We'll be in the suite
next door. He steps out of line, I'm one text or scream away. We'll get him out
and you'll never have to deal with him again. That stands for all three of them
this week."

I laughed at him. "I think
I'm safe."

"You never know." He
turned back to address us both. "All right, you two, you have from noon
today, until noon tomorrow. Enjoy your time." With that, he held the door
open for the crew to leave and he exited out.

Liam moved forward to lock the
door. "Thank God," he whispered.

My soft laughter made a smile
fall across his features.

"Come here," he
whispered and reached out to pull me to him.

I stepped into his arms and met
his kiss. Quick kisses, no tongue, followed by a long hug, and he let me go.
The air around us had changed. We weren't trying to hide from the cameras or
even steal time away from the others. We were free to be with each other in any
way we chose, and it seemed the very air around us was somehow lighter, cleaner
than before.

"Lunch?" he asked.

I smiled at the ease of the
moment. "Yes."

We talked as he made grilled ham
and cheese sandwiches for us. He told me stories from his adventures on the
mountains he loved so much. The mountain lion he had to thank for the scars
across his back wasn't the only animal who'd wandered into the path of his
travels. He'd had to kill a bear, chase away goats, was nearly charged right
off a ledge by a boar, and had a run-in with a moose who broke his leg.

There were other stories about
other animals and some of the, shall we say 'interesting', people he's run into
over the years.

He was doing his best to open up
to the dangers of his way of life, but he countered it all with showing me
pictures from the view he had from his windows at each assignment. He had a
habit of taking at least one from each camping location. He also talked about
the good run-ins, like the wolf that kept snooping around and he started
feeding. The deer that was stuck in a ravine that he helped rescue. The child
he'd found who'd wandered away from his parents three days before and had
gotten lost.

The list went on as the afternoon
grew later. He even poked fun at himself when he told me of the time that he'd
thought he'd discovered a cave in the Blue Ridge Mountains. But it turned out
that he'd just found a back entrance to a cave was actually pretty well known.
That became evident to him when he saw a light coming from the far top of the
cave wall, which turned out to be an opening into another cave room, and heard
a group of people walking through on a tour. He almost landed in jail because
he was unauthorized to be that far into the structure.

He also told me how when, in the
winter, the weather gets too nasty to camp too high, he mainly camps down in
the regular RV hookup spots. And sometimes the location he's working in gets
too remote to get the rig up there, and he parks it somewhere, boondocked, and
he tent camps by his work spot for a few days and comes down to get cleaned up
before going back up. When that happened, if I chose him, we'd just park it in
a full hookup slot for me.

So, I wouldn't always be up in
the middle of the mountains with no hookups and limited internet and phone
services that were dependant on a satellite. And suddenly I was feeling so much
better about the living situation with him.

"So, those times when you
have to tent camp, I can spread out. I can pull out the couch and set up shop
in the living room. I can go nutty and write all night and sleep all day."

"Until we have a
child," he qualified. "Unfortunately, he'll have to stay with you.
It'll be too dangerous, and I too distracted, to safeguard him."

"True, but you only want one
child, so that shouldn't be horrible. There's naptime, toys, and videos. And
she'll
get a kick out of Mommy rearranging things for a while."

He laughed. "So you're
really okay with the mountains all the time? You're welcome to pick spots to
set up camp wherever in between my fieldwork requirements, but I can't promise
any of it will be a month at a time. And some of it we'll use to visit
family."

"I think there will be
plenty of time sequestered near a mountain top for me to write whatever my
little heart desires. The more we talk about it, the more comfortable I become
with the whole thing."

"Really?" he asked with
a sparkle in his eyes.

"Yes, really."

"I thought all the animal
stories might scare you off."

"I come with a dog who'll
let me know if anything comes near. I can fire a gun, and I've shot a bear now,
too."

"You don't worry about being
cooped up without adventures?"

"You have to take days off
every so often, right?"

"Yeah."

"Well then, we'll make it
work. Or maybe we go campout in a hookup spot for a day or two, before or after
we go up the mountain. It'd be a good way to bookend the stay."

We ate dinner out on the private balcony.
Teriyaki chicken we'd marinated, with rice, veggies, and wine. Time between us
was always so easily spent. I'd gotten to the point with him that I could just
be myself. It had been a wonderful day with him, and judging from the warm look
he was giving me, I'd say he felt the same.

"You ready for
dessert?" he asked from across the table, after the dishes had been washed
and we'd returned to the balcony to watch the sky grow dark, his accent
slightly thickened by the second bottle of wine we'd been drinking.

"Mm, yes," I answered
as I removed my feet from the table's crossbar. I stood, and instead of going
inside like he'd expected, I took up residence on his lap.

His arms automatically circled
around me, to cuddle me against him. His chest rumbled with his soft chuckle
and I leaned back against his massive chest. We fell quiet again as we listened
to the nighttime sounds around us. "There's a hot tub in that big bathroom
inside," he whispered in my ear.

I smiled and turned to him.
"What is it with you and hot tubs?" I whispered back.

"It's our thing."

I thought about that for a
moment, "Yeah, I guess it is."

He smiled. "Are we
going?"

My grin broadened before I stood
and headed for the bathroom. I started the water and had a moment's awkward
hesitation on what he expected the dress code to be for this little activity.
But he came in, stripped down to his boxers, and climbed in as though he were
wearing swim trunks.

This much, I'd done with him
before. I stripped down to my underwear and got in beside him.

He inspected the nearby, small,
hotel toiletry bottles and opened one, pouring it in. Bubbles started
spreading, and there was something so simplistic about it that the awkwardness
melted away and back up against that red-hair covered chest I went. His muscled
arms wrapped around me, and his rock climbing hands gently massaged my back. He
pulled me closer against himself once again.

Our tongues twined as his hands
took a moment to undo the clasp of my bra. He removed the cloth, hiked me up higher
against him, and gently took a nipple into his mouth.

I moaned and threaded my fingers
through his hair, trying to massage his scalp, encouraging him along.

I pulled away. He let go, but
surprise showed in his eyes and he opened his mouth to say something. I smiled
and sank into the water before moving in to kiss his chest, swiping my tongue
over one of his nipples, my hands grasping and kneading into his shoulders
before bringing my mouth to his neck and trailing my fingers down the angles
and planes of his six-pack.

His chest rumbled with his sound
of pleasure before he clasped my hips and reclaimed my mouth with his. Hands
roamed, lips explored, and I was so revved up I was about to crawl out of my
skin.

He hadn't made a move for my
panties or his boxers, and I couldn't tell if he was the one having doubts, or
if he was giving me time to make up my mind. I reached down to caress him and
found proof that he was as eager as I was to move things to the next step. I
reached inside the front panel of the boxers, he growled, and I gave him three
long strokes before pulling my hand out and moving to shimmy out of my wet
panties.

His hands landed on mine to stop
me. My eyes met his and he touched a kiss to my nose. "Are you sure?"
he asked.

I nodded,
smiling. "Yes."

"There's actually something
to be said about auditioning them in the bedroom before choosing one,"
Chloe said after thirty seconds of stunned silence when I'd told her that Liam
and I had had sex five times throughout the night and into the morning.
"Now you won't have any doubts as to whether or not you two are compatible
in every way."

"I feel slutty."

"Did he make you feel
slutty?"

"No, my conscience is doing
that."

"Then it's all good."

"Thank God there's
twenty-four hours in between each lockdown. I couldn't face either Jared or
Mike right now."

"That's probably why they
designed it this way."

I sighed. "I can't sleep
with all three of them."

"Okay, so which one are you
going deny?"

"I don't know."

"Deny them both. You've
certainly taken the edge off now. Right?"

"Yeah, I suppose."

"Honey, if five times in
twelve hours doesn't take the edge off, you better choose two of them. Because
no one man could ever keep up."

I laughed.
"One man is plenty enough to contend with, thank you."

A lake-facing suite was chosen
for my second twenty-four hour lockdown. Troy went over the same rules as two
days before, for Jared's benefit, then he said his goodbyes and the camera crew
disappeared.

Jared reached out and locked the
door before shaking his head.

"What?" I asked.

"I just never thought we
were going to make it here. It's been a long eight weeks."

I smiled. "It seems like
forever ago when I first filled out that application."

"I can't wait until we can
leave the cameras behind for good and get on to the next part, after
this."

I bit my bottom lip.

He slid my lip from between my
teeth and rubbed his thumb across it. "I can't wait until you're mine, and
we can go home."

I curled my top lip down and bit
on it.

"What's the matter?"

"Nothing, it's just hard to
believe that there's an ending coming up to this. My life will never go back to
being the same again."

"Isn't that what you
wanted?"

"It is, yes. But wishing for
it and actually getting it are two different things. Once I get it, I wonder
what I'll wish for next."

He smiled. "There's always
something more to wish for, isn't there?"

I grinned. "Always."

"Lunch?"

"Sure."

I think they designed the
time-frame to be from noon to noon to include up to four meals if you ate one
late and one early lunch, just so the couple had something to focus and work on
together. There was something about the physical distraction of working on a
meal that made it easier to get over any awkwardness.

I tried to figure out why I was
feeling so awkward with Jared. Usually I was so comfortable around him that I
almost forgot the cameras were following behind, because he always put me at
such ease.

At first, I thought it was
because he made it blatant that he knew he was going to win this, that I was
going to chose him. But he was only going off of my telling him that I wanted
it to be him. Then I figured that it was caused by the fact that I had a huge
problem with choosing him that we hadn't talked about. And then, from the way
he was glancing at me as we worked to steam the crab legs, I realized he wasn't
feeling any awkwardness. It was all coming from me.

I decided to put it aside and
just enjoy this time I had with him.  I cracked open a beer from the fridge,
took a long swallow, relaxed my shoulders back, and let it go.

The sun was shining, the meal was
perfection, and Jared was looking about as relaxed as a man could be through
the meal. I asked him to share stories with me about his work and the
encounters he'd had. And the whole time he described stories about getting bit
by an alligator and why it was a good thing he always carried an anti-venom kit
with him on the job, all I could think about was trying to figure out why these
animal attack stories bothered me more than Liam's had.

It took me awhile, hell, it had
taken me eight weeks, but I finally figured out the answer by the time we'd
stretched out in the hammock that was strung out on the balcony. Animals in the
swamp bubbled up out of the water two feet away from you without warning.
Snakes climbed trees and dropped down on you from above. The swamp surrounded
you and blinded you to its depths. Danger came from all around. And that's what
freaked me out. And I couldn't see any way to make it ever seem like a
pleasurable thing.

Jared had begun nibbling on my
earlobe drawing my full focus back into the present. I felt a tingle travel
down the back of my neck, my whole body melting against his. If there was one
thing he and I had had from the start, it was a physical attraction so intense
that it was a little scary.

His hands brushed the hair away
from my neck so his mouth to relocate there. My back was to his front and his
hands began to move from my stomach upward. I could only imagine that if he
thought he was going to be the one I ended up with, he was expecting us to have
sex now that the opportunity and, let's face it, the expectation was finally
upon us.

I froze. "I can't do this,
Jared," I whispered. "I want to, I really want to, but I can't."

His breath caught and his hands
paused in their fondling. "Are you sure?" he whispered, trying not to
let frustration tinge his tone.

"I can't."

He drug his palms over me as he
slowly withdrew them from my breasts.

I cleared my throat before
shifting to turn and face him.

"What's wrong? You've been
holding something back all afternoon, what is it?"

I looked down, not wanting to say
it, because once I did there was no going back.

"You wanna wait until after
the show? I can deal with it, if you do," he said.

I sighed. "No, I don't want
to wait."

He put a hand on my hip and gave
it a squeeze. "We can't talk about it unless you tell me what it is."

I bit my lip again and forced
myself to look him in the eye. "I love you," I whispered.

He smiled and moved a hand to
brush over my cheek. "I love you, too."

"I'm in love with you."

Something softened in his
features. "Listen, you've got me. Why are you looking like you're about to
cry? I swear, you can choose me, I'll drop down on a knee and propose. I am in
this for you. You are what I've been looking for."

That was it. Tears flowed,
dripping from my face onto his shirt.

"Em, tell me what's
wrong."

I shook my head, trying to find
my voice. "I imagine marrying you. And I imagine myself being happy... for
awhile."

He stiffened and his voice went
quiet and low, "And then what do you imagine happening?"

Tears were free flowing now.
"I can't marry the swamp. I'm sorry. I wanted to like the scenery. I
wanted to not care about the humidity and bugs. I can make my peace with all
the mud, but not with the things lurking underneath. I am so sorry," I
said, tripping over words and trying not to become a complete slobbering mess.

"Oh, my God. Why the hell am
I even still here, then? I told you about the swamp from the beginning! You
said you wanted to be with me at the end of this! What the hell is going
on?"

"I do want it to be you! I
kept you with me because of that. I wanted to go home with you. I wanted to
give the swamp a chance."

"You gave it one
afternoon."

"Don't act like I haven't
thought about this every day for the last eight weeks.  I've done my
research."

"They're not all humid. Not
all swamps fit the typical profile."

"The one you spend the most
time at does."

He grunted and shifted me around
so he could get up. "Why didn't you just dump both me and Phillip last
week?"

"Because I was still trying
to convince myself that I could live in the swamp and be happy about it."

"I told you we could take an
extra day or two when moving the rigs. I told you we could spend the winters
wherever you want."

"Except if those extras days
fall on a weekend, when the animal sanctuary is the busiest. And the winters,
except for the mild ones where your job asks you to do a wintertime study
somewhere because the weather is holding out. Yes, that leaves me with only
harsh winters, when half the country is cut off from that kind of traveling and
exploring, then I'll finally have the chance to dictate where we go."

"It wouldn't be quite that
bad."

"No, but it wouldn't be
quite as good as you were painting the picture to be."

"You're really going to
throw away love over this?"

"Wouldn't you, if I demanded
that we only live in the swamp during one season and maybe a day or two, here
and there?"

"I can't leave the swamp for
that long and you know it."

"Yes, I do know it. That's
why I never asked you to do it. But just as much as you can't leave the swamp,
I can't live in it."

"You could write from
anywhere, if you really wanted to badly enough."

"Okay, you could switch
specialties and be an ecologist for field and streams, if you really wanted to
badly enough."

He sighed so hard his whole body
slumped on the exhale. "All this time we've been looking for love. We
finally find it, and you want to throw it away."

"Because it won't stay happy
for us. We're going to end up resenting the other over this. You for keeping me
in the swamp, and me for bitching about it."

"You're in love with me, but
you're going to pick one of them."

"I believe they could both
make me happier than being in the swamp can."

"They're not me."

Tears gathered in my eyes.
"I know."

"Em, please don't do
this."

"I don't know what else to
do! We can't change who we are, and the other two are willing to accept me for
who I am. I'm scared that I'd have to change too much about myself in order to
be with you."

"Do you love them?"

"Yes."

"Are you in love with either
of them?"

I sighed and wiped away more
tears. "I need you out of the way so I can figure that out."

"I can't believe this is
happening," he muttered as he stomped inside and started throwing stuff in
his bag.

God, I hated to see this end
badly, but I had expected it. "You can still stay the night," I
whispered.

He snorted. "For what?"
He shoved his phone charger in the bag. "So we can watch pay-per-view
movies all night? So we can have a one-night stand? What do you want from
me?"

"I can't have what I want
from you."

"You should never have told
me that you wanted it to be me. You should never have kept me around," he
said and flopped down on the bed.

"You're right," I
whispered. "I should have sent you out to the cars the minute I heard the
word swamp. At the very least, I should have insisted we travel to a swamp and
spend some time there early on. Because that's what kept me going, the thought that
maybe if I just looked at it through your eyes, I could like it enough to deal
with it."

"...I can't offer you any
more of a compromise," he said, seeming to begin to accept what I'd been
saying as fact.

"I know."

"I love what I do."

"I know, and I don't want to
even think about pulling you away from that."

He let out a heavy sigh, stood,
and pulled me up into his arms. "I'm not staying tonight. Because if I
stay, we'll have sex. And if we do that, Mike and Liam will track me down and
beat the shit out of me for it when I knew I was going to have to leave anyway.
So..." He leaned down and kissed me to the point of all but taking my
breath away. "I'm going to go."

He kissed me again before he let
me go, grabbed his bag, and walked out the door.

The production crewmember keeping
watch outside immediately hit buttons on his phone and started directing Jared
down to the awaiting car. I knew that by the time he hit the lobby, cameras
would be on him.

Two minutes, that's how long it
took Troy to knock on the door. I, feeling stunned and alone in the wake of the
conversation, let him inside.

"Do you need a hug, or are
you good?" Troy asked.

A laugh bubbled up out of me.
"I think I'm all right for now."

"Good. Was this all about
the swamp?"

I nodded.

"It's better that you
addressed this now and not after you picked him, moved down there, and put
yourself through that for the next few months. Then you two would have broken
up and all the work you did here would have been for nothing."

"I know," I said with a
deep sigh. "That's what I kept telling myself."

"And him leaving now, and
you accepting his being gone, gives you more time to focus on the two left, so
you can make an intelligent decision."

I nodded with closed eyes.

"Okay. You have two choices
for tonight. You can stay in here and remain in the no camera or interview zone
and I'll leave, or you can do an exit interview and return to your rig for the
night."

"I think I'm just going to
hole up in here with my thoughts and the rest of whatever beer is left in the
fridge."

"I've got a bottle of vodka
in my fridge. I can go and fetch it for you."

"Even
better."