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On the day of the finale, they separate us.

We’re taken to what I’ve dubbed the Loser Hotel—the hotel on the edge of town where they’re imprisoning us until the live show next week. By us, I mean whichever two of us don’t end up with Jordy. The winner and Jordy are set to live out their week in a totally different hotel. I assume they’re keeping us as separate as possible so the losers don’t break into Jordy’s room and steal his skin or whatever.

Anyway, it means all Skye and I get is a hurried “goodbye and good luck” before we’re taken into separate rooms to be dressed and made up one last time.

I’m feeling pumped and ready as I sit in one of the rooms getting hair and makeup done. I put it down to the fact that this morning’s song was “Eye of the Tiger.” It’s not possible to hear “Eye of the Tiger” and not end up buzzing. That’s just science.

Once my hair and makeup are finally done, the styling team helps me step into my dress, which is, I’m pretty sure, actually a wedding dress. It’s a floor-length, mermaid-cut dress with beading down the whole bodice and chains of pearls draping over my shoulders and upper arms.

Seriously, am I getting married today? Is that the plot twist?

“You look gorgeous,” Saskia, who’s moving between our rooms to check on our progress, says, before kneeling down to pick at a loose thread. “Now, we ’ave you in a pair of beautiful heels, but they are alittletaller than you are used to. You will be fine, just walk slowly,sa?”

“Uh…nie,” I say when I see the monstrosities. The heels on these things are about three feet tall. “Can I try on a… safer pair?”

“No, you will be fine, walk slow,” Saskia says again, patting me on the arm before leaving.

They leave me in the room alone for about half an hour with a magazine once I’m finally ready. They’re staggering each of our final scenes with Jordy, so there’s no way to tell whether we’re about to win or lose.

The magazine’s about six months old, unfortunately, so there’s no mention of the show or how we’re all doing. Jordy’s mentioned once, in a celebrity gossip section. It’s a photo of him with an unfamiliar blond girl, walking down a street in Loreux at night. I wonder if this is the girl he mentioned. The one who actually managed to break his heart.

“Maya,” Isaac says, hovering in the doorway. “You ready?”

Oh, I’m ready.

Whatever happens now. I’m ready for it.

THIRTYSkye

They leave me in my hotel room dressed in a glittery, figure-hugging black gown for what feels like an eternity and a half before they finally collect me and bring me to a sun-dappled glade to wait for Jordy. While I wait, I think of Maya.

I used to think that the biology of all of this made it matter less. As though I could keep it just physical with Maya, because that’s all it was, and I could simply decide to keep my emotions out of it. But whatever it is that links me to her… chemicals, or hormones, or pheromones. The thing is, those pheromones chose her. My body chose her to be my home. It recognizes her as mine.

As for my emotions? My independent, don’t-need-anyonefeelings? I think they’re woven into those chemicals. Inseparable. She feels like my safe place. She feels like finding a missing part of my soul that was floating around in space until it finally burst into my orbit, and I latched on to it. I latched on to her.

And that’s scary. It’s so terrifying it makes my fingertips burn and my neck prickle, and I feel like running, but I don’tknow where to, because I don’t know what from. The thing that’s scaring me lives inside of me.

I’m scared, because I think I’ve let Maya in, and I never meant to. But now she’s here. And she can hurt me from the inside in a way that no amount of hardening my shell can prevent.

And the scariest part of all is, maybe I don’t even want to prevent it. Maybe I want her in here. Because with her taking up space in my heart, I feel more hopeful that love could exist than I’ve felt in a long, long time.

Finally, Jordy’s car pulls up, and he steps out, dressed in a gray-blue suit. He spends a frustratingly long time speaking with Grayson on camera near the car before he finally,finallymakes his way over to me. With this scenery, and the still warmth of the day, it would be a romantic, idyllic moment. Were it not for the cameras, and the boom mics, and the crowd, that is.

And the suitor.

Jordy meets my eyes and relaxes into that familiar, intimate smile, and for a moment I think I must have won. I return his smile, and the wind catches my hair as I mentally rehearse the devastating rejection speech Maya and I prepared over rosé and Pepsi earlier this week.

“Skye,” he says. “From the first day we met, I knew you were going to be the girl that changed my life. You taught me what love could be—and leaving you behind that day we moved to England was one of the worst days of my life.”

Then something changes in his manner, and as I understand what it means I’m hit with an unexpected jolt of relief—both that I don’t need to do anything too confrontational on camera now, and that this might mean Maya gets the moment she’s been dreaming of.

But then that very thought sends an aftershock of trepidation in relief’s wake, because if it’s not me, then it’s fifty-fifty.

I want Maya to win this. She wants it so, so badly.

Jordy takes my hands in his, and for a moment it feels as though we’re standing at a wedding altar. The sort of image that, two years ago, might have made my heart give the tiniest flutter. Now, it merely arouses my gag reflex.

“As true as that was for me when I was seventeen, though… Neither of us are the same people as we were then. You’ve grown into a special, beautiful, intelligent woman. A woman that any man—well, any person—would be lucky to have. But that person is not me.”