Page 44 of Fan Favorite

He knew he should drop it. Let her get off the elevator and then ride back down to his room and check his email.

Except that’s not what he wanted to do anymore.

It was like on that plane to Scotland—all at once this dream of domestic life came back to him and he could picture them together, not in his Malibu condo, but maybe somewhere in the hills, or Topanga Canyon—they could get one of those Selling Sunset agents to find them a place, she’d love that, and he’d make BBQ chicken and corn on the cob and they’d eat on the deck, butter running down their chins.

And maybe they’d have a couple of kids—he could already tell she’d be an amazing mom from the way she listened so deeply to everything the other girls said to her, and by how much their feelings mattered to her—and it was this vision of their life together that ruined everything about his current workaholic bachelor situation, not to mention made every single LA girl seem completely wrong for him.

Now, when he fell asleep next to his glowing laptop, with that stupid little snow globe of the Chicago skyline she’d given him when they met sitting on his hotel nightstand, he felt sad because all he wanted to do was fall asleep next to her.

“Trust me, I wish I could,” he said, a little manic. “It would make everything easier if I could drop it. ’Cause, you know, I’m just over here dismantling everything I’ve built over the past ten years because of you.”

Edie stared at the doors, unimpressed. “What are you even talking about, Peter?”

“Edie, Jesus Christ, don’t you get it? I’m crazy about you!

When we’re not together, all I do is think about you.

I watch footage of you, which, as I’m saying this out loud, I realize sounds completely creepy.

But sometimes I’m watching you and you seem so into Bennett that it makes me fucking crazy and I can’t figure out how you actually feel because whatever it is between us feels so real, but then, there you are, making out with Bennett, which is just like—” He was pacing around the tiny space now, his hands on either side of his head, mimicking an explosion.

“And you deserve so much better. You’re so smart and funny and kind and I like you so much and every time I’m with you, I just want to be with you more, so yeah, I leave!

Because this is insane! It’s a really bad idea!

But you know that video with Janet Jackson in that bone vest, ‘like a moth to the flame, burned by the fire?’ That’s the situation here. ”

The words tumbled out of him with no planning or discretion, just a ramble of adoration he wished he’d crafted and rehearsed into the sort of epic romcom declaration that Edie deserved.

But it wasn’t his fault! He wasn’t some practiced Prince Charming.

He was just some guy. But wasn’t there also something great about that?

Maybe he didn’t have to be anything other than just some guy who was learning what real love was now that it was right in front of him. He stopped pacing and looked at her.

“Edie,” he said, not sure how far he was willing to go until the words were out of his mouth. “I’m falling in love with you.”

Slowly, she turned to face him. Her eyes were wide.

“What did you just say?”

“I said I’m falling in love with you . And I don’t know if you’re into me or Bennett but”—Peter threw his hands in the air—“I hope it’s me, Edie. I don’t even care if it makes me a dick. It cannot be him.”

They stared at each other.

What the hell was he doing? He was telling a contestant that he was in some sort of love with her?

He hadn’t said the word love to anyone since Julie, and he had intended never to say it to anyone again.

And Edie was in the final four, for chrissakes!

But it suddenly occurred to Peter that he didn’t care.

Right this second, he didn’t care about his career or the show or what anyone would think.

All he cared about was her. And telling her he was in some kind of love with her couldn’t be worse than not telling her.

Well, actually, it could. But the bottom line was that he didn’t care.

He kept waiting for his heartburn to surge, but it didn’t.

And, strangely, even though that speech had been totally out of character, inside he felt calm, like all the moments of his life had led him here, to this moment.

Edie put both hands over her face and inhaled slowly. When she dropped them, her pretty gray eyes were wet, and her face had lost that hardness. She looked like how she looked on the plane, like she was wide open to him.

Slowly he reached his hand toward her.

“Edie,” he said softly, tracing his finger down the side of her arm. “Please.”

And, just like that, she was in his arms. When he kissed her, there was no caution or apprehension or any of the tentativeness that comes with a first kiss, just an explosion of everything he’d ever wanted, and then pretended he didn’t want, and then was starting to accept that he wanted more than anything in the world.

He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her, Edie, who kissed him back with the kind of passion he couldn’t remember ever experiencing in his life, her lips on his, his hand up the back of her shirt, her nails cutting exquisitely into the back of his neck—

The elevator ground to a halt. Someone cleared their throat. Peter and Edie pulled apart. In the doorway was a silver-haired couple, the woman clutching her pocketbook to her chest in alarm. “Get a room,” the man said, guiding his wife onto the elevator.

“Thank you,” Peter said. He reached out and straightened Edie’s shirt. “Negotiations are ongoing.”

Edie stifled a laugh and stepped off the elevator. Peter watched her go, not sure if he should follow.

The doors started closing.

Was that it?

Could that be it?

Finally, Edie looked over her shoulder.

“You coming?” she challenged.

A lifetime of cross-country had Peter out of that elevator like he was Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible .

He grabbed her hand, and they sprinted down the hall like a couple of fugitives.

Until he realized he had no idea where he was going, and she laughed and pulled him the other way.

When they reached her door, he pulled her to him again, sliding his hand to the nape of her neck before kissing her slowly, more deliberately than he had before, luxuriating in every second of it.

“God, Peter, who knew you could kiss like this?” she said, a little breathless.

He tried to come up with something witty but just blushed and got shy.

Edie took her keycard out of her pocket and dipped it into the electronic lock. It flashed red. She tried again. Red. One more time. Red.

“Shit.” She turned to him. “Is this a sign? You sure we should do this?”

“Not at all.” He paused. “All I know is I’ve never wanted anyone the way I want you right now.”

And then that too-big smile that made him believe in all the fucking fairy tales broke across her face. He took the keycard and with one swipe unlocked the door.

Peter was doing his best to savor every second of this experience—Edie pressed against the wall, gasping into his ear as he bit her neck—but he was also losing himself entirely as he followed her lead.

Edie sliding her hands into his back pockets and pressing his cock directly into her crotch.

Edie winding her fingers into the waistband of his jeans. Edie pulling his shirt over his head.

“All this time you’ve been keeping a six-pack under wraps,” she teased, throwing his shirt on the floor and placing her fingertips on his stomach. “Not bad, Peter, not bad.”

“Fortunately for you,” he said, moving her from the wall to the bed, “I’m not the kind of guy who needs relentless adoration of his sick muscles.”

“Well, I am that kind of guy,” she said with a grin. “So get to it.”

Peter laughed. She lifted her arms, inviting him to take her shirt off, and quickly he obliged.

He kissed her again and didn’t waste any time unhooking her bra and throwing it into the void.

He moved his hands and his mouth to her breasts, which he’d thought about in the shower just this morning, and which were even more fantastic in real life.

“You’re beautiful,” he murmured.

“You say that to all the girls,” she joked.

“Don’t do that,” Peter said, pulling back and looking at her intently. “Just you.”

For a second, emotion flickered across her face, and she looked like she might cry, and he felt unsure, like he’d said the wrong thing, but then she pulled him to her again, her hands strong and insistent, and they pushed up the bed, her fingers at the waistband of his jeans as he unbuttoned hers.

He pulled her pants down past her hips and then inelegantly used his foot to try to get them the rest of the way off.

When they got stuck at her ankles, he grumbled against her lips, “What the hell?”

“My skinniest jeans,” she said with a laugh.

Peter pushed himself to the end of the bed and removed one leg, then the other, and tossed her pants to the floor.

He kissed both her knees before lying down next to her again, running his hand over every square inch of her ass and thighs until her hips were moving every time he got close.

He peeled off her underwear and she threw her leg over his hip, opening herself to him, and when he finally touched her, moving his fingers up and down, pausing at her clit, then up and down again, she gasped and bit his neck, hard.

He slid his fingers inside of her and she was warm and wet, and his cock was hard against his jeans.

He stroked her and kissed her and stroked her more, Edie Pepper, this woman who was upending everything he thought he knew about love.

“I’m going to come if you keep doing that,” she whispered.

“I want you to,” he said, pressing his face into the hollow of her neck and breathing her in.

And then he was moving his hand against her faster and she was moving in a rhythm against him and saying his name and moaning. He took her nipple in his mouth and right as he bit it, he felt her come against him.

“Peter,” she gasped finally, breathing hard.

They laid there for a moment, staring at each other, and he thought about how disconcerting it was to have all his emotions right up at the surface like this.

How he felt so warm toward her and wanted to make her come like this all the time.

He brushed her hair off her face and a filament of a thought about the show and what in the hell was he going to do about the show floated through his mind, but then she was tugging his pants off and then her mouth was around his cock and he had no more thoughts about anything other than the sensation, like he was flying, until she asked if he had any condoms.

“Right,” he said, pushing up from the bed. He found his pants and then his wallet, where he retrieved a condom, and when he returned, Edie was under the covers waiting for him, her hair loose around her shoulders, a mischievous grin on her face.

“What?” he said.

“Nothing.”

“Tell me.”

“I’m just trying to remember what you said in the elevator,” she said, twirling a lock of her hair like some winsome coquette. “What was it again?”

“About Janet Jackson?” he asked. “I remember the name of the song, by the way. ‘That’s the Way Love Goes.’”

“I know the name of the song, Peter. It’s peak MTV. I’m talking about the other part.”

“Hmm,” he said, sliding in next to her. “About when I watched footage of you? Standard protocol. The EP watches all the rough cuts.”

She kicked him in the shin. “The other part!”

“Oh,” he said, kissing her collarbone, nibbling her neck. “When I said I was falling in love with you?”

She pulled all her hair in front of her face and nodded. “Say it again,” she said, wrinkling her nose.

“Edie Pepper,” he said. “I’m falling in love with you.”

And then they were kissing, and he was putting the condom on and she was on top of him and he was inside of her and they were moving together and it was nothing like the random hook-ups Peter had had over the past few years.

It was like he’d completely forgotten sex could be like this, because surely at some point, he’d known.

She felt so good riding him that he said, “If you keep doing that, I’m going to come,” and she said, “I want you to,” and then they were moving together faster until he came and she did, too, a few seconds later.

After a moment, he sat up and wrapped his arms around her, burying his face in her chest, breathing hard.

She wound her fingers through his hair and held him to her.

He listened to her heart beating while she held him, and he felt his breath slow as he relaxed into her softness.

She hadn’t said it, but Peter felt certain she was falling in love with him, too.

Because it was clear to him that what they had between them was, well, everything .

Then all at once, the everythingness of the everything took his breath away.

“You okay?” she asked, smoothing his hair back and kissing his forehead. “Do you need a guided meditation to calm down?”

And then they were both laughing and Peter was hiding his face from her and doing his best to ignore the pounding in his chest because, holy fuck, what had he done?

And what the hell was he going to do now?