Page 39 of Love at Full Tilt

Starshatter Hotel, Fableland

Orlando, FL

Tess Rhodes @RhodieGirl

A week used to feel like an eternity. Now it doesn’t feel long enough.

“Are you still looking at those?”

Mason pulls the truck into the drop-off lane at the hotel and cuts his eyes to me as he puts the vehicle in park.

“Yep.” I swipe my thumb across another picture of his bookcases and admire the next one that pops up. It’s the long view. You can see Toast’s stubby legs in the corner of the frame.

“For someone who hates her job, you get pretty worked up about furniture.”

I place my phone back in the armrest of the passenger seat and face him. “I don’t hate my job.”

I must be frowning harder than I realize, because his brow furrows.

“If I had chosen it for myself, I might like it.” Like everything else with my family, my feelings about the store are complicated. “But not forever.”

Mason nods. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

“You have nothing to be sorry for.”

“I always say the wrong thing.” He scratches the back of hisneck.

I grab his bicep and give it a gentle squeeze. A forlorn expression spreads over his face, and my insides ache at the fact that I’m the one who caused it.

“You didn’t say anything wrong,” I insist. “I’m sure I sound like I hate my job. But it’s more that I hate that I never got to decide on my own. College or no college, furniture or something else, my parents carved out those paths for me.”

Mason avoids looking at my face as he traces the steering wheel with his index finger.

The absence of his gaze is like pulling off a stack of blankets in the middle of a winter’s night: empty, cold, unbearable.

I want to take his chin in my hand and draw his face to mine, but I don’t.

“Have you thought any more about your princess story?” he asks.

I turn fully toward him. “Um, absolutely. Like, what if she finds a fallen angel on one of her hunts? And she has to protecthim.”

“And they fall in love?” he asks.

I roll my eyes playfully. “Obviously.”

“Fable Industry hasn’t done anything with angels before.”

I beam. “I know. It could be another edge to help sell the story. A kick-ass, plus-size princess who saves an angel.”

A car behind us honks, forcing Mason to loop around. This time, he parks as far back in the lane as possible so people are less likely to queue up behind us.

“Have you tried to talk to your parents about it?”

I shake my head hard. His face and the trees outside the truck twist and blur with the force of my movement. “I can’t. They built that store for me. It would kill them if I rejected their plans. They’ve sacrificed so much.”

“But if you’ve never asked them, how do you know—”

I hold up my hand to quiet him. “I don’t need to ask.

They have been working toward this for me since I was born.

As far as they’re concerned, this is my future.

” My stomach sours, and I pick at a thread on the hem of my tank top.

That trapped feeling sinks over me, the doors of the truck inching closer, the roof lowering with every breath.

“What if you win?” Mason asks.

That’s the part I don’t like to think about.

“Then I’ll have to tell them. I’ll have the money to do it myself if they don’t support me.

” I scrub at my forehead with the heel of my hand.

“I know it doesn’t really make sense, but without the prize money, there’s no point in breaking their hearts. Not yet, at least.”

He cups my chin with one hand and brushes a few strands of hair from my eyes with the other. “It makes perfect sense.” He kisses me softly. “Just promise me one thing. Even if you don’t win, don’t give up on this.”

This time I lean forward to kiss him. My phone tumbles to the floor as I stretch across the console to press my lips to his. “Only if you promise the same.”

Nodding, he eases the truck back in front of the hotel. We kiss one more time, long and slow.

I look back to him as I open the passenger door. “But one of us is definitely winning.”

“Hey, Mrs.B.”

“Hi, Mr.Baker.”

I step out of the bathroom to hear Tess and Issy answering their phones at the same time.

My heart freezes in my chest. It’s almost nine o’clock. I missed a check-in again.

I’m swearing under my breath as I hustle toward Issy. I press her phone to my ear before it’s even fully in my hand. “I was waiting for my phone to charge and I needed a shower. I was about to call you, I swear.”

“Your mother was beside herself,” my dad says. “She said this happened earlier too.”

“Dad. We only have two days left here, we’re just trying to make the most of them. I’ve been checking in”—I have to stop myself from saying more than enough —“a ton.”

He sighs. “I know, Amelia. I’m doing my best to make this work for all of us.”

I wish that didn’t mean leaving me still strangled by my mom’s anxiety. “Could we maybe stop with the scheduled check-ins if I promise I’ll call more? I think it’s too much for her to be watching the clock. If I’m a second late, she spirals.”

Even though I can’t see him, I know he’s nodding. “Call a lot,” he says.

“Deal.”

He gives the phone to my mom, and for the next few minutes, I answer every one of her questions about where my friends and I were and what we did.

I try my best to only tell the truth, but I have to make up stuff about dinner and the last few hours, since I was with Mason.

“Yep. We went back to Phoenix’s Landing after dinner because Tess seems to enjoy torturing us with rides that flip upside down postmeals. ”

“I’m helping you develop an iron stomach!” Tess yells from her bed.

By the time I’ve finished talking to my mom, she seems calmer. I hand Issy her phone as I flop back onto the bed.

“Sorry that they’re dragging you two into it now,” I mumble.

“It’s no big deal,” Issy says, “but why didn’t they call youfirst?”

Tess thumps my head lightly with her socked foot. “Did you not learn your lesson from the last time you silenced your phone?”

“It’s not sil— Shit.” I jerk up into a sitting position. I don’t remember bringing my phone with me back to the room. Jumping up, I rush to the bathroom and check the pockets of my shorts.

I tear through my luggage next, tossing clothes everywhere.

“When do you last remember having it?” Tess asks. She’s following me around, picking up the clothes and folding them on the bed.

“In the truck when Mason dropped me off.” I claw my hands through my hair. “I have no way of letting him know I might have left it there.” I stare from Issy to Tess in horror. “How am I going to solve the next clue if I can’t get it back?”

“He’ll have to come back tomorrow to get his own clues. You can make sure to grab it then.” Issy speaks softly and slowly like I’m liable to combust at a loud noise.

I shake my head. “It’s not his truck, it’s his dad’s.

” Closing my eyes, I try to remember what Mason had said about his dad leaving to gamble.

Was it just for today? Would Mason still have the truck tomorrow?

But my mind’s too full of our kissing and everything he shared about his life to recall those tiny details.

“I could lose. There are fifty contestants left, and half of us will be cut tomorrow. I won’t have any time to plan or figure things out ahead of time.

And I was ranked too low for the special hints. This could be it.”

My stomach lurches, and for a second, I’m afraid I’m going to be sick.

Confiding in Mason about my princess story, seeing the look on his face as he listened, made that dream feel closer.

Almost within my grasp. But now it might as well be floating into space.

Headed toward one of those stars that’s millions of light-years away.

“Hey.” Tess stops balling up my orphaned socks to lay a hand on my arm. “I’ll text Carter. He’ll text Mason. Mason will get your phone.”

She pulls out her phone and types, then returns to picking up my mess.

Issy pats the bed beside her. “How was it with Mason? Did you guys talk?”

I tip my head back to stare at the ceiling. “Yes. But not about anything we needed to talk about.”

“So you still don’t know what you’ll do when you get to the end of the contest?” she asks.

I shake my head.

“Or what happens after you leave?”

I shake my head harder.

Tess has four of my shirts draped over her arms. “Okay, but what about you?”

“What do you mean?”

“What do you want?” She sets my shirts down one by one in my suitcase and lowers the top, then comes to sit across from me. “If you could decide what happens, what would that be?”

“I’d win.” Tess nods. “I’d move here. And Mason and I would be together.”

It’s the first time that I’ve really thought about us this way. As something that could be concrete. Real. Not some nebulous after.

I hate how much I want it as soon as I make it a possibility.

“What if you don’t win?” she asks softly.

My arms fold over my chest. “That’s not—”

She holds up her hands in surrender. “I know. I know. You’re the queen of Fableland. You’re obviously going to win. But humor me. What if you don’t win?”

I grab a nearby pillow and scream into it. Then I mumble, “I still want to be with Mason.”

The bed undulates beneath me as Issy claps with excitement.

Lowering the pillow from my face, I clutch it to my chest. “I’m starting to think I need to tell my parents about all of this. Mason, wanting to work here, everything.”

“Hallelujah.” Tess throws her hands in the air like she’s at church. “Finally.”

I kick her shins (somewhat) gently.

Issy knocks her shoulder into mine. “They’ll understand.”

I hope she’s right. But I’m worried that my mom will fall apart. That she won’t be able to get past her anxiety enough to see what all this means to me.

That thought still hasn’t left my head an hour later when Carter texts Tess back.

“All set on your phone,” she announces. “Mason will meet you at the gate with it in the morning.

“And the first clue is This culinary delight is a winter’s treat wrapped in a buttery blanket. ”