Page 27 of Reality With You (Arden Beach #1)

Lennon had never been the jealous type. She had plenty of experience watching women hit on Dylan when they were together.

After all, he was a professional athlete.

It came with the territory. But she’d been secure in their relationship.

Even when he started partying with his teammates, Lennon only questioned his loyalty once, and he assured her he hadn’t stepped out on her.

Plenty of people had openly expressed how stupid she was for believing that.

To this day, she didn’t believe he’d cheated on her. Whether he had wanted to, though, was another matter.

Seeing Kelsey with Dylan had triggered feelings she hadn’t before contended with. She wrestled with a strange sense of possessiveness, even though he wasn’t hers. She had no claim on him. No right to be jealous.

What she did have was the right to feel protective of him. Even Kelsey supposedly believed in protecting friends. She blamed Lennon for trying to exploit this vulnerable time in his life for her own benefit, but what if Kelsey was the one doing that?

“He won’t fall for it,” Erin said, interrupting Lennon’s dark spiral. She slowed to a walk on the treadmill to begin her cooldown. “He doesn’t go for girls like her.”

“What, beautiful blondes who stroke his ego? That’s every man’s type.” Lennon turned to the other side of the aisle and tossed a bag of potato chips into the cart, then grabbed a box of microwave popcorn further down.

“Trust me, he’s not interested in dating anyone new right now.” Erin glanced at her phone. “Do you eat anything that isn’t processed?”

Erin’s confidence in Dylan’s dating life brought a wave of relief and disappointment. Lennon didn’t want to think too deeply about why she felt the latter.

“People’s souls,” Lennon answered Erin’s question absentmindedly. She grabbed a box of Cracker Jacks—the classic ballpark snack—and shook it in front of the camera with a sly grin. “Remember these?”

Erin smiled, nostalgia dancing in her eyes. “Of course.” As Lennon tossed them in her cart and then reached for a container of peanuts, Erin tapped some buttons on the treadmill to slow to a stop. “Did you tell him what happened?” she asked as she dismounted. “At the beach.”

“No, not yet.” Lennon thought it better to give him space. While they’d agreed to be friends and do this show together, she didn’t want to overstep and interrupt his entire life with her return.

And Lennon’s own feelings were getting confusing. She needed to maintain some boundaries for the sake of her sanity.

“You should tell him, so he knows what’s going on,” Erin suggested, patting the sweat from her face with a small pink towel.

“I can talk to him tomorrow before we meet up with you for dinner.”

“I can’t wait to see you guys. Especially you. I mean, I miss Dylan, too, but I miss you more.” She lowered her voice as she crossed the empty gym. “Don’t tell him I said that.”

“I think he already knows, but I won’t confirm it.

” Lennon smiled at the phone. “And I’m looking forward to it, too.

Arden Beach isn’t the same without you.” The promise of seeing Erin got her through the week, even if it meant going to dinner at Rhett’s house with her and Dylan.

They hadn’t all been in the same room together since before the divorce.

Something that had once been a normal, weekly affair now had Lennon’s stomach in a knot every time she thought about it.

Navigating the new dynamic with Dylan was complicated enough. How would it feel to have dinner with his family when she was no longer part of it?

“I wish I could stay more than a couple of days,” Erin said. “I’m so tired of being on the road.”

“I mean, you’ve been traveling with the team your entire life. I’d be surprised if you weren’t starting to get a little burned out on it.” Lennon grabbed butter and eggs, completing her shopping.

“At least I don’t have to do it in the off-season.” Erin popped the straw on her stainless steel water bottle, drawing a few sips from it.

“That’s what I keep telling myself about the show. I just have to make it until September.”

“Try to spend as little time as possible with Kelsey for the rest of it.”

“That’s going to be a bit difficult, given the whole show is pretty much centered around Avery’s wedding and Kelsey’s, you know, the maid of honor.”

“You have to remember that she’s baiting you, like you said. She wants you to react,” Erin said as Lennon made her way to the front of the store. “She knows the cameras are there, and she’s playing to them. So, don’t walk into her traps. Try not to engage at all.”

Lennon snorted. “You make it sound so easy. Have you met me? It’s the downside to my passionate, highly expressive natu—” She drew up short at the entrance to a closed checkout lane. “What the fuck,” Lennon loosed under her breath.

“What? What is it?”

Lennon pulled into the lane and snatched Star Pulse , a popular tabloid, from the shelf above the conveyor belt. She stared at it for a few seconds, her gut churning, before flipping her phone’s camera around to show Erin.

Splashed across the glossy cover was a grainy photo of Dylan and Kelsey at the beach clean-up. The bold, bright yellow headline read: DYLAN STRICKLAND’S NEW LOVE?

“Oh, God,” Erin groaned. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Lennon set the magazine on her bag, then flipped through it with one hand while she kept the camera trained on it for Erin. She found the page with more photos of them and a short article accompanying it.

“They’re just standing near each other talking,” Erin pointed out.

And laughing. And smiling. Apparently, that’s all that was needed to sell a supposed romance.

“What does the article say?” Erin leaned closer to the phone, scrunching her eyebrows. “It’s too small and blurry on the camera.”

Lennon read it aloud:

Fallen baseball star Dylan Strickland looks to be falling for someone new.

The Arden Beach Tidebreakers star was spotted with a mystery blonde while volunteering on the beach.

Though they were joined by a group, including recently retired football star Chadwick Mormont and his wife-to-be Avery Mora, Dylan and the blonde bombshell kept close to each other and were even spotted leaving the beach together.

Dylan was suspended from the Tidebreakers back in February following an injury from a boating accident while under the influence.

Could a new romance be helping his road to recovery?

Lennon stared at the page, her head spinning. Dread crawled through her body.

“Articles like that are a dime a dozen. He’s been linked with so many random women over the years that he barely even spoke to,” Erin assured her. “They’re just trying to sell magazines.”

“They didn’t even mention I was there,” Lennon observed. “He walked off the beach with her but left the park with me.”

“Who knows why they choose to print what they do? Maybe they didn’t get good enough photos of you two together, or they didn’t fit the narrative they wanted to push.”

Maybe the article would fly under the radar and be old news by next week’s issue. But her alarm bells were ringing. It felt like the first sign of an oncoming storm.

Forces were at work that she was not privy to—that much was clear. It was the same thing she sensed around Kelsey. Lennon didn’t like the feeling of being a pinball kicked around in a machine by other players.

If this was the story the press were going for, what did that mean for the show? Could she end up being squeezed out of that, too if she didn’t give them what they wanted?

“I need to start playing the game,” Lennon said, the realization solidifying.

Erin raised a curious—and somewhat concerned—eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

Lennon flipped the camera back around so Erin could see her face. “I’ve been treating this show like a regular job, but it’s not. It’s a game. All of this is.” She looked at the article open in front of her. “I’ve been playing defense while Kelsey’s playing offense. I need to turn the tables.”

Erin’s gaze sharpened, the wheels turning. “What’s your plan?”

“I don’t know yet.” Lennon shut the magazine. “But I’m sure as hell done being the pawn in theirs.”