Chapter 16: Leith

"You two! Side yard. Now."

He knows.

If the sun hadn't already coaxed the lines of sweat down Leith's back, Carter's impatient demands would have done the job in a heartbeat. His body made up for the denied reaction by sending Leith's heart into overdrive and reducing his lung capacity by about eighty percent.

Willow pinched the inside of his thigh before standing from the lounger, making him yelp. Her face was a picture of calm Leith wasn't sure he could ever manage. And she knew it.

"Relax your face," she hissed. "You look like you just sucked twelve lemons."

She held out her hand for him and waited for his grip to pull him to his feet.

"Carter wants us," he breathed.

And as he said it, he reached a terrifying conclusion: Leith was destined to have this exact reaction for five weeks. Because, surely, every attempt to get his attention, every request for conversation, every sideways glance from the production team—they would all be warning signs flashing behind his eyelids. Just a repeat of they know they know they know they know they know.

"I heard," Willow smirked, oh-so-casually brushing her palms off on her thighs and making the flesh shake.

"And you're calm about it."

"‘Course." Why was this so easy for her? Before he could ask, she continued and her tone was subtly clipped. "We haven't done anything wrong."

"Of course," he echoed.

They'd have to maintain that, with the cameras and the microphones. This lie that they were just two people on the path to falling in love. Without those surveillance devices on them at all times, there would have been no need for what they did in the shower last night.

God, Leith had never thought the first time he'd ever stepped into a shower with a woman would be to discuss how they'd scam America. He'd never imagined having that discussion at all.

Maybe if it were still just him, he wouldn't be so anxious about it. He'd still have nerves around the idea of getting caught but it would only be him going down. He'd accept the slap on the wrist and his tarnished reputation and hope it would lose his family business so he could just start the hell over.

Now, though, Willow was involved. Now, if he fucked it up and got caught, she was going down, too. She wouldn't get the money and she'd be backed into a corner again, forced to use her body to help her niece. And Leith wouldn't be able to do shit to help her because it wasn't like he had an abundance of his own funds.

It would be different if she wanted to cam. If she liked the rush of attention and sexuality—maybe she did, to some extent. But Leith had noticed the clench of her jaw when she'd told him why she'd done it. The frustration building over the hopelessness of it. He knew if someone questioned her, she'd defend her right to sex work and he would, too. But he also knew that sex work came with sacrifices. How was he supposed to go about his time normally, knowing that one misstep could send her back to feeling like her body wasn't her own?

He wouldn't take a cent of that money, if they pulled this off. Who gave a shit about his stupid family business? At least no one would die if he didn't win. He'd just be miserable. Leith had a lot of practice being miserable.

And it looked like they were on their way to practice some more.

Willow slipped her hand through his and twined their fingers together. When he glanced at their connection, she smiled and sent his heart racing for a different reason entirely.

"You two shitting me right now?"

Yes.

"Are we not supposed to hold hands?" Willow asked. Her calculated uncertainty awed Leith, a little bit.

"Hold hands all you want," Carter said. "Hold hands, make out, jump each other's bones. I don't give a fuck. But do it for the cameras, won't you? No more shower activities."

Leith's eyebrow shot up but Willow was the one who responded. "You want us to get it on out in the open?"

"Preferably."

"I don't know if I'm comfortable being on camera like that."

Carter blinked at her and the three of them sat in the unspoken commentary. Leith bristled. Fuck that. Just because she'd done it on camera before—had she done it on camera before?—didn't mean she was obligated to whip out a device every time she got horny.

Carter scrubbed a hand down his face. "Look, all I'm saying is that this is what you two signed up for. You agreed to be mic'd and on camera twenty-four-seven for five weeks. That was the deal. I'd just like everyone to live up to it."

While, abstractly, Leith agreed—yes, they'd signed up for this—Carter's attitude made him want to be difficult. "So if showers are off-limits, how are you expecting us to get clean?"

"Showers aren't off-limits," Carter bit out.

"Sounds like they are."

"Shower when you need to shower. But use it for getting clean and getting clean only."

"You'd think it would be a favor to you guys, us showering together," Leith pretended to muse. "That way, you don't have to break up the content of either of us sitting alone while waiting for the other to finish."

Carter heaved an impressive sigh and Leith thought he might've been inclined to stomp his foot, if he weren't nailing the whole broody dude thing. "I dunno what the hell you two are getting at but I just want to remind you of the footage we do have. Neither of you got in that shower with the intent to shower, based on what I saw. You hid in there and you talked. You barely even touched each other." Man, Leith wished someone would turn on the A/C out here. "Now, I don't give a shit what you were doing. I don't know if you were talking strategy on how to break up the other couples or plotting stupid pranks. Like I said, I don't give a fuck. I just need you provide the fucking content you said you would, ‘kay?"

"So we aren't in trouble?" Leith clarified.

Carter pinched his nose. "Do I look like your fucking father? No, you aren't in trouble."

"You just want to give us more screen time," Willow chimed in cheerfully.

"Are you—you know what? Sure, if that's what you got out of that conversation. Yes. I want to give you two more screen time."

Willow shrugged. "Well, why didn't you just say so?"

"Yeah," Leith agreed, wholly amused at how they'd decided to play this. "Could have saved us a bunch of time."

Carter stared and raised a finger, like he might use it to spew profanity at them. "I h—" he sighed. "You're going to make me go gray."

Willow pouted. "Sorry, dad."

"Don't fucking call me that."

"Daddy?" she tried.

"Don't fucking call him that," Leith blurted.

"Papa?"

Carter spun away from them, waving a dismissive hand towards the backyard. "Can you just go be on camera somewhere?"

Willow settled her hand back into Leith's and started pulling him back to civilization. "Yes, Papa." When they were far enough away, she took a chance to speak aloud. "You know, if he pulled us aside like that, he probably does want to give us more screen time. Which probably means the audience does like us."

"Thank god we're doing something right."

"We should really try to do everything right."

Leith thought, perhaps, she meant to sound a bit cheeky. Really, all he could hear in her assessment was vulnerability. The fear that they weren't doing enough. But if their encounter had shown Leith anything, it was how well the two of them seemed to work together. How they went to bat for one another. Took the heat and redirected it.

He might panic every time someone called his name over the next few weeks but if he had to choose someone to panic with, Willow seemed like a pretty good bet.

Definitely the best one here.

"For what it's worth," Leith informed her, "I like us, too."

It didn't truly occur to either of them until three days later that going to the end meant staying together. Which meant completing challenges together. Which meant getting to know each other.

Sure, they'd spent their days next to each other so far. They'd talked and flirted and laughed but they hadn't really delved into anything of substance. What if the next challenge they faced was some sort of newlywed-esque situation? The only things Leith could confidently conjure about her that the public wouldn't know was her niece's stenosis and the color of her nipples.

Leith tried really hard not to think about her nipples. Her tits in general, actually. But he was, at his core, a weak, weak man.

Regardless, he was determined to use the rest of this week to get to know her.

When he found her, after breakfast and after half the manor decided to put a showy effort into working out, she was spread out next to the pool. Her mass of hair was fanned out above her, looking molten in the sun. Her eyes were shut gracefully behind her translucent glasses, her lips relaxed. Despite her positioning, Leith could still see the tense set of her body.

Willow was poised to strike, if she needed to.

Well, Leith was, too.

He stepped into the pool at the shallow end, not wanting to earn her ire with a splash before they got the chance to chat. She didn't react when he swam up next to her, resting his dripping arms on the ledge next to her.

Leith'd had the best intentions. They would talk again but this time they would say something. To the world, it would look like they were making an effort to get to know one another. To each other, they'd be strategizing. But then he was looking at her and all he wanted to do was suck the tension from her spine and let her know that he would do everything in his power to get her what she wanted.

He was looking at her and had the striking, misconceived notion that he could fix it all for her, if she'd just give him a chance. And he couldn't help it if he thought one of the ways he might fix it was with his mouth.

Before he could give himself the opportunity to question it, Leith was hefting himself higher out of the pool and pressing his lips to the skin right above her bikini bottoms. It was a soft kiss, like her skin. Nothing sucking or desperate or lewd about it. Just…a kiss.

When he dropped himself back down into the pool, she was watching him with one eye, her glasses held above her face to give her a better look.

"Did you just kiss my hip?"

He gave himself only a second to consider. "Yes," he said. "Yes, I did."

Willow's lips snuck up at the corners. "Why?"

"Guess I just wanted to."

"Are we at the kissing stage already?" she asked.

"Well, we've sailed through the showering together stage so I guess that just depends on where you place kissing on the scale."

She settled her sunglasses back onto her face. "Well, obviously after the showering stage."

"Obviously," he agreed.

"So, did you just come over here to give my hip a little peck or did you have other body parts you intended to explore?"

He'd explore her anytime she asked him to but when he answered, he settled on, "Just your brain."

"You want to kiss my brain?"

"No, just…explore it."

Willow flipped her body so she was facing him now, resting her head on her hand and her elbow on the concrete. He could feel her eyes on him but, from this angle, it wasn't as clear what was going on behind her glasses.

"You're so fucking corny, Leith."

The bluntness made him laugh. "Yeah."

She liked that he didn't deny it, he thought.

"Explore away, I guess."

Leith scooted so that his face was across from hers, rather than her hips. The hand that wasn't supporting her head pressed into the ground in front of him so he collected her fingers, playing absently with them as they talked. There wasn't anything absent about the look he gave her before he launched in, though. That was a look that begged please just trust me.

"Tell me more about your family."

And Leith loved that she understood the look. Because she told him about her family. About her sister and the business and about her niece and her diagnosis, leaving out this time the financial aspect. And then he wanted to know about her. Leith discovered that Willow loved office management. She liked the comfort of tedious administration and she liked the control her position granted her over the operations without the stakes of ownership. He discovered that she adored lazy Sundays and preferred tea over coffee and that she had a kitten named Chai that she was heartbroken to leave when she signed up for the show.

And through it, though Leith was learning the hard facts of her life, he learned the soft ones, too. Her compassion for her family and her employees. Her dry sense of humor that she sometimes couldn't keep up with because she just needed to smile.

He let himself wonder what it might have been like, if they'd met outside of the show. If she'd have been drawn to him the way he suspected he'd have been drawn to her. Would they have ever had these conversations? Would they have ever even made it to a date? Leith didn't think he was bad-looking—hell, they'd casted him so he had to have something going for him, right?—but he didn't think he had the kind of confidence a woman like Willow demanded. He probably would have assumed she was larger than the life he saw for himself and never have given her a chance to show that that was what she wanted, too.

And maybe some of that insecurity had followed him into the manor because he found himself asking, "So, are we doing this, Willow?"

Her questioning look was sharp.

"Together, I mean," he said. "Are we doing this together?"

"I thought we already were."

God, sometimes he was so bad at saying what he meant. "Only together," he clarified. "Just you and me. We seeing this through?"

She studied him, her tongue poking out to catch a tiny bead of sweat that fell to her lip. "Are you asking me if my head's gonna turn?"

"I'm asking if we're exclusive."

Willow resumed her position on her back, arms resting at her sides and eyes shut towards the sky. She let him wait a beat and then, like it was the simplest thing in the world, answered, "Yeah, Leith. We're exclusive."