Chapter 13

They'd just finished seeing Maddison off through the front door when Cas's phone pinged.

Because of course it was Cas's phone.

"?‘Lovers,'?" Cas said, and despite the fact that her hands were still trembly, her voice, at least, was steady. "?‘It's time to get ready for bed. Lights out in one hour.'?"

Most everyone lingered in the entry, but Cas turned the moment she finished reading the text and made her way upstairs. She should have stayed, talked more about Maddison, strained her ears to hear the sound of the Jeep that was going to take her away, or whatever it was they were doing downstairs, but she needed to get out of there.

Needed to go feel guilty on her own.

She was able to remove all her makeup and wash her face before anyone made their way to the bathroom, but she heard the top step creak as she was patting her face dry and then a whisper that made her entire body go cold.

"It should've been Cas."

It was Lexi, standing outside of the bathroom.

"What?" Charlie, it sounded like.

"She's least popular," Lexi whispered. There was a soft thud, like someone leaning up against the wall. "Why is she allowed to stay and Maddison wasn't?"

"Well, but it was Femi's choice, wasn't it?" Charlie said. He could not have sounded less interested, but Cas tried not to let that go to her head. It was less an endorsement for Cas's continued time in the villa and more a reflection of how little Charlie seemed to care about anything.

"They should've sent home the least popular people this week," Lexi said. "If they're going to bother ranking us this summer."

Charlie just hummed vaguely, and Lexi huffed. "Whatever."

And then Lexi walked into the bathroom, Charlie at her heels, and froze.

This was a crossroads moment. Cas could confront her, make her own up to what she said. It would bring the drama the producers and audience loved, would show that Cas wasn't going to take any shit, but it could also be too confrontational. Too much.

But if she ignored it, pretended she hadn't heard anything, then she was too passive. A doormat. Someone the audience didn't need to respect.

And, in that moment, Cas wanted respect more than anything. The Cas she was outside the villa wouldn't leave this unaddressed, so why should Cas in the villa let it lie?

Cas tossed her face cloth into the washing basket and dotted some moisturizer onto her face. "You could have said that to my face, Lex."

Lexi's cheeks were blood red. "I..."

Cas waited, smoothing moisturizer into her skin, but that was apparently all Lexi had to say.

"Right." Cas put toothpaste on her toothbrush but didn't start brushing right away. "Look. I know Maddison is your friend and you're probably not trying to be rude. But I'm here. She isn't. Get over it."

"I'm just saying that it's not fair," Lexi started, and Cas scoffed.

"It's not fair that Femi wanted to stay partnered up with me? That he decided to stick with me, despite what the public had to say?"

"It's not fair that you got to stay and she didn't." Lexi shrugged. "I just think the people in last place should've gone home."

"Well, they didn't. And you don't get to decide whether Femi's choice was the right one—he did what was best for him, and I'm grateful to him for it. I'd also appreciate, in future"—Cas switched on the water and wet her toothbrush—"if you showed me some actual respect and said this to my face instead of chatting shit to Charlie behind my back."

Charlie raised his hands in a faux-innocence gesture—because of course he was going to leave Lexi out to dry—and Cas rolled her eyes before popping her toothbrush into her mouth.

Cas was still fuming when she made her way down to the bedroom a few minutes later.

She'd tried to remain calm while she was in the bathroom, especially because Lexi and Charlie had continued going about their own nighttime routines, albeit more awkwardly than usual. The second she walked into the bedroom, though, she huffed angrily and dropped down onto the bed.

Reece and Tia were lying on their new, now shared bed at the other end of the room, Tia's leg threaded through Reece's. She rolled halfway onto her back as Cas arrived, brow furrowed. "You okay?"

Cas nodded and tugged the duvet down before wiggling herself underneath. "Yeah. Just tired."

"Yeah, same." And Tia rolled back toward Reece.

It had been a nice distraction, that little disagreement with Lexi upstairs, from her anxiety. But she needed to tread with caution, couldn't let herself get carried away—the public wasn't exactly looking for reasons to like her, but people would pounce on anything she did that solidified their opinion that she was the worst.

Though, maybe, this was exactly what she needed. Friday Cas clearly hadn't impressed them, so maybe it was time for real Cas, the one who would never stand for this passive-aggressive shit, to make an appearance.

She was lying on her back staring at the ceiling as, one by one, more of the lovers started returning to the bedroom. It sounded like a few of the boys had made their way back out to the kitchen—Cas could definitely pick out Femi's and Jayden's voices, and she assumed Brad must be there, too, because she hadn't seen him since they'd left Maddison at the door. She'd just closed her eyes when someone picked up the duvet and slid in underneath.

Cas didn't even need to open her eyes to know who it was. She caught the sweet smell of Ada's perfume again, peach and smoke and a little bit of salt air. It should have been light now, faded after hours of wear, but the scent seemed to cling to her skin.

"Hi, Ada."

Ada huffed, and when Cas looked, she was frowning. "How'd you know it was me?"

She'd done her hair in a plait, and it fell loosely over one shoulder. She wasn't wearing anything special—an oversized cropped T-shirt with strawberries on it and a pair of matching sleep shorts—but something about it made Cas's heart molten in her chest.

It was strange, an uncomfortable feeling, one she swallowed down.

Cas rolled onto her side so she and Ada were facing each other. "Your perfume. What is it? It smells so nice."

Ada's cheeks flushed the slightest pink and she tugged the duvet a little higher up over her shoulders. "It's not my usual perfume."

"What is it?"

"It's..." She looked down at the microphone hanging around her neck, her fingers tracing the cord in a way that might have appeared absent to anyone not two inches away from her.

"Oh god. Is it Claire's body spray or something?"

Ada laughed. "No, god. It's just expensive, that's why I'm embarrassed."

"Oh, so it's Tom Ford or Chanel or something."

"Tom Ford," Ada confirmed. She still wasn't meeting Cas's eyes. "I splurged on it when I found out I got onto this show. Scent memory is apparently one of our strongest senses and... I don't know." She flicked her gaze up so that her eyes found Cas's. "I wanted to remember this place."

"I personally can't imagine wanting to remember this place right now, but I hear you."

"Fair enough." Ada's fingers moved to the end of her plait and she started brushing them through the loose strands. "My best friends were completely taking the piss out of me about it. A lot of ‘why would you want to remember men gyrating at you all summer?'?"

Cas laughed. "They're right, though."

"Oh god, please don't tell them you said that," Ada said. Her eyes were shining with amusement, the gold vibrant against the dark brown of her irises.

Cas pointed to one of the five cameras hanging from the ceiling in the bedroom. "That ship has sailed, love."

Ada flicked her gaze to Cas's again. Her eyes seemed to darken, and Cas would have sworn, sworn, that she felt the featherlight touch of Ada's fingertips against her thigh.

"But, I don't know." Ada tucked her right arm underneath the pillow. "I just felt like this was going to be a big summer, you know? Like, looking back, it was going to be something I wanted to remember. Anyway." Ada exhaled, her mint breath on Cas's neck. "I wanted to check on you. You disappeared pretty quickly earlier."

"I needed a second," Cas said. "I was feeling a bit overwhelmed."

"You do that a lot," Ada said. When Cas's brow furrowed, she clarified. "Take time on your own when you need to process something."

Cas looked down, watched her index finger trace a tight circle on the sheets so she didn't have to look Ada in the eyes. "It's one of the worst things about me. My best friend Aisha's been trying to coach me out of it for years."

"I mean, yeah, you can't disappear every time something doesn't go your way, but it can be helpful to take space sometimes. Get your head together before you do something you regret."

That was the excuse Cas always used—she was trying to avoid making a mistake, was trying to be careful—but she knew, deep down, that she was running away before things got too hard. Before she felt vulnerable.

"I do hide out too often, though," Cas admitted quietly. "I hate confrontation and it's easier to just... disappear."

Ada hummed again, thoughtfully this time, her eyes searching Cas's face. "Why do you think that is?"

"God, I don't know. Too much confrontation growing up, probably. As soon as I realized I could just leave the house, I never looked back." She wasn't smiling now, could feel emotion pricking in the corners of her eyes. She swallowed hard, tried to bury it, but it cracked her voice all the same. "Probably didn't set me up with the best coping mechanisms."

Lexi and Charlie walked into the bedroom then, Lexi swinging her water bottle so, every once in a while, it smacked Charlie in the side of the leg. Lexi made eye contact with Cas for half a second before she looked away, but neither of them said anything.

"I did make a nice step forward tonight, though," Cas said, lowering her voice to a whisper. She slid a little closer to Ada in hopes they wouldn't be overheard. If she was really lucky, even her mic wouldn't pick it up. "Lexi was chatting shit about how I'm still here when we were upstairs."

Ada's expression was immediately outraged, an echo of the one from last night in the bathroom. "What the fuck?"

Cas waved her off. "It's fine. I talked to her. I'm sure it'll pass in a few days and we'll be back to orbiting around each other like we have been all week."

"Still," Ada said, and Cas watched as her gaze flicked over to Lexi and Charlie's bed. "If she tries anything again..."

Cas laughed. "I'll let you know."

"It's probably good that this happened here. Not that she said anything rude about you, I mean," Ada said, "but that it happened while we're all trapped in this house. You've got to deal with it. No running away."

Before Cas could reply, Femi walked in and immediately dropped his hands playfully onto his hips at the sight of them. "Now, where am I going to sleep?"

"You can go sleep in Sienna's bed," Ada said, her eyes flicking to Cas for the briefest moment, the flash of a grin on her face. "I'm sure she won't mind."

Femi raised an eyebrow. "And then where will Jayden sleep?"

"With Brad, I guess," Ada said. "Or we can make Brad sleep outside and Jayden can have my bed all to himself."

"Who's to say I don't want a bed all to myself?"

Cas rolled her eyes. "Femi, please."

"What?"

She stared at him for a long moment. It didn't seem like he was trying to draw her out, he seemed genuinely confused. Like he hadn't the slightest idea what she was talking about. And she was not about to get into it in front of the bedroom, even if half of the lovers were still wandering around somewhere.

Cas sighed. "We'll talk about this tomorrow. We can have pool float breakfast."

They'd gotten told off by the Voice of God the last time they'd tried to have pool float breakfast, but as long as Cas didn't drop a croissant into the water again, they'd probably be able to get away with it.

"Sounds like a plan," Ada said. "Now, good night, we're going to sleep." And with that, Ada whipped the duvet over her and Cas's heads.

It was dark, warm underneath the duvet. Despite how close they were, Cas could just barely see the outline of Ada's features, lit up by the tiny slice of light where the blanket wasn't quite tucked in all the way.

Femi scoffed lightly. "Oh, I don't think so."

And then he dove into the space between them and wrapped his arms around them both, trapping them under the duvet, and Cas was lost in the sound of her and Ada's shrieking laughter.