Then

I'm walking around the pool when I'm attacked.

All I wanted was a few minutes of alone time. I've been in the Proposal mansion for a full week, and between the group date, confessional camera sessions, the second rose ceremony last night, and the sheer number of girls in the house, it feels like I haven't had a second to myself, waking or sleeping.

Evening is falling, a cool respite from the warm day. I'm in pj's, my hair in a messy topknot. The rough patio stones are sun-warmed, and the heat radiating into the soles of my bare feet feels incredibly healing, like California is pouring its love into me.

Of course, I'm not totally alone—the cameras always follow. And even now, it's only a matter of time before a few shrieking girls in bikinis tear into my moment. The pool is a popular hangout spot. But I'll take what I can get.

I lose my eyes in the aqua blue of the water as I think about tomorrow. Josh is announcing his next one-on-one date choice in the morning, and I've been so keyed up all day, I can barely function.

I'm just so hungry for it—time with Josh. All I've gotten so far are snatches. In fact, our longest interaction to date was when I confessed to being a Synth.

I smile remembering his smile. The way he said, What the hell. Let's see what happens. The fire in my body when his tongue explored my mouth. I might think it was just my coding making me so obsessed, except that the other girls seem to feel the same. "I imagine him next to me every night when I go to sleep," confessed Zoe, which made me blush, because I've been doing that, too. Pretending that if I just reached across the bed, I'd be able to run my fingers down his naked back.

Though...the girls do seem to approach this all a little differently from me. They seem eager, for example, to analyze what draws them to Josh. His beliefs...his values...shared backgrounds...common interests... Should I be thinking that way, too? And yet I have no background. No particular interests. No belief except that I'm meant to be with Josh.

"What makes you certain he's the one?" Emma asked me last night as we all hit up the hot tub after the drama and emotion of the rose ceremony.

"A feeling," I confessed.

Emma raised a brow, like my answer was too simple. Too pat. But what draws me to Josh—it's deep. I know it is. Just because I can't define everything in the same way as the other girls doesn't make my connection with Josh less than.

"Feelings come and go," Emma said. "My ex, the father of my daughter...let's just say that I thought what we had was real, but it was just feelings. You know what I mean? There was literally nothing underneath. Compatibility has to go deeper."

I had no response. Just an unease, frothing in my chest like the bubbles in the hot tub. I'd been telling myself all along that I'm more similar to the girls than I am different. I even sold myself to Josh with that very line. But looking at Emma, laughing across from me in the hot tub, suddenly felt like looking across a chasm, and I had to think—what if I was wrong?

Stay in the moment, I tell myself now, as I make a second circle around the pool, taking care to stop and feel each sensation of my feet on the stone. Overthinking things can only ruin them at this point. I am what I am. If I doubt the process, I could end up destroying my future before I have a chance to build it.

And then it happens.

The jolt of a body hitting mine from behind.

The crunch of my arm against the patio as I fling it up to brace my fall.

Needles in my skull as the attacker yanks me around by the hair, lifts my head, and brings it crashing against the stone.

I have only a millisecond to take in the face above mine, a pale moon set with a strange, cold grimace, as if what she's doing is not an act of passion but of necessity. A millisecond to gaze into eyes of washed-out blue, like the life was wrung out of them long ago. A millisecond to register age-spotted cheeks like sad, sunken craters, the smell of ripe body odor and unwashed gray hair.

Then Proposal crew members are pulling her back. I think there's shouting, but a loud buzz in my head drowns it out.

I'm left looking at the dark blue sky, stunned. It's so...wide. I feel so small, a mere bubble floating on the surface of a world deeper than I can know.

I think about saying What just happened? but I've bitten my tongue. Blood wells up, flooding my mouth.

"Julia?" It's a medic, leaning over me, her face a kinder moon. She smells fresh, like lemons. "Can you hear me? Stay with me, Julia. Julia?"

My vision goes fuzzy. A bubble is so delicate, after all. One touch and it bursts.

I black out.