Wicked Games (Games #1)(25)
Author: Jessica Clare

My eyebrow went up.

“You want to elaborate?” Leon crossed his arms over his chest, a scowl on his face.

Dean shook his head. “Nope.”

Leon glanced back at Chip and then moved back to his seat.

“All right, we’ll move to the next member of the jury.” Chip pulled out another shell and examined it. “Abby, you’re up next.”

My heart gave a painful nervous thump. I stood, unclasping my sweaty hands, and moved to the center of the stage. One of the cameramen zoomed in on me and that made me suddenly tense. Swallowing hard, I met the gaze of the two contestants sitting across the fire from me. Lana had a confident smile on her face, but I’d expected that from her. She knew how to work people. What I hadn’t expected was the smile on Dean’s face. His gaze was possessive as he regarded me, his eyes roaming over my figure, and he wore a smile like we shared a secret.

I wanted to punch it off of his face. I cleared my throat, kept my expression calm, and focused on the two. “I’ll start with Dean,” I said in a light, careful voice. “Dean, did you f**k me to make sure you’d have my vote?”

His smile was replaced by a frown and then a scowl. “No, of course not.”

I turned immediately to Lana. “My question for you—is he lying?”

She glanced over at Dean and a small, smug smile touched her mouth. “He told me he was stringing you along for your vote.”

“Now wait a minute–” Dean began.

Chip interrupted. “I’m sorry, Dean, but you had your chance to speak. Abby, did you have any further questions?”

I felt ice cold as I stared at the two of them. My eyes narrowed at Dean and I scowled back. “No. No more questions. I found out what I needed to know.”

I turned and went back to my seat.

The rest of the questions passed in a blur to me. I clasped my hands hard in my lap so I wouldn’t cry or anything embarrassing like that. I focused so hard on keeping my icy composure that the council blurred for me. Lana answered all questions glibly, freely admitting to scheming her way to the top of the pile. Dean seemed less inclined to answer quite so easily—his responses were terse and sometimes angry. It reminded me of him when we’d first gotten to the island.

“Those are all the questions,” Chip said. “Now it’s time for the jury to vote who they want to win the prize. Abby, we’ll start with you.”

I stood and walked carefully to the voting booth. A stack of blank slates was there waiting, and I took one and laid it flat, then carefully wrote a name on the front.

The cameraman waiting there spoke to me. “Can you hold up your slate and explain to the audience why you voted the way you did?”

Very calmly, I held up the slate and revealed the name.

Lana.

“I’m voting for you, Lana,” I said, and I couldn’t even be gleeful about it. I was just tired and hurt. “You have my vote because you admitted to lying, and you never tried to get in my pants to get what you wanted in this game. Dean, I did not vote for you.” My voice threatened to wobble but I rushed past it, my words spilling over themselves in a hurry to get out while my voice was strong and I was composed. “I’m sure that ruins all your little plans for world domination, and I hope it does. I hope you slept with every woman on this island and I hope your dick falls off because of it. You are the worst kind of person to sleep with a woman just because you wanted her vote. I actually thought there was something below that shallow surface of yours, but it looks like I’m the biggest idiot on this island, right? No longer. Lana, I hope you enjoy your two million dollars.”

And I dropped the slate into the voting box.

Chapter Thirteen

I can’t wait for this to be over. Now maybe we can get back to being normal again. And I can’t wait to talk to Abby. It’s been a long three weeks without her. I miss her.—Dean Woodall, Last Day of the Game

Once the final vote was cast, the producers moved into action. The jury was separated and shuffled away, reminded of our non-disclosure agreements. We weren’t allowed to discuss our votes, or anything about the show until the finale aired on national TV a few months in the future. Each of the cast members was assigned a media escort that would follow us like a dog until we boarded the plane and went on with our lives. I was fine with that—I just wanted to get home.

So I quietly packed my things and closed up my cabin and followed my escort out to the gravel parking lot where all the show’s vehicles were parked. One or two of the cast had already left, and more were getting ready to depart. I saw Chip chatting with one of the cameramen. A few of the others hung back, talking while their media escorts waited, analyzing every word of conversation with a frown on their faces. Waiting nearby was Lana, and she scowled at the sight of me.

I ignored her, climbing into the passenger side of the waiting jeep.

“Wait,” a familiar voice yelled, and I cringed.

Dean rushed to the side of my jeep, trailed by his media escort. “Abby? I’ve been looking for you. We need to talk.”

I examined my fingernails. “I really don’t have anything to say to you, Dean.”

“That’s bullshit,” he said, an angry tone entering his voice. “We need to talk about what happened at tribal council tonight, because I get the impression that you’re mad at me—”

“No talking about the council,” barked my media assistant. “You are contractually obligated.”

I gave Dean a tight smile. “Sorry. You’re out of luck.”

“Then give me your phone number—”

I shook my head. “I don’t want to talk to you. Understand?”

He gave me a shocked look, and it emphasized how hollow his cheeks were. He’d played the game for so much longer than I had—it wasn’t fair. “Abby, what the fuck?”

“She’s got all she needs for her little book,” Lana called from across the way. Both of us turned toward her. She was looking over at me with a look that mixed irritation and disgust. “Or didn’t you know that, Dean? She’s writing a nasty little tell-all. Your little bed partner here was a media plant.”

He recoiled as if I was diseased. “You what?”

“That’s right, Dean Woodall, Mister Olympian,” I said in a bitter, angry voice. “I’m writing a book for the show. And I work for MediaWeek. Don’t you think I’ll have lots and lots to write about?”

His jaw tightened with anger, and he glared at Lana, then back at me. “Don’t do this, Abby.”

I gave a hard, bitter laugh. “Don’t what? Don’t use you to further my own ambitions? Oh the irony.” I gestured at our vehicle. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to be late for my flight back home.”

Dean took a step or two backward, the hard glint still in his eyes, clenching his jaw. But he said nothing else as the jeep backed up and slowly drove away, leaving behind my time at Endurance Island.

The assistant glanced over at me and gave me a cheery smile. “Bet you’ll be glad to get home, huh?”

“Thrilled,” I said in a voice that didn’t echo my enthusiasm. Tears threatened to escape, but I fought them back. I was done crying over Dean Woodall.

***

"I told you already, I’d rather watch the show by myself," I said to my friend for the tenth time that day, holding the phone against my ear as I flopped down on my sofa. I curled my legs up under me. "No watching party, no nothing. I just want to have some time to absorb what I watch without anyone staring at me. You understand, don’t you?"

Todd made disappointed noises into the phone. "I guess. But you’ll let me grill you over it tomorrow? I hardly ever get to see you anymore."

"Tomorrow over lunch," I promised. By that time I should have had the chance to adjust to whatever horrors showed on the TV tonight. "I’ll buy.”

“All right,” Todd said, mollified. He chattered on for a few more minutes, discussing work and how things had changed around the office since I’d left. “I still can’t believe you turned down the book deal and the TV special, Abby. Girl, are you crazy?”

“Oh, they gave that to Chip,” I said, waving a hand in the air even though he couldn’t see it. “They hadn’t paid me anything up front, so as long as I agreed not to do any competing shows, it wasn’t a problem.”

After the taping, the producers had cornered me and tried to get additional details about my relationship with Dean for the show. They wanted to use our ‘romance’ as a major storyline and harassed me for details. All kinds of details. Very personal details. When I’d balked, they’d tried to sweeten the deal with offering me the hosting duties for an exclusive ‘making of’ special for Endurance Island. I turned it down as well. My heart still hurt.

Being on Endurance Island had completely broken my heart and it had taken months to get over it. I still wasn’t sure if I was over it.

I smiled into the phone. “I must be crazy to pass on all the big money gigs, right? I just… I don’t know. I didn’t want to air my dirty laundry? It’s bad enough that everything is going to be on TV.”

He laughed at that. “I can only imagine what I’m going to see on TV tonight. You’re being all sneaky and evasive, which means it’s worse than I thought.”

He had no idea. The nervous flutter in my stomach that had been present for the last week was going nonstop. “Listen, Todd, the show’s about to start so I’m going to let you go, all right?”

“Tomorrow! Details at lunch!” he said and hung up.

I curled up on the far end of the couch in my apartment, reaching for the Pepto-Bismol as the opening credits began to play with a blare of trumpets. They’d created a montage of all the players, flashing their cast photos back and forth as they zoomed in on wilderness shots.

My face flashed onto the screen, pale and round-cheeked compared to the other women. I wore a bright, sunny smile and my brown, coiling curls had been pulled into twin ponytails that rested on my shoulders. I wore the tankini that displayed my name in hot pink, and it was clean and bright. This must have been prior to us landing on the island. I didn’t get a chance to dwell on how I looked, because Dean’s photo moved onto the screen next. It was an action shot of him rising up out of the ocean, rivulets of sea water pouring down his tanned abdomen. He looked amazing.

Just seeing that depressed me. Why had I ever thought a guy like that would be interested in a girl like me? He was a freaking Olympian, for crying out loud. I should have seen it coming. My stomach gave an unhappy gurgle and I chugged more Pepto.

Then the show started, panning in over the crystal blue waters of the ocean, and I was hooked. I watched, fascinated, as Chip’s voiceover explained the rules of the game. The camera zoomed in on the twenty contestants scrambling for goods on the surface of the boat, and then the mad rush to get to shore. It was breathtaking to watch, and I settled in for the ride.

A few minutes into the show, it was evident that I was going to get a lot of face time, and I cringed at the thought. The camera kept zooming in on my scowl. I scowled at Chip. I scowled at the others. I scowled at Dean when he picked me as his partner. My face flushed with embarrassment every time the camera zoomed in on my angry body, hands on hips. Had I really been that upset to be there?