“Boring,” Hina rolls her eyes. “What if you fall in love with someone on this show? Do you think you’d be with them in the real world?”
“Are we not in the real world?” Dean moves behind me, grabbing things, the pan is sizzling and personally, I think he needs to keep his eyes on the meat rather than talking to Hina.
“We are but it isn’t realrealyet, you know?” Hina points her half-bitten carrot at me. “Tell me you know what I’m talking about.”
I nod.
The cameras and the performance of it isn’t real. It exists momentarily and I get why people on Love Land and shows where they’re completely cut off from the world struggle with understanding how much time has passed, because it can feel like ages.
Thankfully, we were only told to delete any social media platforms and not search up the show or our names. Otherwise, all of us would be searching our names and trying to see who likes us and who doesn’t.
“Let me think about my answer,” he arm brushes over mine to get the dull knife I was working with earlier. It’s hot, heated, totally unwanted.
I think.
Hina waits for my response.
Grabbing a tomato, “The surprising thing is I don’t believe in love like that. You can find someone you feel connected to here, but it’s temporary. You really need to know someone in order for love to exist and to be honest, is that possible in the eight weeks we’re here?”
It’s not like I hate love, but romance has always been out of reach. I’ve never been confessed to. Never had a man tell me he wanted me or yearned for me. If I don’t know what it feels like or what it is I’m truly missing out on, do I even deserve to want it?
“Real,” Hina replies with a salute. “But then if every man here looked like Dean, I’d think love is everywhere.”
I choke on a laugh. Or shock. Who knows? This woman is starting to make me laugh with anything she says.
“I’m a one-woman man,” Dean says. “If I fall in love with a woman on this show, then no amount of hate, press, or change can drag me away from her.” Something odd constricts in my chest.
Maybe it’s gastritis?
Wrong organ.
It happens so fast. One minute, I’m cutting using the claw method and the next the knife slips from my fingers and scrapes against my palm.
My breath hitches.
“Shit, you’re bleeding.”
I don’t get a second to think about the red line, when Dean takes me to the sink and runs the cut under warm water.
He cups his palm below mine, spreading my fingers with a gentlepush using his own. “Are you okay?” He gruffly asks.
I tilt my head to look at him. His brows are pushed together, eyes dead set on the cut. He presses his lips together, a look of complete guilt morphs into his face.
Then, like he can feel me staring at him, he looks. And all I see is green, green, green.
I can feel every part of my body light up. There’s fireworks in my knees, the back of my elbows, in the crevices of my cellulite.
“I, uh…” I pull my hand away. “I’m fine, thank you.”
Anothercrunch.
“That looks bad, girl.”
“Nothing a little iodine and a bandage can’t fix,” I joke to try and lighten up the mood. It doesn’t work too well.
“Go sit,” Dean orders from behind. Then passes by me to the stove. “I’ll take care of everything.”
“But I can?—”
