Page 107 of Unscripted

They didn’t get it. They didn’t understand what had just happened. How everything was turned upside down.

“I need—”

Ella cut me off. “Callum. We know. You lovebirds are inseparable. But right now, you need to pack. We’re all staying at the same hotel anyway; you can always sneak out and see him later.”

Later. It felt impossible to let it wait until later, but I clearly didn’t have a choice. Maybe giving Callum time to cool off would help anyway.

I blindly packed my things, tossing whatever was near me into a bag, and then followed the rest of the girls out to the van that was idling in the driveway.

I paused before I got in, turning around to take in the villa one last time. Sure, we would be right back here tomorrow. But it wouldn’t be the same. Everything was different now.

As swiftly as it begun, Bella Amore had come to an end.

***

When we arrived at the hotel, I was overcome with a sickening sense of déjà vu.

This was where it all started, where I had been cooped up in the days before entering the villa, filled with doubts and fear of the unknown.

I had wanted to escape then, to find a way out of the decision I made as quickly as I could. Now, I was desperate for more time.

I also needed a way around the producers, who were holding tight to the insistence that the girls and boys remain separated until the start of filming the next day. “It heightens the experience,” Harry told me.

It was currently heightening my nerves.

The other girls thought it was romantic, how much I wanted to see Callum. “One night away and your head’s already spinning,” Chiara cooed at me, thinking it was the sweetest thing she’d ever seen.

I started to tell her that it was actually serious, that it wasn’t romantic at all, but then I stopped. I had filled the girls in on what had happened during my “family visit” with Gavin, but I didn’t know how to explain the rest of it. Didn’t want to, really. I knew saying it out loud would make it real in a way I wasn’t ready to deal with yet.

So I kept quiet. I made it through dinner and then room checks at the end of the night. I waited until it was dark, until I was sure more than an hour had passed and the producers had all gone to bed.

Taking a deep breath, I cracked open my hotel room door and peered out. I slipped down the hall, down the stairs, and out the lobby’s side entrance. It all went unnoticed, just as it had six weeks before when I was on the verge of a panic attack and needed to get out.

Crossing the outside terrace, I stopped at the same spot I had that night. It was where Callum and I had spoken for the first time. I was hoping he would also come back to it.

I stood there, the warm night air caressing my face.

But no one came.

At some point, I felt tears slide down my cheeks. But still, I stayed.

I stood in the spot where it all started until the sun rose. Until the birds started to chirp and I could hear production vans pull into the hotel’s front driveway, ready for the long day ahead.

Callum never came.

***

I spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon in glam with the girls. I was exhausted, having gotten no sleep the night before, but my mind was too anxious to attempt any kind of nap.

I must have looked as ragged as I felt because when I walked into the hotel room that was serving as the glam room, Ella took one look at me and simply got up, walked to the room’s mini fridge, and pulled out an ice roller.

She handed it to me without a word, just a tiny pat on my shoulder. In Ella speak, she might as well have given me a big hug.

I spent the next hour icing my face, trying to undo the damage that standing in the night air while crying for hours on end had done.

“You alright?” Chiara asked as we sat in chairs next to each other, our hair both having been blown out and put up in rollers.

“Honestly? No,” I said.