Page 26 of Down and Dirty Celebrity Edition

“Fine,” Amy responded, then she walked over to the well once again and filled up another bottle. Stalling at its finest, she thought. But how long could she stall before Wyn wrung it out of her like water from a cloth?

As luck would have it, long enough. Luna walked into the clearing. She was dressed in Kate’s spare pair of gym shorts. Her soft legs had a shiny sunburned layer that wasn’t there yesterday. “Oh, hi,” she said, looking surprised to see the two of them. Then she snapped her head back over her shoulder before scanning the area. “Where’s Savannah? I thought she came here to do the bottles. She’s taking her sweet time. I’m absolutely parched. What are you doing here, Wynnie? I thought you were at Moon Pit.”

Wyn caught Amy’s eye and flared a warning.

Amy could easily ignore it. She could blurt out the word brigadeiro right now and watch Wyn’s game burn, but Wyn knew something, and wasn’t it better to keep your enemies close?

“Savannah left me with all the bottles because she had an errand to run. And I happened to see Wyn coming from Moon Pit and asked for her help.” She walked over and shoved the three remaining canteens hard against Wyn’s chest. It was a miracle she didn’t burp up brigadeiros.

Luna didn’t look completely convinced, which was why Amy picked up the bottle with her initials and handed it to her. “Here’s yours, all filled up.”

The distraction was enough. Luna tipped her head back, her eyes closing as she chugged half the bottle.

Amy caught sight of Wyn, who mouthed thank you.

But it wasn’t so much a favor as it was strategy.

Chapter Sixteen

Four days had come and gone, and unlike every other minute of Savannah’s life—which was packed wall-to-wall with tennis at the country club, reading advanced proofs, scrawling critiques in the margins, power lunches with literary agents pitching their newest lead titles at Via Carota, and endless dinners with editors at Don Angie—they had dragged by excruciatingly slowly.

It didn’t help that Maya Lin and Wyn had won the last reward challenge by completing the obstacle first, or that they’d come back smelling like lavender and their skin glowing from a tea-tree body scrub. Their shoulders were visibly unknotted from a deep-tissue massage. Or that they’d voted off Jade and Erica in a brutal three-to-two blindside, followed by Avery, who had stepped on too many toes when she’d implied that half the cast of Velvet Coast was on Ozempic. Or that Savannah and Amy were basically just pawns in the lake ladies’ alliance. Savannah could hardly care. She didn’t even blink when Ezra had wrestled a crab out of the mangroves with her bare hands and turned it into an incredibly delicious broth using wild sea salt and native lime, then paired it with cassava root that tasted surprisingly close to gnocchi.

She was way too hung up on Amy.

The lying low, no touching, no kissing under the cover of darkness was shredding her from the inside out. She felt like a soda bottle that had been dropped down three flights of stairs, just waiting for someone to crack the cap and let her explode.

Maybe if there had been actual physical distance between them, things would have been better, but no. Two nights ago, when Amy had shifted in her sleep, she’d thrown a bare, warm leg over Savannah’s legs, leaving Savannah staring wide-eyed and completely paralyzed at the palm frond roof. Then yesterday afternoon, Amy had stumbled over a hidden root barely two feet from the fire pit, which no one had ever tripped on before, and Savannah, who by her luck, or more so lack of luck, had found herself in proximity. She’d swung her arm around Amy’s middle just in time and then nearly leaned in to nuzzle her nose in Amy’s neck. Could you imagine?

Even this morning, while Amy was washing the sand off her glistening shoulders in the shallow surf, Savannah, who had been delegated to cleaning out the pot, had to avert her eyes.

She kept imagining sinking her teeth into Amy’s skin, trailing the tip of her tongue along her lovely breasts.

Savannah was literally beside herself with frustration, and at the same time, deeply disappointed. This was exactly why she didn’t have one-night stands, and the very reason she kept her heart locked up in her chest. In the end, wanting someone this badly, especially when they didn’t want her back, was literally hell.

She huffed out a breath and turned onto her side. Then she snapped open her eyes just as Amy let out a soft whistling purr beside her, and all Savannah could think was that her faint snores were the perfect white noise.

UGH!

Savannah couldn’t take it anymore. It was killing her to be so close, and yet they were separated by that stupid invisible wall Amy had put up. A wall that wasn’t just physical. They hadn’t had a serious conversation in almost four days. It wasn’t that Amy didn’t try; she did, but it was all Savannah could do to keep her distance. One conversation and Savannah would surely spill her feelings like a knocked-over can of paint. If she had to be honest, she’d thrown that challenge.

Exhaling, Savannah sat up. She needed air, and there wasn’t enough in the lean-to. Careful not to snag the woven palm-leaf mat, she shuffled out feet-first and found her flip-flops, thankfully right where she’d left them. The moon was bright enough not to render her completely blind, but she didn’t need the light because she took the same path she always took down to the beach.

She was just about to let the waves curl around her ankles when something overcame her. Instead of standing in the shallows and letting the foam wash away her misery, she pivoted left.

“Literally a week ago, she was trying to get inspiration,” Savannah muttered under her breath. She air-quoted inspiration because, seriously, what a ridiculous thing to do. “And now she’s telling me that we should lie low, as if I started it.”

Her feet were sinking deeper into the sand because she wasn’t walking; she was stomping, and lividly at that.

“I just don’t get it. What the hell changed? She’s literally a romance writer; surely two people lying about sleeping with each other behind everyone’s back is her bread and butter.”

The faint moonlight snapped off like a flipped switch.

Savannah’s entire world was immediately plunged into darkness.

“Fuck,” Savannah muttered under her breath. Had a cloud just drifted over the moon? Or had she stepped into the forest without noticing? Either way, she couldn’t fucking see. Her eyes didn’t adjust like a normal person’s eyes, and even worse than that, they weren’t going to.

“Ugh,” she moaned as she shot her hands out in front of her.