Bonnie gulps down on a lump forming in her throat. With her back to Carla, she takes her time locking the door. She widens her eyes to ensure she doesn’t cry and exhales loudly, wishing she were alone so she could take the time to nurse her heart.

‘You’re doing the right thing,’ Carla says steadily. ‘He might have been your first love, but he’s not the right guy for you.’

Maybe Carla is right.

Bonnie knows she needs to be away from Oliver, away from what’s happening in his life. She just wishes it didn’t hurt so much.

Chapter 13

13

‘What else have you got?’ Darcy asks with a smile, trying not to stare at the girl in front of her who is posed in an extremely revealing pink dress, exactly the same dress a girl about five rooms away is wearing.

It’s finally the big day. Within a few hours, each of the twenty-two girls will step out of the limo and walk down to meet Ty. In the meantime, Darcy and Mel are run off their feet approving everything.

The current crisis is that two girls both want to wear the same dress. One girl, Imogen, has outright refused to change. She purposely bought this dress to meet the suitor in, and there is no way she’s wearing something else. She doesn’t care if another girl is wearing it too because she knows she’ll wear it better. She’s got the confidence of a champion bull rider.

Darcy’s now chatting to Addison to see if she wants to change. Addison has laid out every other outfit she packed on the bed to show Darcy. There is nothing but a sea of pink. Darcy doesn’t wear pink herself, she’s more drawn to red and navy, so has to fight the natural urge to curl up her nose.

‘Can I just call my sister?’ The girl turns to her. ‘We went through every dress and what order I should wear it in.’

Darcy shakes her head. ‘Sorry, no.’ The girls had their phones and devices taken off them upon checking in to the hotel. They’ve been in lockdown for twenty-four hours, each stuck in their hotel room with nothing to do but watch television. ‘Can you just switch dress one and two?’ It’s times like this that she wishes they had a bigger budget and the girls were dressed by a wardrobe department instead of having to bring their own clothes.

Addison shakes her head and looks at Darcy as though she’s just suggested wearing her pyjamas to meet Ty, which is actually what another girl is doing—sexy lingerie, with the line, ‘If you pick me, you get to go to bed with this every night’.

‘This dress makes a really strong first impression. I tested out thirty dresses on a group of friends and this one was the stand-out.’