The True Love Experiment

He leans forward, whispering in my ear, “I told you back there that you were right.” He’s read my mind. Connor pulls back just enough to smile at me. “Thank you for reminding me: Everything is going to be amazing.”

It hits me like a physical shove: He trusts me as much as I trust him. He came to me in the wings for the same reassurance I’ve always sought out in him. Somehow, even in front of millions, we have found a safe space in each other.

I can’t handle this, can’t handle what this is doing to my heart. If this is a grand gesture, I could never have written it, never have imagined the feeling that would swell inside me until I feel like I can’t speak, can’t even think.

Connor squeezes my hand, saying to the audience, “We figured I should get equal screen time, but of course that isn’t possible. So, I made you something myself.” Lifting his chin, he gestures to the screen again, and the houselights dim back down. The opening notes of my favorite Wonderland song, “Joyful,” begin, and I feel a swell of emotion I’m not sure I’ll be able to hold back.

There are video clips of the two of us joking on set, me throwing a wadded-up napkin at him. Footage of us eating lunch together, always separated by a few feet from the rest of the group; in another clip we’re sitting at a table alone, noodling on our phones but silently together. There’s footage of us trying to learn a TikTok dance together and cracking up, and then a quick-cut compilation of footage of me poking him in the ribs every time I walk past that has the audience in hysterics.

The next few clips show Connor patiently giving us feedback on set while I watch him with trusting, wide eyes, nodding. My love is as subtle as a brick to the face, and I’d be embarrassed by the way I’m obviously infatuated with him if it weren’t so obviously reciprocated. Whoever captured the footage of him watching me cook in the industrial kitchen and plant trees with Jude is a genius; Connor looks like he’s watching his favorite show.

The song ends, the screen turns black, and I think that’s the end of it until the starkly clear sound of my own voice surprises me, backed by quiet music: “Should we talk about last night?”

The audience laughs at the implication, and oh God. I know what this is. The very first day of shooting, when my mic was live. Mortification washes icy cold through me. I slap a hand to my forehead and the audience vibrates with excitement over the salacious things to come.

The video on-screen is still black, but Connor’s answering pause and then measured reply over audio leaves no question that he’s trying to cover for what I really meant: “You mean our conversation about today’s run of show?”

My blasting, “Yes! Of course that conversation! What other thing would we have to discuss?” sends the audience into waves of laughter.

Brenna appears on-screen, sitting beside Rory on the sofa in the confessional trailer. “Honestly, that those two were head over heels was obvious to all of us from the beginning.”

Now Rory: “God. She was constantly looking at him.”

This is followed by a hilarious quick-cut montage of all the times I glanced at Connor during filming. Sitting at the café table, in the industrial kitchen, at the park, in the spa looking for Connor when he wasn’t even there. The video speeds up, clip after clip of scores of times where I’m glancing over, looking for him. More than I ever imagined I’d done, and I knew I looked for him a lot.

It’s hilarious.

I bend, pressing my head into my hands as the audience cheers.

But then I straighten at Brenna’s voice again: “Yeah, but Connor was just as bad.”

Now there’s a montage of Connor’s face every time a Hero touched me, leaned in close, made me laugh, flirted with me. The compilation is hilarious—Dax and me on the first date, and a quick cut to Connor scowling at the monitor; Nick feeding me a cherry, and Connor appearing to breathe deeply with his eyes pointed at the ceiling; Evan braced behind me on the fishing boat, and Connor staring daggers at his back. The audience is eating it up, screaming with amusement. The Heroes, too, are in hysterics.

Isaac appears on-screen. “I think we all noticed it, but at first it didn’t feel like they were dating so much as just really good friends.”

Then Dax: “Those two are definitely hitting it.”

The audience cheers bawdily.

Nick says, “I think he tried to fight it, but there’s no doubt he’s got a thing for her,” and Colby, standing beside him some unknown night, says, “And Fizzy didn’t want any of us because she wanted him. It’s hard to be mad when you see two people falling in love.”

I look over at Connor and realize he’s been watching me. Of course he is; he said he put this together. And then it hits me—I’ve seen these outfits on Nick and Colby before. They wore them to the wrap party.

“You did this?” I ask quietly. “Just on Thursday?”

He nods, and then lifts his chin to the screen for me to watch what’s next.

We’re sitting in the confessional trailer, facing each other. We both look miserable and my heart bottoms out in my chest. It’s the first bit of footage from that agonizing confessional on our last day of filming.

The part of that confessional that never aired.

“How are you feeling entering this final date?” Connor asks.

“Relieved,” I say, and stare at him squarely. I remember that feeling, shoving my devotion out into the air between us, trying to get him to see how much I loved him. It’s written plainly on my face.

Connor’s expression tightens, his eyes searching mine. Seeing him like this, I don’t know how I kept it together.

His mask slips again. “Relieved why?”

“Because it means soon I can stop pretending I want someone other than you.”

“Fizzy,” he says, glancing in panic at the camera, “you—you can’t say that.”

I lift my chin. “Edit it out, then.”

With a long, slow exhale, Connor reaches to turn the camera off. The screen goes black.

The houselights come back on and it’s a silent beat before the audience erupts, thunderously, standing in their seats.

My hand is so slippery in Connor’s grip that I want to wrench it free and wipe it, but I don’t dare; he subtly turns it over, pressing it to his leg. The audience screams again as they watch him flatten my hand to his upper thigh.

These people would suffer from cardiac arrest if they ever saw this man perform in bed.

“Well, Connor, looks like you’ve officially entered this competition,” Lanelle says coyly, and for some reason my heart drops, like I’d forgotten why we’re all here. “I guess we need to find out how the audience voted.”

She explains that voting took place on social media, where it was tracked by an objective third-party contractor, and rattles off the statistics about how many votes came in the first week and how many came in for the finale. The numbers are staggering. The lights dim and then slowly turn red for, I guess, suspense. And then Lanelle says, “With 41.2 percent of the vote… the audience chose Isaac!”

There is a pause, and then loud—but polite—applause.

“However,” Lanelle says, smirking at the crowd, and I realize that of course she’s in on this, too. “There was a bit of a surprise. Anyone know what it is?” The audience shouts out about a hundred different unintelligible things before she motions for them to quiet down and makes a show of examining her cue cards. “In a completely unprecedented turn of events, Connor Prince appears to have received 38.6 percent of the vote, and he wasn’t even a contestant.” Mayhem erupts and she has to shout over the roar of the audience. Even the crew behind the cameras is cheering.

I don’t need Jess’s nerdy math skills to know that 38.6 percent of the vote is millions of people. Millions of people who want Connor to be with me. But the only two that matter are sitting together on the couch. I look at him; his smile hovers somewhere between shy, smug, and completely overwhelmed.

I lean in, which only makes the uproar around us intensify. “Did you know about this?”