The studio lights felt hotter than usual, bleaching the color from the vibrant array of flowers that surrounded them.
For the first time, the cloying scent of roses and lilies felt less like a perfumed paradise and more like a funeral parlor.
Julian stood shoulder to shoulder with Rev, but a chasm, miles wide and carved by humiliation, yawned between them. The Producer’s Cut had aired two nights ago.
Two nights of shared, sleepless silence, of checking their phones with a masochistic compulsion only to be met with a tidal wave of memes, mockery, and pity.
“The Thorn-Crossed Lovers.” “Anything for a blue ribbon, I guess.” “#ShowmanceSucks.”
Magnifico, the show’s host, glided onto the stage, his sequined blazer catching the light in a thousand tiny, merciless glints. His smile was a predatory slash of white.
“Florists,” he boomed, his voice echoing with practiced drama.
“You have trimmed, wired, and blossomed your way through challenge after challenge. You have worked in pairs, in teams, building floral fantasies together.”
He paused, letting the silence hang, thick and heavy. Julian’s jaw was so tight it ached.
He could feel Rev’s tense energy beside him, a thrum of anxiety that mirrored his own.
“That,” Magnifico declared, “is over.”
A collective gasp rippled through the remaining contestants.
“From this moment on, there are no more teams. For the semifinals, it is every artist for themselves. You will be assigned individual workstations. You will conceive, create, and compete alone. Your only alliance is with your own ambition. One of you will not make it to the finale. Good luck.”
The words landed like a guillotine. Alone.
The finality of it was absolute.
The safety net of their partnership, the one pure thing that had flourished amidst the artificiality of the show, was officially severed by the producers who had already twisted it into something ugly.
Julian felt a cold dread snake up his spine.
This wasn’t just a new rule; it was an ultimatum.
The walk back to the shared living quarters was a silent, agonizing trek.
The other florists chattered nervously, speculating on the challenge, but Julian and Rev were encased in their own miserable bubble.
The air between them was thick with unspoken accusations and the phantom echo of his mother’s voice from their phone call that morning.
“Julian, your father and I are mortified. A ‘showmance’? On national television? We raised you to have more discretion, more self-respect. Is this what you’re throwing your reputation away for?”
They reached their room, and the moment the door clicked shut, the fragile dam of their restraint shattered.
It was Julian who spoke first, his voice tight and strained. He started pacing, unable to look at Rev, who stood frozen by the door.
“This is a catastrophe,” Julian muttered, running a hand through his perfectly styled hair, messing it up for the first time in weeks.
“They planned this. All of it. The edit, the public humiliation, and now this. They’re isolating us.”
Rev’s voice was low, rough with unshed tears. “Jules, we just have to get through it. We do our work, we ignore them.”
Julian spun around, his face a mask of desperation and anger. “Ignore them? Rev, my phone has been blowing up for forty-eight hours straight. My mother called me. My mother.”
The word was laced with a unique horror. “She thinks I’m… tarnishing the family name for camera time. She thinks I let you… let us…” He couldn’t finish the sentence.
Rev flinched as if struck. “Let me? What does that mean? Julian, what happened between us was real. It had nothing to do with the cameras.”
“But they didn’t see that, did they?” Julian shot back, his voice rising.
“No, they saw exactly what you gave them! Holding hands in the greenhouse, whispering in the corner during judging. You were so open, so… reckless with it! You didn’t think about how it would look, how they could twist it!”
The accusation hung in the air, venomous and sharp. Rev’s expression shuttered, the hurt in his eyes quickly hardening into a protective shell of anger.
“Reckless?” he repeated, his tone dangerously soft. “You mean honest? You mean I didn’t hide how I felt about you? I’m sorry, I didn’t realize our feelings were a strategic liability you needed to manage.”
“This isn’t just about feelings, it’s about our careers!” Julian gestured wildly around the room.
“This show was supposed to be a launchpad, not a sideshow. I’ve spent my entire life building a reputation for precision, for elegance, for professionalism. And in one episode, they’ve turned me into a lovesick joke. And you just… you played right into it.”
Every word was a hammer blow to Rev’s heart. He had thought they were in this together, two souls against the manufactured world of reality TV.
Now, he felt Julian pushing him away, shoving him under the bus to save his own pristine image.
“I played into it?” Rev’s laugh was a bitter, broken sound.
“You were right there with me, Julian. Or was that just another performance? Was holding my hand part of your ‘elegant and professional’ brand strategy?”
“Of course not!” Julian’s frustration boiled over. “But there’s a way to handle things! A way to be discreet. You don’t seem to understand that perception is everything. My family—”
“Oh, God forbid we offend your family!” Rev exploded, his own pain finally erupting. He stepped forward, his eyes flashing.
“For someone who creates such beautiful things, you are terrified of anything real, anything messy. Anything that doesn’t fit into the perfect little box your parents built for you. You know what I think? I think you’re not angry at the producers, Julian. You’re angry at yourself for letting your guard down for one second. You’re angry that you actually felt something.”
“That’s not fair,” Julian said, his voice cracking. He looked cornered, trapped between his family’s expectations and the undeniable truth in Rev’s words.
“Isn’t it?” Rev pressed, his voice lowering with a devastating quiet.
“They show one episode portraying us as a cheap romance, and your first instinct isn’t to hold me closer, it’s to blame me for being too much. Too open. Too… me.”
The realization settled in her chest, a cold, heavy stone. “You’re ashamed. Of me. Of us.”
Julian’s face crumpled. “No. Rev, it’s not that…”
“Then what is it?” Rev demanded.
“Tell me. Are you willing to stand here, right now, and say that what we have is more important than what your mother thinks? Than what a bunch of strangers on the internet are tweeting? That you’re not afraid?”
Julian opened his mouth, but no sound came out. The silence was his answer.
He looked away, his gaze falling on his pristine toolkit, a symbol of the orderly, controlled world he so desperately wanted to reclaim.
In that moment, he saw a path forward, a path back to his old life, and it was a path he had to walk alone.
Rev saw it too. She saw the retreat in Julian’s eyes, the shuttering of his heart. The fight drained out of him, replaced by a profound, hollowing grief.
“You’re a coward, Julian,” she whispered, the words holding no anger anymore, only a deep, aching sorrow.
“You’re so afraid of what everyone thinks that you’ll never get to be your own man. You’ll just be a perfect, empty arrangement.”
Julian winced, the floral metaphor a perfectly aimed dart. He finally looked at Rev, his own eyes swimming with unshed tears. “And what are you, Rev? A wildflower that grows so freely it gets trampled?”
They stood there, two feet apart, the wreckage of their beautiful, fragile connection scattered around them.
The argument was over. There was nothing left to say.
The new rule from Magnifico wasn’t a challenge; it was a prophecy.
Every artist for themselves.
“Maybe…” Julian began, his voice barely audible. “Maybe they’re right. Maybe we should just… focus on the competition. Separately.”
It was an offering of an armistice, but it felt like a surrender. It was a way to save face, to retreat to their respective corners without admitting the full, gut-wrenching scope of their failure.
Rev nodded slowly, a single tear finally tracing a path down her cheek. She didn’t bother to wipe it away. “Yeah,” she said, his voice thick. “Okay. We go our separate ways.”
She didn’t wait for a reply. She turned and walked to his side of the room, his movements stiff and robotic.
She began to pack a small bag, gathering his sketchbook, her favorite clippers, a worn t-shirt.
She couldn’t stay here tonight. She couldn’t breathe the same air as the ghost of what they had been.
Julian watched her, his body rigid, his heart a cold, tight knot in his chest. He wanted to scream, to apologize, to beg Rev to stay, to tell her that he was the only real thing in this entire plastic world.
But the weight of his family’s disappointment, of his own crippling fear, pressed down on him, silencing him.
He had made his choice. He had chosen the safety of the vase over the chaos of the garden.
Without another word, Rev slung the bag over her shoulder and walked to the door. Her hand rested on the knob for a fraction of a second, a silent, final hesitation.
Then she opened it and stepped out, closing it softly behind him, leaving Julian utterly, devastatingly alone.