Chapter 2
lilah
Despite what others may tell you, I didn’t hate Michael Valentine.
Most of the time, I didn’t even mind being around him.
He would always me out, I would turn him down, we’d make fun of each other relentlessly, and then I would complain about him to my friends.
It was fun. Predictable. Dependable. And in a world where my life has felt chaotic because of my brother’s fame, it was nice having something consistent.
Even if that consistency came in the form of a smug hockey player.
“I’m really sorry about the door!” he stammered. “I was just checking if the coast was clear and I didn’t hear you coming and—oh man, is that blood?”
I pulled my hand back to see what he was talking about and noted, with a turn of my stomach, that yes, it was in fact blood. The idiot had hit me so hard with a door that my head was bleeding. Of course.
“You’re a hockey player, Tino. Shouldn’t you be used to the sight of blood?”
“Well, yeah, but…” He left the words hanging there but I got the gist: but not when a cute girl I may or may not be in love with, who is bleeding because of me.
Luca stepped forward, and I assumed he was going to comment on the literal head wound I had, but he wasn’t even looking at me.
“You’re Tino?” he asked. And gone was my fun-loving brother who has never been serious a day in his life. In lieu of his usual goofy smile was… well, a murderous expression.
Tino gulped. “Uh, yes sir?” His voice cracked on the last word.
I grinned to myself as I realized that he was scared of Luca, the human embodiment of a puppy dog and a boy who wouldn’t hurt a fly.
I knew Luca hated Tino because he always listened with rapt attention when I complained about the people at school, but he listened even more intently when I mentioned Tino.
Before Luca could say anything else, which was a shame because I was curious just how much he hated Tino—probably more now due to the whole door thing—another boy appeared in the doorway. And despite never having met Tino’s family, I knew immediately who he was.
Not because they looked similar.
Not even because I assumed that Tino’s family was also visiting him today.
No, I recognized him from the poster hanging in the common room on my floor right next to the one of my brother’s band.
Will Valentine—Tino’s eldest brother and one-third of the band The Valentine Brothers.
One of the reasons Tino insisted we would be perfect together—among the many, many reasons which he’d actually outlined in a Google Doc for me—was that we were both the younger siblings of boy band members.
For me, it was just Luca, since my other two siblings weren’t famous either.
For Tino, though, all three of his brothers were in a boy band together called the Valentine Brothers (and yes, the fact that we were both the youngest of four siblings was something else he thought made us compatible).
I made it a point of making fun of him for being the only person in his family with zero musical talent and that they made a band name about being brothers, while completely excluding him.
He, of course, always argued that he would rather be good at hockey than music, and he would be famous in his own right one day.
“What’s going on?” Will asked. In direct contrast to my brother, Will always seemed a little too serious for his own good. His concerned gaze flicked from his brother, to my mildly bleeding head, to Luca.
“Oh my gosh!” a voice screeched behind us. “It’s Will Valentine!”
I cringed and spun around. A wave of dizziness overcame me and I stumbled, but that didn’t stop me from seeing my worst nightmare coming at us.
The whole alleyway was filling with fangirls, even more than there had been on the street behind us before.
One of the Valentine boys swore under his breath, but I wasn’t sure which one of them it was.
“Get in here!” Will ordered. I assumed he was talking to Tino, but the next thing I knew, someone was grabbing my arm and hauling me inside too.
The door slammed shut with a clang that reverberated through the walls and made my head pound, although I would still prefer that to the screaming coming from outside.
“Where…” The question fell from my tongue as I spun around and came face-to-face with three more people: Noah and Logan Valentine (the other two-thirds of the band) and their bodyguard. The place was empty aside from them—and the hundreds of boxes and hangers of costumes that filled the room.
“We’re in the storage room of the Halloween store,” Will said in his gruff voice.
His arms were crossed and he was looking at me with a gaze that made me feel a little like he somehow blamed me for the predicament we were in, even though I was one of the few people in the room who wasn’t famous.
“And it looks like you’ll be stuck here with us for a while. ”