Chapter 3
tino
Lilah Turner was never more beautiful than when she was mad at me. Which was pretty much always.
“Tell me again why you’re in here,” she demanded.
We’d moved from the back storage room to the main area of the store, which the owners were nice enough to clear out so that we could hide comfortably.
The street outside seemed almost deserted now from my view, but my brothers’ bodyguard insisted that we needed to stay inside until the cars showed up to take us home safely—me and Lilah to Hartwell Academy, and each of our brothers to a hotel for the night.
“Do you think I’m hiding some of the story from you?
” I asked. I reclined in the spinny chair I’d found behind the counter, although the thing felt so unbalanced that I wouldn’t be surprised if I went toppling over.
Lilah was sitting on the counter in front of me, a huge white bandage covering the side of her head where I’d slammed the door into it.
The bodyguard had checked it over for her and reassured us the wound was superficial, but he was still worried about her possibly having a concussion.
Lilah had been unfazed by that, saying that there was nothing we could do about it until we got out of here, then promised that if she felt nauseous, she would be sure to throw up in my direction.
“I just think it’s pretty convenient your brothers happened to be visiting on the same day mine was,” Lilah argued. Her legs were swinging back and forth like a kid sitting on a too-tall chair and I grinned at the motion. “And that you happened to be on the same street as us too.”
“Do you think I planned this?” I asked. “That I eavesdropped on your conversations to find out when your brother was visiting, then invited my brothers to come the same day, and then spread the word that we would be on this street so we would all be forced to hide together?”
She gave me a look that told me that was exactly what she thought happened. Maybe I should have been more offended than I was, but really, I couldn’t totally blame her for thinking so because it did sound like something I would do to get some alone time with her.
“Well, I didn’t,” I said firmly. “Besides, if I were the mastermind behind some plan to make sure we would end up locked in a store together, don’t you think I would have also planned for it to happen without our brothers present?”
I pointedly looked toward the back corner of the store where Noah, Logan, Will, and Luca were sitting on the floor getting a tarot reading by one of the employees.
She looked to be only a couple of years older than us and was very obviously flirting with Will, but he was completely oblivious.
Even though they were seemingly occupied, I could feel them glancing in our direction every minute or two like they were making sure we weren’t doing anything untoward.
Then I glanced at the front of the store where the bodyguard was on the phone, probably arranging for more security to come, but also pointedly keeping an eye on us as well.
“Point taken,” Lilah sighed.
“And for the record, I would have also planned it in a way that didn’t involve me hitting you in the face with a door,” I added. “That just feels like an important thing for you to know.”
Lilah’s lips quirked into an almost smile and I felt a weird pang in my chest. It was a strange feeling, a cross between being happy that I could make her smile like that at all and being sad that she hardly ever let me.
She laughed at me a lot, but seeing her genuinely smile at my jokes was a rare enough occurrence that I just stared at her now, wanting to memorize the look on her face.
“I’m bored,” Lilah announced a minute later, breaking the perfect image.
She jumped down from the counter, then squeezed her eyes shut and wobbled as she landed like she thought she got dizzy.
I immediately jumped to my feet and put my hands out so I could catch her if she needed me to, but a moment later, she was fine and walking off like nothing happened.
Which pretty much summed Lilah up as a whole.
She walked down the first aisle toward the front of the store, pulling costumes out at random and studying them, then putting them back on the rack.
A couple of times, she pulled out a costume and held it up to me with a thoughtful expression, but every time, she found a reason it wouldn’t look good—too blue, it was too long, reminded her too much of Shrek—and she’d put it back with a smirk.
I refused to take any offence to her comments, which made her lips twist in an adorable frown.
I thought we were going to continue the process down another aisle, but as we reached the front end of the store, she suddenly stopped and spun around with a wild grin on her face.
“What?” I asked, immediately on edge. When Lilah looked that happy, it usually meant something bad for me.
She didn’t say anything, but she turned to the shelves lining the wall.
They were filled with boxes and packages of costumes.
I assumed they were just packaged versions of the ones hanging on the racks, but Lilah seemed to have her eyes on one in particular that I had to assume she hadn’t seen out.
She sighed. “Why are they so high?” I watched as she put her foot on one of the lower shelves and put a little weight into it like she was testing whether it could hold her.
A moment later, she pulled her foot back down with another loud sigh, which made me think she decided it wasn’t—and thank goodness for that, because I could see at a glance that it wasn’t stable enough to anyone’s weight and I could only imagine how fun it would be to try to catch her while boxes of costumes rained down around us.
Then again, maybe catching her would be super romantic and she would finally realize how perfect together we were.
I mean, probably not, but a boy could dream.
“Want some help?” I asked. I wasn’t sure which one in particular she was reaching for but it was obvious she was aiming for the second highest shelf, which was just out of her reach.
“No, I can get it!” Lilah insisted. She was on her tiptoes now and tugging at the thin cardboard box, her whole body wiggling with every pull.
Normally I might have been happy to stand back and laugh at her attempts, but it had been less than an hour since I slammed a door into her head, and right now, all I could imagine was that box also crashing on her head and making it even worse.
I sighed. “Just let me help you. I’ve got better reach.”
“Yeah, yeah, we all know you’re taller than me,” she said without letting go of the box.
She pulled again and it shifted forward about an inch, making her go ah-ha!
I decided not to point out that it was barely any closer to coming off the shelf as I stepped up behind her and grabbed the box myself, carefully pulling it down around her so it didn’t smack her in the head.
It was hilarious, really, how easily it was in my reach when she’d barely been able to get a grip on it even when standing on her tip toes.
Had she always been that short? I’d never noticed before.
“Hey!” Lilah snapped. “I told you I had it! Why did you—”
She spun around, clearly ready to curse me for doing her a favor, but cut herself off with a soft gasp as we came chest to chest. Her eyes flicked up—so wide and such a bright blue—and her soft pink lips parted in a small ‘o’.
I should have been stepping back—she clearly hadn’t realized how close I was to her or she wouldn’t look so surprised right now.
The gentlemanly thing to do would be to give her space and just hand over the box like I’d been meaning to do in the first place.
Instead, I stayed rooted on the spot and worked very hard to fight the instinct to tuck a stray piece of her blonde hair behind her ear.
“Which one did you get?” I asked. I dropped my gaze just enough to look at the picture on the box in my left hand.
It was a couple’s costume, I realized quickly, with a purple princess dress and an outfit that must have been the prince, though it didn’t look anything like the Prince Charming costumes I’d seen before.
Lilah mumbled something quietly. When I looked at her again, the wild smile she’d been sporting before was gone and she was now looking mildly embarrassed.
I couldn’t imagine why she would be embarrassed by this, especially in front of me, and I suddenly wished I’d paid attention when her roommate, Poppy, had given us a PowerPoint presentation on her official ranking of the Disney princesses a few weeks ago so I could at least identify the costume.
“What was that?” I asked, leaning even further in. I rested my free arm on the shelf behind her and held my head practically right next to hers, so close that I could smell her strawberry-scented shampoo.
On an unrelated note, I was suddenly a very big fan of strawberries.
“It’s from Tangled,” she repeated, her voice tickling my ear. “Rapunzel and Flynn Rider.”
I had no clue what Tangled was, and I’d never heard of Flynn Rider, but I did recognize Rapunzel.
“The princess with the long hair?” I asked. I pulled my head back enough that we were looking at each other again, but we were so close that our noses almost brushed.
Lilah shrugged, which I took as a yes. “She was always my favorite when I was a kid.”
I grinned, imagining a younger version of Lilah running around in a princess dress like this.
It was too bad she’d rather die than show me childhood photos, because I would give anything to see them.
Maybe I could bribe Luca to “accidentally” sending them to me.
Then again, was it possible to bribe a guy who probably had more money at his disposal than he knew what to do with?
“I was thinking,” Lilah said, snatching the box from my grip, “that you and I aren’t famous—”
I pretend to gasp. “We’re not?”