Chapter 14
lilah
If one more person tried to “subtly” take a picture of us, I was going to lose my mind.
I’d been sitting outside of Heart’s Coffee with Tino for all of five minutes and at least three people had walked by pretending to scroll on their phones but angling the camera way too obviously in our direction.
“This is getting ridiculous,” I muttered, stabbing at the lid of my coffee cup with the stirring straw.
Tino didn’t look up from his phone. “What’s ridiculous? That you’ve read the same paragraph four times, or that that girl over there just used her reflection in the window as a mirror to take a photo of us?”
I glared. “You saw that too?”
“Oh, definitely.” He smirked, finally setting his phone down. “She didn’t even try to hide it. I wonder if she’s selling it to that sophomore for her blog about school events. What do you figure a photo of us is worth? A hundred, two hundr—”
“Shut up.” I tried not to laugh, but it slipped out anyway. “It’s your fault for being so… photogenic.”
Tino raised an eyebrow. “Photogenic? Not handsome?”
“Don’t push it.”
He grinned, leaning back against the bench. “So what do we do?”
I frowned as I noticed another girl whip out her phone and point it in our direction.
Maybe I should have been happier about this since it was what the fake relationship was for—to let people get used to the idea of Tino and me being together and get all this craziness out of their systems—but I felt like an animal at the zoo.
I’d never understood how Luca could live with the attention from his fame like this.
“What can we do?” I asked. “It’s not like they’ll all stop taking photos just because we asked nicely. And I’m not sure we really want them to anyway, right?”
Tino thought it over for a minute. “We don’t want it to stop altogether, I guess. But maybe we can control it a little more.”
I slowly put my coffee cup down, offering him my full attention. “What do you mean?”
“Well…” He tapped his legs as he thought.
“They want photos of us, right? So why make them take the photos when we could take them ourselves? That way they’ll actually look good instead of the cartoonishly terrible way we’ll look in the photo of a reflection, and everyone would be more excited about it, right? ”
I sighed and leaned back against the bench. “That’s true. But it also sounds like an insane amount of effort.”
“I think it sounds like fun.”
“So your definition of fun involves cameras and pretending to be in love?”
He shot me a look, half-amused, half-serious. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
I groaned. “You’re impossible.”
“That’s what you like about me.”
“I didn’t say I liked anything about you.”
“Noted.” He stood up, stretching, then extended a hand toward me. “Come on. Ten minutes. We’ll do a quick photoshoot and get it over with. We can cross to the other side of the river by the woods. Nobody will be there in November.”
The river ran on the far edge of campus, with a small grassy area and woods behind it, making up the true border of Hartwell Academy’s grounds.
It was a gorgeous spot to sit in the early fall and in the spring, but he was right that at this time of year it would be pretty empty.
I supposed that if we had to do a photoshoot, it would be better to do it where nobody could stare at us.
“We’re meeting Poppy and Bear in forty minutes,” I reminded him. It was the only legitimate excuse I could think of not to do this. I knew he was right that it would help the ruse, but I still wasn’t sure how I felt about the idea of giving into the frenzy like this.
“Then we’d better make it a short photoshoot,” Tino said. He swung his bag over his shoulder and held a hand out.
There was no winning against him. With a resigned sigh, I took his hand.
His palm was warm against mine, steady and sure, and it sent tingles up my arm.
I did my best to ignore it as we cut across the quad and past the stone buildings that were all dark since it was the weekend.
A few students lounged on the grass, either chatting or working on their laptops, and almost every single one of them stared at us—and at our clasped hands—as we walked by.
And I still wasn’t used to it at all.
Granted, it had taken me a long time to get used to the semi-fame that I got from being Luca’s sister.
I still remembered what it was like when my life was flipped upside down from his going on The Next Great Boy Band—one day, I was just an average girl at school and the next, I was being invited to every hangout and birthday party in the hopes that he might come along with me.
It wasn’t long before my so-called friends started demanding more and more from me, from his autographs to stealing his stuff for them.
That was where my ideas for selling his clothes had come from.
I drew a line in the sand that I wouldn’t give anything away but if they were willing to pay, I was willing to give this stuff up.
At least that made it easier to see who actually wanted to spend time with me and who just wanted to be connected to Take Five in some way.
I never thought I’d be thrown back into the deep end like that, starting to become scrutinized as Luca’s little sister more than I already was.
Maybe I should have anticipated that becoming connected to the younger brother of the Valentine Brothers would cause this, but he and I had been in each other’s lives for years at this point without it turning into this.
I guess it was something of a perfect storm—each of our brother’s bands just growing bigger and bigger, being spotted by somebody who had to be a massive enough fan to know what store they were hiding in, and everyone at school apparently already wondering if we would end up together given how excited they were when we supposedly did.
But I wasn’t in my comfort zone when we were doing this.
Tino seemed perfectly happy with everything that was going on—if I was looking from the outside, I’d have no doubts that he was in love with me.
Maybe it was built on the fact that he was actually interested in me and this was essentially like playing pretend at the relationship he did want, but I thought it went deeper than that.
There was some part of Tino that made him enjoy being in the spotlight.
It was the same piece of him that was excited at the idea of being a famous hockey player too.
Meanwhile, I was happy to remain largely irrelevant.
It had taken me long enough to get used to being Jude Turner’s little sister, and if this week had shown me anything, it was that I didn’t want to become any more famous than that.
I didn’t want to be watched, I didn’t want people to speculate about my feelings, I didn’t want any of it.
I just wanted all of this to be behind us already.
As we crossed the bridge over the river, I looked around. This edge of campus was just as empty as Tino had assumed it was, thank goodness. I was already awkward enough trying to act as Tino’s girlfriend, I didn’t need an audience for a photoshoot on top of that.
He pulled his phone from his pocket, flipped to the camera, and handed it to me. “Here. You start.”
“Me?”
“Yeah. Take a picture of me looking off into the distance or whatever. Make it look candid. Girls love that brooding stuff.”
“You’re enjoying this way too much.”
“Obviously.”
I rolled my eyes but lifted the phone anyway. He leaned against a tree, squinting toward the sun, his hair catching the light in that annoyingly perfect way. I snapped a few shots, then lowered the phone. “Done.”
“That fast?”
“I don’t need twenty identical photos of your face.”
“You sure? My mom says it’s my best feature.”
I gave him a flat look. “Your mom’s biased.”
“True.”
“I’m also not sure how me having photos of you is going to help at all.”
“You’re going to make them your lock screen, duh.”
I raised my eyebrows. “I did not agree to that. And nobody is looking at my phone, anyway.”
“That’s what you think.”
“I—”
“Your turn!”
I debated arguing further but decided against it. I handed him the phone. “Let’s get this over with.”
Tino grinned like a wolf who’d just spotted prey. “All right, Miss Model. Why don’t you sit right there,” he indicated toward some Adirondack chairs around a rarely used fire pit, “and lean back, look all effortlessly cool—”
“Tino.”
“Fine, fine. Just act natural.”
I perched on the chair, tugging my sweater sleeves down over my hands. “Natural,” I muttered. “Totally natural to be doing a fake photoshoot with my fake boyfriend in the middle of campus.”
He crouched slightly, adjusting the angle. “Okay, look at me.”
I did—and immediately wished I hadn’t. His expression was focused, but there was this spark in his eyes, playful and a little dangerous, like he knew exactly how flustered I was getting and found it hilarious.
“Stop looking at me like that,” I said when I saw him practically choke trying to hold back a laugh.
“Like what?”
“Like you’re about to laugh.”
He looked away for a second like he was trying to fix his face without me seeing, but when he turned back, his face was almost red from the effort.
“I’m not laughing,” he said, but his voice was forced from the effort.
I glared at him. “You’re definitely laughing.”
He took another photo. “That was the perfect face! Keep it.”
I groaned. “You’re impossible.”
I sat still and entertained his ridiculous ideas for a couple more minutes before jumping up and announcing I was done with this.
“Hold on,” he said, moving closer. “We need one where it looks like I’m kissing you.”
My heart stopped. “Excuse me?”
“Come on, couples loving PDA like this.”
He came up beside me and without thinking, I stepped back.
He just raised his eyebrows and I could practically feel his thoughts in my head—we can’t be in a fake relationship if you don’t let me touch you.
This is how to make everyone get over this quicker.
And I knew he was right, but letting him near me went against two years worth of me turning him down.
It was hard to give in, even if I knew it was all fake and would be over in a couple of weeks.
Tino stepped up to me again and this time, I didn’t move away, even though my heart decided this was the exact moment to go from being frozen to sprinting. He stood behind me, one hand braced on the tree beside me, his breath warm against my cheek. “Just tilt your head a little... There. Perfect.”
I stood practically frozen in place as he snapped a couple of photos. I could feel the ghost of his touch across my whole back, even though I knew he was barely touching me, and it sent shivers up and down my spine.
“Tino,” I whispered.
“Hmm?”
“This is insane.”
“Yeah,” he said softly. “Kind of the point. Now lean in.”
Is this really worth it? I asked myself as Tino practically pressed his face to mine.
We were millimetres apart, close enough for our noses to bump, for us to accidentally kiss if we moved wrong.
It immediately transported me back to the day in the store, when he’d been so close to me that I wondered if he might just try to kiss me.
To that moment that started all of this—when somebody got the wrong idea from looking through the window.
He snapped the photo, then stepped back as if nothing had happened. When I dared glance at the screen, the picture looked so natural it was almost unfair. My eyes were half closed, a smile ghosting my lips, and his face was angled toward mine, close enough to look real. Too real.
He looked over my shoulder. “That one’s good.”
I swallowed hard. “Yeah.”
“We should post it.”
“Now?”
“Why not? Let them think we’re disgustingly happy.”
I tried to roll my eyes, but the motion came out weak. “You are too good at this.”
“Years of practice,” he said lightly, scrolling through the photos.
I pretended to gasp and put a hand to my heart. “You mean I’m not your first fake girlfriend?”
He laughed. “I meant needing to keep up appearances about being a celebrity’s brother, but now that you mention it…”
I shoved him. “Shut up. I know you haven’t dated anyone before me.”
He stared at me for a beat too long before dropping his eyes. “You’re right. I haven’t.”
I suddenly felt like a total jerk for my words. I hadn’t thought about what that might sound like to him—as if I was rubbing it in his face that he’d never had a relationship before. It wasn’t like I thought there was any problem with that, but tell that to his heartbroken face.
“I’m sorry,” I blurted. “I didn’t mean that you…” I trailed off as my phone buzzed in my pocket. I didn’t mean to totally stop speaking but I got distracted as I saw the notification.
Michael Valentine has tagged you in a photo.
My gaze flitted back up to him. “You already posted it?”
He finally looked at me again, his smile already back again. “Of course I did.”
I held my breath as I clicked on the notification, worried that I already knew what photo he’d posted.
He could put up a photo of just me, of course, but it was about ten times more likely that he posted the almost kiss shot.
And my worries were proven true immediately.
Even worse with the caption: she told me to stop smiling like an idiot. Oops.
I groaned. “You didn’t.”
“Oh, I did.”
Within seconds, my notifications were blowing up. Comments, likes, reposts.
I shoved the phone into my pocket. “This was a terrible idea.”
“Worse than having photos taken of us when we’re not looking?” Tino asked cheerfully. I didn’t respond and he laughed, throwing an arm around my shoulders. “Come on, let’s go meet Poppy and Bear.”