Chapter 24
lilah
It sounded like the apocalypse was happening downstairs. Who could have guessed a house of five teen boys would be utter chaos?
I left the bathroom door open as I did my makeup for the awards show next to Nina, which meant that I could hear everything going on downstairs with clarity.
Hudson was singing at full volume, Neil was laughing so hard that I wondered how he was breathing, Finn kept yelling for them to focus, and Luca was going on and on about his hair not looking right.
The only one from the band who I didn’t hear was Zach—Poppy’s sister’s boyfriend—which made me guess he was hiding in the basement until they had to leave. Smart guy.
“How do you live like this?” I asked my sister, briefly making eye contact with her in the mirror. Her lips quirked up in a smile but it took her a minute to respond since she was applying her mascara.
“It helps to match their chaos,” she said as she put the tube of mascara down and picked up her blush. She paused to bump my hip. “Something you’d do well at, I imagine.”
I laughed. “Yeah, except I wouldn’t fall in love with any of them.”
It had only taken her a couple of weeks living here to fall in love with Finn, whose room was right next to hers. From what I’d heard, Luca hadn’t taken it too well at first, but he’d certainly come around.
“No, you’ve got your own romance going on,” Nina said, then she pointedly looked toward the closed bedroom door right across the hall.
I blushed and focused on the makeup on the counter.
I knew she was only saying it because she thought we were already together, but I had to admit that the last few days had started to make me wonder about Tino and why exactly everyone seemed to think we were such a good match.
Obviously, Tino had been making a case for us to be more than friends for a long time now, but I’d never given it serious thought.
He was so firmly in the “friend” category of my mind that I never really entertained the idea of him being my boyfriend.
I always thought we’d be better as platonic friends, which was exactly why I told him that this fake relationship would prove to him once and for all how incompatible we were.
But now… I was starting to wonder if it was proving the opposite for me instead.
For the past week and a half that we’d been doing this, I told myself that none of it meant anything.
The butterflies in my stomach when he kissed me were a fluke, the way I’d begun seeking him out more than I had before was just because of the ruse, the happiness I felt when he was around was because we were becoming closer friends, and the fact that I’d cuddled him in my sleep was just because this house was colder than my dorm.
But then he’d asked me last night if I thought we could ever go back to normal and I realized… no. We couldn’t.
More importantly, I wasn’t sure I wanted to—and I wasn’t sure what that meant for us.
I picked up my curling iron, wrapping the next section of hair as I tried to tune it all out.
I was good at this—compartmentalizing. I could smile for cameras, keep my brother from saying something he’d regret on live TV, and pretend that the boy waiting in the next room didn’t make my pulse skip when he laughed.
Downstairs, Luca’s voice carried easily through the vents. “Who took my shoes?”
“You left them on the porch,” Finn called back.
“No, you left your shoes on the porch—mine are the Saint Laurents!”
Hudson’s voice followed, calm and unbothered: “Maybe if you didn’t own five pairs that look exactly the same—”
“Blasphemy,” Luca interrupted. “And they don’t! They each have a unique spirit.”
A knock sounded at the door and Asa stuck his head in. “Car’s coming in twenty. I’m begging you both to be ready on time.”
“I just need to get dressed,” I told Asa, finishing off the last curl. I glanced at Nina. “You don’t mind if I use your bedroom to get changed, do you?”
She barely glanced at me, too focused on her makeup. “Go ahead.”
Asa disappeared down the hallway, probably to go yell at the boys to hurry up as well, and I went into Nina’s bedroom.
It occurred to me as I grabbed my dress that I could have just insisted on staying with Nina once I found out about the one bed situation with Tino.
Sharing a bed with my sister would have been infinitely less uncomfortable than sharing it with my fake boyfriend.
Sure, it might have raised a few questions about our relationship, but that wouldn’t be a big deal—it wasn’t the band we were trying to convince about us, after all.
But despite that, I felt strangely glad that I hadn’t thought of asking before.
“Lilah?” Tino called from the hall.
“I’m in Nina’s room!” I called back. “Just getting dressed. I’ll be out in a sec!”
I stepped into my dress, smoothing the fabric over my hips.
The soft blue shimmered faintly when it caught the light, and for a second I just…
stared at myself in the mirror. It was understated but elegant, and I looked almost…
grown-up. I put on my earrings and perfume, grabbed my clutch, and looked one more time in the mirror.
Then I took a deep breath and opened the door.
“Okay, I’m ready—well, mostly ready, don’t laugh—”
The words tripped out of my mouth, but they stopped dead when I saw the look on his face.
Tino was standing near the bed in a perfectly fitted black suit, tie undone around his neck, hair falling slightly into his eyes. He looked… good. Too good.
And he was staring at me like he’d forgotten what air was.
“You’re staring,” I said automatically, cheeks warming.
“Yeah,” he said, voice a little rough. “I mean—no. You just—uh—look nice.”
“Nice?” I raised an eyebrow.
“Okay,” he said, clearing his throat. “You look amazing.”
I fought the smile tugging at my lips. “That’s better.”
There was something about the way he said it—like he hadn’t even meant to out loud—that made it hard to breathe for a second.
“You clean up fine yourself, Valentine,” I said, because it felt safer to tease.
The moment hung there for a beat—soft, fragile, like it would shatter if either of us moved. Then he blinked, stepping back. “We should get downstairs before Luca wonders where we are.”
Right. My brother. The reason we were here.
I nodded. “Yeah. Let’s go.”
I smiled, small and a little shaky, and picked up my clutch.
As we walked downstairs together, his hand brushed mine—barely there, gone in an instant—but it sent a tiny, traitorous spark up my arm.