Page 47 of The Lodge

I could sit up here all night, honestly.

I most definitely do not feel cold anymore.

He’s still holding me tight, firm but tender. Neither of us has acknowledged the way his fingers have found my hair, the way his knuckles brush up against my jawline every now and then, the way the memory of this moment will forever be entangled with the night sky: expansive and sparkly and unforgettable.

“It must be amazing to have this kind of view in your backyard all year long,” I say quietly.

Not once have I missed my apartment in Brooklyn since arriving here. I don’t miss my loud neighbors, the unreliable heat, the uninspiring view, the never-ending construction across the street. I don’t miss Lauren making the place feel even smaller than it already is. I’ve always considered myself a city girl at heart—but maybe that’s because I only ever wanted to get out of the small town where I grew up.

“I love it,” he says. “Some people up here… I think they stop seeing the world around them after a while and forget how incredible it is.”

“But not you?”

He’s quiet again, and I feel the rise and fall of his chest with every breath. I think back to last night at dinner, how he changed the subject when we delved too deeply into his life. Is he about to share something real now? Something more than the fact that he took up ice-skating because his best friends were training for it, I mean. Something more than his odd (but admittedly respectable) preference for dipping soft pretzels into hot cocoa.

Finally, he says, “I left this place behind for a while. I had a job opportunity that paid well and took me all over the world.”

It’s like he’s poked a hole in the sky—the barest pinprick of blazing light, hinting at everything still hidden behind that thick velvet curtain—and now I want to rip clean through it. I wish he’d let me see all the things he so clearly feels he needs to keep to himself.

Maybe if I don’t push, if I just let him give, he will.

“But you came back here to be with your friends,” I say, because it’s a fact—because it focuses on where he ran to and not what he ran from.

“I did.” He takes another deep breath, sighs it out in a long exhale. “You travel the world long enough, you leave a little bit of yourself every place you go, and after a while, you start to forget who you are—especially when the people who are supposed to have your back turn out to be snakes.”

Suddenly all I can think of is Sebastian Green, of everything he went through with his manager and how perfect his life looked on the surface. I guess you can never truly know what someone is going through.

I stare up at the sky, wondering just how awful a person would have to be for someone as great as Tyler to refer to them as a snake.

“It makes it hard to know who to trust when that happens,” he goes on. “When you’re not even sure who you are anymore, so you question your own judgment, and it just makes you more and more paranoid, but also more reluctant to listen to your own instincts because you aren’t sure what’s real.”

I stay quiet, give him space to continue.

When he doesn’t, I say, “I’m so sorry anyone made you feel that way.”

I want to say I can’t even imagine it happening.

“It wasn’t just someone,” he says. “It was pretty much everyone.”

It’s hard to imagine Tyler outside of the context of this ski resort, as some sort of fancy businessman traveling the world, surrounded by people who ended up breaking his trust—it’s starting to make a lot more sense why he came back to his roots. To Julie, to his best friend, to the peace and quiet and serenity of the mountain. Maybe he doesn’twantto be a recluse so much as he’s afraid not to be.

I’m weighing how—if—I could ask more about what happened, since he’s trusted me enough to crack the door open and let me peek into his past.

But then he says, “It was a long time ago. I want to hear aboutyou.”

And just like that, he closes the door.

I watch the sky. Still no sign of shooting stars.

“What do you want to know?” I ask.

“Well, I know you’re a writer,” he says. “And I know you’re writing a book. And I know you can’t talk about the book. But the first day we met, you told me the subject matter was in yourfield and that’s how you got the job. What do you normally write about?”

Never in my life have I had to think before answering that question—but now that Sebastian’s book is in the mix, it gives me pause. Tyler doesn’t at all seem like the type who cares one bit about entertainment journalism: if I had to guess, he’s the type who curls up in a worn leather armchair, reading his spy thriller novels until well after midnight, not a smartphone in sight.

He’s given me more than I expected—it’s only right that I give him something real, too.

“I’m in entertainment,” I say. “Pop music, reality shows, royal weddings. Stuff like that.” It’s a vague enough answer: maybe I’m writing a book about a prince!

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