Page 48 of The Lodge

Still leaning against him, though, I feel his muscles tense. But as quickly as I felt it, he relaxes.

Maybe this was a mistake—maybe he’s like my brother and thinks entertainment journalism is a complete waste of time. A complete waste of mylife. Maybe—

“How long have you been doing that?” he asks.

Relief floods through me. There’s no trace of Ian-like disdain in his voice at all.

“A little over a decade now. It started as a side gig my freshman year of college but turned into my actual job somewhere along the way.”

“Do you ever get to interview famous people?”

“I’ve interviewed more famous people than I can count,” I reply. “It’s not as great as everyone thinks. Most of them act like they’re some superhuman gift to the planet, and like all the rest of us were put here to worship them. It used to make me feel small. Then it made me feel angry. And now—now I’m mostly indifferent.”

There’s an edge to my voice I didn’t mean to let in, at odds with this crystal-clear, delicate night.

Tyler is quiet behind me, taking in my words, my sharp tone.

He wraps his arm tighter around me, pulls me in closer. I lean my head back and breathe him in. It’s instant comfort.

“I can’t imagine anyone evermeantto make you feel that way,” he finally says.

“Oh, I think some of them definitely did mean to.” The Jett Beckett interview comes to mind, and I shove the memory back down into the putrid cesspool from which it came. “Pretty sure most of them were too wrapped up in themselves to consider anyone else might have feelings, though.”

He reaches down, finds my hand, and intertwines his fingers with mine. In this moment, it feels as intimate as a kiss, this purposeful connection from someone who’s done everything he can to disconnect from the world—a way to sayI see younow that he knows I’ve spent far too many years feeling unseen.

“I’ve never understood why the world glorifies celebrities,” he says softly, “when it’s only luck and timing that put them under a magnifying glass instead of someone else.”

I think again of Sebastian: how luck and timing changed his life, how a single powerful someone happened to see him performing in a high school musical and brought him out to LA for that fateful first meeting at the record studio. It could have happened to anyone—anyone who had just the right mix of talent and charisma and a cocktail of blessed genes.

“Alix,” Tyler says suddenly. “Look.”

I follow his gaze just in time to see a shooting star streaking across the sky, here and then gone.

Fame is like that, I think.

So are some moments. Like if you were to blink, you mightmiss your chance—might not know it ever existed in the first place.

Still wrapped in the blanket and his arms, I twist around to face him. I could kiss him right now, we’re that close. All it would take is an inch, maybe half, to close the gap between us.

“That was beautiful,” I say.

My voice is so quiet I wonder if he might ask me to repeat myself.

“We might see more,” he replies, “if we keep watching.”

But he doesn’t turn to look at the stars, and neither do I.

His lips find mine, there in near darkness, soft and slow and tender. He doesn’t hurry, he doesn’t press for more than I might want to give—but that only makes me want to kiss him harder, more fervently. I don’t—

Not yet.

With every lingering kiss, every second I resist the urge to take this fire up one notch, the flames feel hotter all on their own. I can tell he’s holding back, too, relishing the tension as it builds. And it does build—I feel it in how he touches me, one hand in my hair and the other at my low back, firm but gentle, like it’s taking all his restraint to keep himself under control.

Until finally—finally—the tension breaks.

I’m the first to give in.

I kiss him harder, deeper. Like I can’t get enough, like this moment might be every bit as fleeting as fame and shooting stars, like this night will slip away if I don’t stay as present as possible in the here and now.

---