Page 52 of The Lodge

When I try to lift the stack, a shock of pain shoots through my injured wrist—the books are too heavy, and I drop them immediately. They fall to the floor, each landing with a resounding thud.

I’m scrambling to straighten them when Tyler knocks on my front door, his muffled voice saying, “Forgot to prop it open!”

“Be there in a second!” I call out, stacking them one by one behind the big leather armchair, spines hidden from view. I flip the top book upside down to hide its cover—that’ll have to be good enough.

When I open the door, I do a double take.

Not only has Tyler changed clothes—thick sweatpants in dark charcoal gray, light-green cotton V-neck, wavy hair loose and nolonger confined under a hat—but he’s also added a pair of black-framed glasses that somehow make him look even hotter. Maybe it’s the intimacy of it: knowing this isn’t his usual look, that it’s rare for someone else to see him like this.

I have the sudden urge to take it all off—his glasses, his V-neck, his everything else—to get as close as I possibly can, to tangle my fingers in his hair.

Heaven help me.

“You said you were going to get your laptop,” I say as casually as possible, “not that you’d be transforming into a totally different person.”

Tyler laughs. “Ididget my laptop.”

He holds up a worn leather satchel that looks entirely at odds with his loungewear. It’s even monogrammed:TJB.

“We’re not going to talk about your pajamas?”

“We’re not going to talk aboutyours?” he counters.

Never mind the fact that neither of us is actually wearing anything particularly risqué—we could both go jogging in public and no one would bat an eyelash.

“I live here, and it’s nearly one in the morning,” I reply, committed to giving him a hard time. “Pajamas are standard.”

“It’s nearly one in the morning and my place is so close to yours we could practically be roommates,” he says, grinning.

“Except for two crucial details: those extremely lockable front doors we both have, and the fact that I would never in a million years move in with someone I’ve known for less than a week.”

That’s a bit of a white lie, as I actually did have a college roommate I moved in with on a whim—great location, even better rent thanks to her family’s connection to the landlord—but four months of living with her iswhyI would never move in with a stranger again.

“I can go change back into my date clothes? Or maybe a Halloween costume?”

“Hey, I never said I wascomplainingabout your pajamas—but I’m intrigued by the costume.”

“Let’s just say you’d never look at velociraptors the same way again.”

“Which is how, exactly?”

He laughs. “Oh, you know. You’d be more likely to run straight into their tiny arms than to run away screaming in terror.”

“Because I seesomany velociraptors on a regular basis,” I say, and now I’m laughing, too. “And aren’t T. rexes the ones with tiny arms?”

“You and your details,” he says, waving it off. “Where should I put this?”

His biceps flex as he holds up his laptop satchel, and it’s all I can do to keep from staring.

“How about here?”

Tyler follows me over to the armchair where my stack of boy band books sits gloriously incognito. I’ve been working all around the penthouse over the past few days—maybe I’ll just stay in this room tomorrow. It would certainly be easier than relocating all the books.

“Thank you again,” I say.

“Use it for as long as you need to.”

His smile is soft, sincere. This close, something feels a little different about him—it’s probably just that I’m not used to seeing him in glasses.

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