Page 90 of The Lodge

26

Sebastian Green.

Sebastian ishere.

A heads-up would’ve been nice. A text, an email, anything. In his defense, I guess it’s possible someone tried to give me one—my phone is still dead back at my place.

Lauren’s question hangs in the air.

Is that Jett Beckett?

I’ve never seen a person’s head whip around as fast as Sebastian’s did when he turned toward Tyler—never seen an expression shift so seamlessly from confusion to shock to recognition to fury.

“What are you doing here?” Tyler says, eyes darting from Sebastian to River and back again.

“I could ask you the same question,” Sebastian replies, spitting the words like his mouth is full of acid. Gone is the shiny façade he puts on for the entire world—here, in the privacy of our penthouse floor, his bitterness is on full display.

“So, yes, then?” Lauren says from the doorway. “Jett Beckett?”

“He doesn’t use that name anymore,” I say quietly.

Lauren’s eyes widen as she realizes this isn’t news to me: that I knew—that I’veknown—and I’ve kept an enormous secret from her. More than one enormous secret, if you factor in Sebastian and his memoir.

But she’s hardly the only one here who’s been left in the dark.

“Riv?” Tyler says, a thousand questions in that single syllable.

Tyler’s lifelong best friend—keeper of his most secret secrets, who went so far as to help him disappear—has just dropped his nemesis right on his doorstep.

River can’t meet Tyler’s eye.

Tyler turns to Sebastian. “How did you even get here in this snowstorm?”

“Flew in last night,” Sebastian says, shrugging. “Roads weren’t bad yet between here and Burlington.”

Leave it to Sebastian to fly toward a blizzard, not away from it, just because hecan. It dawns on me that my text warning him about the Yeti is probably the very thing that made him want to come—I should have known he’d be the thrill-seeking type who loves the drama of a storm like this.

“Showed up unannounced in the middle of the night,” River finally says. “Said he needed to talk to Alix about the book—so I brought him to Alix.Notin the middle of the night, and you’re welcome for that.”

Tyler studies River for what feels like forever, presumably adding up all the pieces: that in order for River to hook me up with the penthouse like he did, he must have known who I was writing about this entire time.

I’m more convinced than ever that it’s not serendipity that Tyler and I met the way we did—but that River put me in Tyler’s path on purpose.

“You knew.” It’s Sebastian who turns on River now, furious. “All this time, you knew where he was? You could havesaidsomething.” He cuts his eyes toward Tyler. “And you could have, too. I was drunk the night you disappeared, and there were times—”

He breaks off, and the silence he leaves in his wake feels like an apocalyptic wasteland.

Gone is the Sebastian who claimed Jett Beckett’s disappearance was the best thing that ever happened to him. That may still be true, but he’s clearly also got a lot of pent-up anger. Even if it did eventually change Sebastian’s life for the better, Jett leaving the band affected all of them. Itendedthem.

“I always wondered,” he goes on, voice breaking, “if I’d said something that pushed you over the edge somehow. Iworriedabout you.”

For a split second, I’m tempted to back into Tyler’s place and let the guys work out their drama on their own—but then Sebastian turns on me too.

“And evenyouknew?” he says. “How many voice memos did I make talking about the hell I went through dealing with rumors and internet trolls?”

Approximately six hours’ worth, my mind fills in automatically, but Sebastian keeps talking before I can give an actual answer.

“You didn’t think, not once, that it might be relevant to mention that Jett Beckett is alive and well and, oh hey, livingright next door to you?”

---