At one point, Finn started telling a story about a tour stop that had gone spectacularly wrong—something involving a broken bus, a misplaced passport, and Luca somehow ending up onstage in the wrong city entirely. Tino listened like it wasthe most fascinating thing in the world, chiming in at the right moments, laughing in all the right places.
I watched Tino banter with the boys, watched how quickly the rhythm formed—how he didn’t overdo it, didn’t fade into the background either. He asked questions, remembered details, followed up on things they’d mentioned earlier like it mattered.
Because it did.
And I realized, with a strange mix of warmth and something dangerously close to fear, that he wasn’t trying.
He wasn’t performing for them any more than he was performing for me.
This was just… him.
Somewhere between the third song and the fifth retelling of the hockey-versus-boyband debate, Tino excused himself to help my eldest brother Asa bring out more wood. Asa, who had stayed inside all evening like clockwork, appeared briefly at the back door, exchanged a few words with Tino, and handed him gloves like this was a well-established routine. I watched them disappear toward the side of the house, my chest tightening unexpectedly.
“You’re smiling,” Nina said softly, appearing beside me.
“I am?”
She nudged my shoulder. “You look happy.”
I looked back toward the fire, toward the people who had raised me as much as they’d grown up alongside me. “He fits,” I said quietly. “I didn’t think he would. Not like this.”
Nina hummed. “Sometimes the people you expect to be temporary aren’t.”
By the time Tino came back, his cheeks were pink from the cold and he was laughing at something Asa had said, the sound easy and unguarded. He dropped back onto the bench beside me and immediately reached for the blanket, tucking it around us again like it was second nature.
“You missed Luca attempting harmony,” I told him.
He winced. “I’m devastated.”
Luca pointed at him. “Rude.”
Tino leaned closer, his voice low, meant just for me. “You okay?”
I nodded. “Yeah. I just—this is nice.”
He smiled, warm and genuine. “Yeah. It is.”
The fire burned on. The night deepened. And for the first time in a long while, I didn’t feel like I was pretending at all.
CHAPTER 20
lilah
When Lucafinally finished showing us around and left us at the end of the hall with a casual, “You two can drop your stuff in here,” I hadn’t thought much of it. I’d dropped my bag in there and then gone down to the campfire without thinking about it at all.
But I was thinking about it now.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said flatly.
There, in the middle of the room, sat one queen-sized bed. Just one. Covered in fluffy white bedding like it was mocking me.
I wrapped the blanket tighter around my shoulders—the same one I was just sharing outside with Tino as I realized that something was different and natural and comfortable between us—and stared at the single sleeping space. After all the insisting I’d done to Poppy, I really did think that Luca would give us separate bedrooms, or at the very least, separate beds.
The weird thing was that I wasn’t all that bothered at the idea of sharing a bed with Tino for a couple of nights.
But I couldn’t let him know that. I’d already opened up enough in the car. And besides, this was our game. Keep saying no, right?
“Huh,” Tino said.
