“We were just going,” I said slowly. I inched in the direction I was pretty sure Zach’s room was. I’d only had a tour of the place once, and Jude hadn’t followed me out of his room for some reason, so I couldn’t ask him, but I was pretty sure I was right. “But, um, it was nice seeing you again.”
I had my eyes trained on Finn even as I walked away from him, so I didn’t notice somebody coming up the stairs until I stumbled right into them. For a heart-stopping moment, I thought it was the boys’ manager that we were trying to hide from, but when I finally looked, I was relieved to see it was just Zach.
“Sorry!” I said. “But, actually, now that you’re here—we need to borrow your room.”
He frowned. “My room?”
“Your window, more specifically,” I said. “Just need to climb out of it.”
“You want me to climb out of a window?” Megan asked incredulously.
“It’s the only way out without going downstairs,” I said. “Besides, it will be fine. Grace and I do it all the time, and we’ve never had problems.”
“Except for the one time I broke my ankle,” Grace said.
“But that won’t happen this time,” I said. “We just have to climb onto the roof of the garage, then down a ladder Jude said was set up there. Easy peasy.”
“We have very different definitions of easy peasy,” Megan said.
“Would you rather stay here and watch your boyfriend get yelled at for letting you up here?”
Megan sighed. “Lead the way.”
I looked at Zach. He still seemed really confused by everything going on—and honestly, I couldn’t blame him—but he took it in stride and led us down the hall to his room. We ran straight across the room to his window and Grace unlocked it and pushed it up.
“Stop. Right. There.” The deep and commanding voice made us all freeze in place. I squeezed my eyes shut, too scared to turn around and face this. “Zachary… why do you have three girls in your room?”
“Um…”
“It’s not his fault.” The British accent tipped me off to who else had appeared in the room—Hudson, probably here to save Megan. “I told them to use Zach’s window to get out of the house.”
There was a long pause.
“Could you three turn around, please?” The man asked. We all shared a resigned expression before we turned around. The man—who I could only guess was their manager, George—was standing in Zach’s doorway. He was tall and imposing, dressed in a nicely tailored suit that probably cost about as much as a car. He looked at us for a long time, and I felt more like I was in the principal’s office than my boyfriend’s house. “Am I right in assuming that one of you is Hudson’s new girlfriend?”
Megan timidly raised her hand. “That would be me, sir.”
“Megan,” Hudson supplied. George nodded slowly.
“And I’ve seen rumors online that Jude is dating someone as well,” George said. He looked at me and Grace. “Which one of you lovely ladies would that be?”
“Me,” I said.
“Which just leaves you,” he said to Grace. He stuck a hand in his suit pocket, looking way too casual for what was happening here, and raised an eyebrow. “What are you doing here?”
“Well, I’m—” Grace's voice cracked, and she cleared her throat. “I guess I’m dating Neil, sir.”
We had a lot to catch up on later.
“Neil!” George called into the hallway. “Luca! Could you come in here for a moment?”
Grace frowned in confusion. “Luca?” she whispered to me.
“I’ll explain later,” I whispered back.
Neil and Jude came into the room, and both grimaced as they realized what had happened.
“Boys,” George said. “I know you are young, but I still expect a certain level of maturity from you. And I would sincerely hope that you would know better…” All three of the boys looked at him nervously as they waited for his next words. “Than to tell your girlfriends toclimb out your bandmate’s windowto get out of the house.”
