My Online Crush Swore He Wasn't the Idol, Then His Song Sang My Secrets novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Lights Off

Lena beats Brynn to the cabin and lies to her face to hide him, then he steps into the moonlight with Jasper's exact face and a smear of makeup on his wrist.

Brynn's shift at the Inn ended at nine.

I knew that because she'd complained about it at every rehearsal for three summers.

At eight I messaged rowF7.

"Somebody from town is coming to your cabin tonight with a camera. She thinks you're him."

No answer.

At eight-fifteen I tried again.

"Jay. She traced your rental car. Please answer."

Nothing.

At eight-thirty I put a crate of peaches in the back of Mom's pickup and drove out Route 9 with the windows down.

I told myself it was because I hated Brynn.

That was only partly true.

The cabin sat at the end of a gravel drive, right on the lake.

A grey rental sedan was parked under a pine.

Every window was dark.

I carried the crate up the porch steps and knocked.

Nobody came.

I knocked again.

"Jay? It's Lena. From the play."

A floorboard creaked on the other side of the door.

Then his voice came through the screen, low and close.

"You shouldn't be here."

I couldn't see him at all.

The inside of the cabin was black. There was only the lake behind me, going silver.

"I messaged you," I said.

"My phone's off. I turn it off at night so I don't read the news."

"Brynn's coming. The girl who posted the picture. Ten thousand dollars says you're Jasper Larkspur."

He was quiet.

I heard him breathe out.

"Then I'd better stay in the dark."

"Can I at least see you?"

"Not yet."

His voice did something to the back of my neck.

It was deep and a little rough.

I had heard that voice before.

Gwen played it in the diner kitchen every single morning.

"You sound like him too," I said.

"I know. It's a problem."

Headlights swung across the pines.

A white hatchback crunched down the gravel and stopped right behind the pickup.

"Go inside," I whispered. "Stay away from the windows."

"Lena..."

"Go."

I pulled the chain on the porch light.

It buzzed and came on yellow, full of moths.

I stood right under it with my arms crossed, so I was the only thing to look at.

Brynn got out with a camera around her neck the size of a brick.

She stopped when she saw me.

"What are you doing here?"

"Delivering peaches."

"At nine o'clock at night."

"He's old. He goes to bed early. Mom sends him a crate every week."

Brynn looked past me at the dark windows.

"He."

"Mr. Whoever. He rents this place every summer. He's about eighty and he has a cat."

I have no idea where the cat came from.

It just came out of my mouth.

Brynn raised the camera and aimed it at the front window.

I stepped in front of it.

"Brynn, if you flash that thing in an old man's window, he's calling the sheriff. And the sheriff is going to call the Inn."

She lowered it an inch.

"The car was rented under a fake name."

"Old people don't like their names on things."

"You're lying."

"I'm standing on his porch with his peaches. What are you doing on it?"

We stared at each other under the moths.

Brynn had always been better at this than me.

She was better at everything on a stage except the part where you mean it.

"If this is him, Lena, you're going to be the stupidest girl in Ohio."

"If this is him, you can have Rose."

She laughed.

Then she got back in her hatchback and threw gravel on my shins pulling out.

I watched her taillights all the way to the road.

My hands were shaking.

I set the crate down on the porch and sat on the top step because my knees wouldn't hold me.

The screen door creaked behind me.

"You have a cat now?"

I turned around.

He stepped out of the dark and onto the porch, just past the edge of the yellow light.

The moon was bright over the lake.

It was enough.

It was the face from Gwen's door.

Not close. Not similar.

Exactly.

The dark hair falling in his eyes. The sharp jaw. The little scar through the left eyebrow.

He was taller than he looked on television.

He stood there with his hands in his pockets and let me look.

"Well?" he said.

"You're him."

"I'm the guy they pay to be him. There's a difference. He's the one who sings."

He sat down on the step beside me.

Not touching.

"Nobody's ever lied for me before," he said. "Not for free."

"It wasn't free. Now I have to find an eighty-year-old man with a cat."

He laughed.

I'd seen that laugh in a music video.

It was better in person.

He picked a peach out of the crate and turned it over in his hand.

"Can I ask you for something?"

"You can ask."

"Save me seat F7. For Saturday."

"People will see you."

"People saw you tonight. You didn't run."

He handed me the peach.

That was when I saw his left wrist, in the moonlight, where his sleeve had slid back.

There was a smear of skin-colored makeup across the inside of it.

Thick and matte, like somebody had painted over something.

Right where Jasper Larkspur had his star.

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