Page 16 of Billionaires Don’t Date Cheerleaders (Texting the Boyband #2)

sixteen

“Sloane! What are you doing here?” she demanded.

“What are you doing here?” I shot back.

“I—” Grace faltered just as a door across the hall opened, and Megan came out with Hudson close behind. “Megan?”

“Oh!” Megan said. She wiped at her lips, where her lipstick was all smudged. “Hey guys.”

“Don’t ignore the question,” I said to Grace. “What are you doing here?”

“I was… just… um… hanging out… with Neil.” She looked at Megan and then at me. “Now, what are you two doing here?”

“And I was hanging out with Hudson,” Megan said slowly.

“Same here,” I said. “I mean—Jude. I was hanging out with Jude.”

“We were all just hanging out and not doing anything else,” Megan said.

“I don’t even know what else we could be doing,” Grace said. I guess we had a good understanding going on.

The bathroom door opened, and Finn walked out with steam billowing out behind him, wrapped only in a small towel. He stopped short when he saw the three of us standing in the middle of the hallway.

“Um…” His hand moved to grip the towel where it was tucked in like he was trying to make sure it didn’t suddenly fall off. “Hi?”

“Hi,” I said.

“Hi,” Megan said.

Grace just stared at him with wide eyes, her face flushing red. I guess it wasn’t every day you saw your favorite member of a boyband fresh out of the shower.

“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 to climb out your bandmate ’ s window to get out of the house.”

Jude’s head snapped. “What?”

“You’re not mad they were in our rooms?” Hudson asked timidly.

George sighed. “I’m trusting you to be responsible enough to have that privilege. But for goodness’ sake, if you’re going to invite a girl to your house, the least you can do is let her enter and leave through the front door. Don’t you owe them that?” As the boys looked down in shame, he turned to us. “I’m so sorry about this, girls. As I’m sure, you’ll soon realize, if you haven’t already, teenage boys sometimes lack a certain amount of common sense.”

“We were just worried about you seeing them,” Hudson mumbled.

“Yes, well…” George gestured his arm to the hallway. “Why don’t we head downstairs? We can have some tea, and I’ll get to know your lovely girlfriends.”

“He already likes them more than us,” Jude said to Neil in a stage whisper.

George patted Jude on the shoulder as he walked out of the room. “It doesn’t take much, Luca Jude.”