Before He Was Gone: Starstruck Book 2 Read Online Free PDF Page B

to the waitress for the check but she’s looking at her cell. I get up from the bench as Harri picks up her own cell, make my way to the counter. On the way over, a magazine on the edge of a table catches my eye. It’s some girl’s mag - In Touch .
    I stop. Noah Lockton’s on the cover with his girlfriend - that pretty photographer chick with the blog everyone seems to love. But there’s someone else next to them.
    ‘Can I see this?’ I say to the teenager it belongs to. She nods, slurps on her shake as I pick it up. It’s the girl from the interview; the one who was standing outside the boardroom. She’s a celebrity? I thought she looked familiar.
    ‘What’re you doing?’ Harri’s standing next to me now.
    ‘This girl,’ I say, tapping at her face with my finger.
    ‘That’s Alyssa The Greek,’ Harri says.
    ‘Who?’
    ‘She’s dating Noah Lockton’s drummer. Well, she was. I think he ditched her.’
    I look back to the image. She’s as beautiful as she was in person, in the second or so I got to take in her face. Angular cheeks, short, styled hair. Tiny waist with proper curves. But something stirs in my stomach as I study her in the glare of some paparazzi’s flash; her glossy lips, her tiny red dress, her manicured hand gripping Chloe’s arm. It’s the same discomfort I felt back in L.A. She makes it real, what I’m doing. She’s competition - if she even made it in. 
    I’m about to tell Harri what I know when the doors to the diner fly open and three people stroll in. One is Mitchell. Two are hidden by cameras.
    ‘Gotcha!’ Harri cries suddenly, springing away from me. A grin has broken out on her face. My heartbeat quickens and I stand rigid as a camera guy runs up to me and everyone in the room stops to stare in confusion. Ed Bernstein appears. Cell phones spring up all around me. Shit.
    ‘Joshua Brenner!’ Ed cries. He’s the show’s presenter, here in the flesh. He’s headed up the last ten seasons, hosted all the challenges and council meetings. He’s shorter in real life. A girl in the corner is almost choking on her burger, struggling to breathe as she tries to take his photo over the back of her booth. America loves Ed Bernstein.
    I pull myself together, try not to look as shocked as I am. Harri’s next to Mitchell now. Both have their arms folded. ‘Nice one, Potter,’ I hear him tell her. 
    ‘Sorry to walk in on your lunch, Joshua, but your friends here agreed to see you off in style,’ Ed says, holding a mic up to my face. ‘I hear the bacon cheeseburgers are the best in town – I hope you had your fill. Got everything with you?’
    ‘Yes sir, got the yacht right outside,’ I say, walking back to the bench and grabbing my backpack. A camera guy trails me. I look at the nachos we didn’t finish. Will they become the last proper thing I had to eat, and then abandoned? I consider reaching for Harri’s leftover Diet Coke, just ‘cause I’ll be drinking nothing but coconuts and water for the next eight weeks, but I force my brain to unscramble. This is the start of everything.
    I turn to the lens pointed at me. ‘Take me to paradise, Ed Bernstein,’ I say with a grin as more flashes go off and everyone in the room erupts into a cheer.
    Ed talks more about Austin and how the guys at the climbing center were all in on the surprise. He’s wearing his trademark jeans and un-tucked brightly colored shirt with no logo. This one’s blue. His buzz cut looks fresh. I shove my hat onto my head. What the hell am I doing?
    ‘It's day one of Joshua’s adventure of a lifetime, folks,’ Ed says to the camera as he leads me past the tables of clicking cell phones and whispering people. ‘This is his chance to show that he can endure being deserted . Here’s where he waves goodbye to life as he knows it, oh, and decent food - mind if I have a fry?’ He snatches a French fry from a girl’s plate and she laughs, snapping another shot of his perfectly sparkly TV grin.
    My