Page 41 of Heartbreak Honey

Before

Skyler hadn’t expected the Sierra thing to last this long. He’d wanted to ask Trevor to tell Maggie to call it off before, but Trevor had been grieving, so he’d left it alone. He’d thought he could wait it out. But now Sierra was around all the time, and he could feel Trevor slipping away from him.

The more time and energy Trevor was forced to put into this fake relationship, the less time and energy he had left to put into his relationship with Skyler.

Yet here Skyler was, still trying.

Trevor had just returned to their hotel room after a meeting with Maggie, and Skyler had made him lasagna again, per Trevor’s request. But Trevor clearly wasn’t happy.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Skyler asked cautiously when Trevor violently stabbed a bite of lasagna onto his fork.

Trevor only grunted in response.

God, he was so sick of this. He wanted them to be like they used to be.

“Did the meeting have something to do with you and Sierra?” he pushed. Because he needed to know.

“Obviously,” Trevor said.

Skyler did his best not to glare at the short response.

Then Trevor sighed loudly and put down his fork. “Apparently, it’s our one-year anniversary.”

“Huh?” They were definitely past four years at this point.

Trevor shook his head, looking defeated. “Not ours. Me and Sierra.”

Oh.

Damn.

“But it hasn’t been nearly that long,” he argued.

“Doesn’t matter. Maggie wants to play it like we’d been together for a while before the public found out about it. I’ve been told that I’ll be buying her a nice necklace and taking her to a very expensive restaurant to give it to her. Where paparazzi will happen to catch us and take pictures.”

Skyler wasn’t sure what to say. It was irritating, more bullshit. He didn’t want Trevor to do it, of course. But Trevor was the one choosing to, so why should Trevor get to be the one to sit here and sulk?

“And I know she’s going to prompt interviewers to ask me even more obnoxious questions about it,” Trevor went on, idly pushing food around his plate.

Maybe this was Skyler’s chance to bring up what he’d been thinking about. He placed his fingers gently over Trevor’s wrist and asked him, “What would you think about asking her to end the whole thing?”

Trevor shot him a disbelieving look. “You know I can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“Because she’d give me a condescending smile and remind me that she knows what’s best for me.”

“Doesn’t mean she’s right,” Skyler said. “And doesn’t mean you can’t try.” He withdrew his hand when Trevor narrowed his eyes at him, but he kept pressing because he couldn’t help himself. “Tell her you don’t want to do it anymore. I know I don’t want you to.”

Trevor shoved his plate away and stood from the table. “You’re acting like I happily accepted this plan in the first place. Like I want to spend my limited free time with a girl I barely know, rather than my boyfriend.”

Seems like you know her a lot better by now, Skyler thought bitterly.

He was a little more than irritated now, and he probably should have just kept his mouth shut, because he’d had a feeling this would go this way if he brought it up. But he was tired of keeping quiet in order to keep the peace.

It was hard to say which one of them escalated the tense conversation into an actual fight, but the next thing he knew, they were both standing and shouting dumb shit at each other. He didn’t consider how loud they were being until, in a moment of relative silence as they each caught their breath, there was a hesitant knock on the door that joined their room with Sierra’s.

Trevor went to answer it, leaving Skyler standing there hurt and trying to get his emotions under control. He couldn’t see Sierra in the other room, but he heard her asking if everything was all right, and he wanted to yell at her to mind her own business.

But Trevor said, “Yeah, we’re fine,” and asked if she needed anything.

“Um, no,” she said. “I wanted to let you know I picked out that necklace, if you wanted to send the link to your manager.”

“Oh, right, sure. Text it to me and I’ll have them buy it.”

Skyler huffed to himself, his urge to argue renewed by the time Trevor closed the door and came back to him.

Before he could open his mouth, though, Trevor shook his head. “Don’t.”

Well, fine.

If that was how Trevor was going to be, then he’d go to bed. He pulled off his shirt and changed into his pajama pants. They had rubber ducks all over them, and he wasn’t in the mood for silly pajamas, but they were the only ones in his bag. Silently, he pulled down the duvet on the bed and climbed in under it. He closed his eyes, pretending to be more tired than he was.

Trevor settled in behind him a few minutes later and pressed a kiss between his shoulder blades. “I’m sorry.”

It took all of Skyler’s willpower not to melt into him. He didn’t want to fight anymore, but he wasn’t ready to make up either.

To his credit, Trevor kept trying. He left a trail of kisses all the way down Skyler’s spine, and once he reached the top of his ass, he made his way up again. Skyler’s resolve was slipping away. Damn it.

When Trevor reached around and slid a hand tantalizingly down Skyler’s stomach, an involuntary whine slipped from Skyer’s lips. He could feel Trevor smiling against his back now. And after Trevor curled his hand around his dick, Skyler found himself rutting forward into the grip and backward to press his ass into Trevor’s front.

By the time Trevor was buried inside him, all was forgiven. But as Skyler lay in bed after, trying to fall asleep, he worried this wasn’t how it should be. Whether on purpose or not, they shouldn’t be using sex to end a fight.

But for tonight, he supposed it was fine. He’d certainly enjoyed it. They just couldn’t let it become a habit.

On the night Trevor went out with Sierra for their fake anniversary dinner, Skyler tried to keep his mind off it by hanging out in Jermaine’s room and having a few drinks. But it wasn’t long before a few had turned into more than a few, and the drunker he got, the angrier he became.

He didn’t realize his anger was so obvious until Jermaine said, “Can you please stop stomping around and come sit? We’re going to get a noise complaint.”

“I don’t understand why he’s still going along with this garbage,” he grumbled, taking a seat in the chair opposite Jermaine.

“Does he have any choice?”

Skyler grabbed another beer and cracked it open, ignoring his friend’s concerned look. “I don’t know. Maybe it seems like we don’t have any choice but to go along with whatever crap management wants us to do, because we signed contracts that apparently let them control us, but, like, what if we just didn’t?”

“What do you mean?” Jermaine asked.

He sighed. “I’m not even sure. But I’m tired of feeling like a puppet, dancing whenever someone pulls my strings.”

“I get it, bro. Trust me. I’ve been trying to grow my hair back out for years, but they keep cutting it. And every time I suggest us doing some songs with a little more of an RB rhythm, I get shut down real fast.”

Skyler frowned. He hadn’t known Jermaine was struggling with this stuff. Jermaine wasn’t big on talking about things that upset him. Unlike Skyler. He wanted to ask more about the music issue, but Jermaine gave him a look and shrugged in a way that indicated it wasn’t up for discussion right now.

“So what are you going to do?” Jermaine asked.

He thought about it a few moments—considering all the alcohol in his system, he probably should have thought about it a lot longer—and then came to the conclusion that he needed to find Maggie immediately and have a serious talk with her. “I’m going to tell that evil manipulative shrew that I’m done with this shit and I’m coming out publicly, whether she likes it or not.”

“Oh no, you’re not,” Jermaine said, grabbing Skyler’s arm as he rose from his seat and yanking him back down. “Not tonight, at least.”

As he fell into the chair, his elbow knocked over his open beer and a bit spilled onto the carpet before he could right it. He sulked, less over the loss of alcohol and more over being told once more what he could and couldn’t do. “Why not?”

Jermaine gave him a pointed look. “You’re wasted. And if you seriously want to do that, then you should probably talk it over with Trevor first and come up with a plan for how you’ll approach management about it.”

Skyler didn’t like that idea. The last tiny sober part of his brain told him Jermaine was right. But he wasn’t interested in listening to that part right now. He didn’t want to plan or wait. He was so fucking tired of waiting. And Trevor… He wasn’t sure where Trevor stood anymore on the whole coming out thing.

He loved Trevor so much, but just once, wasn’t he allowed to do what he wanted most without taking anyone else into consideration?

If he came out, it’d make everything better. It had to.

Jermaine was still watching him sternly, so he nodded to show he’d wait, though he didn’t intend to. And he agreed when Jermaine suggested he go back to his room and get some sleep, but he didn’t expect Jermaine to follow him there and make sure he got into bed. After Jermaine left, he waited a few minutes to be safe, and then scrambled out of bed and got dressed again.

Stumbling down the hall, he had time to rethink this. But he didn’t. He pounded on Christian’s door and demanded that Christian find Maggie for him immediately because it was an emergency. He ignored the look of horrified concern on Christian’s face and Christian’s attempts to calm him down.

It wasn’t until Skyler said he’d knock on every door of the hotel if he had to that Christian finally gave in and called Maggie, trying to explain the situation.

Before dropping him off at her door, Christian gave him one more warning. “Look, kid, you know I’m always here for you, and I think you should trust me on this one. Whatever it is you’re about to do, you probably shouldn’t. You’re upset and it’s obvious you’ve been drinking. If you waited until morning, you’d have a clearer head.”

“No, I’m good. I know what I’m doing,” he insisted.

But shit, he really didn’t.

The concert was starting in five minutes, and for the first time, as Skyler waited in position backstage, he was neither nervous nor excited.

No. He was hungover, and he was pissed, and he had to try his hardest not to show either of those things.

To say Maggie had been furious with him last night would be an understatement. Not only had she laid into him for being drunk, warning him there’d be severe consequences if he was too hungover to perform properly the next day, but when he said he was going to come out and she couldn’t stop him, she’d threatened to kick him out of the band. Said she’d make up a story so he’d look like the bad guy, ensuring no one in the music industry would ever want to work with him again.

Afterward, as he’d sat alone sulking in his room like a scolded child, the only thing that kept him together was the thought that Trevor would be there soon.

Trevor had to give Sierra expensive jewelry and take her out to a fancy dinner, but it was all for show. No matter what, Skyler was the one he came home to. They didn’t need to go out to a restaurant for a romantic meal together in order to be a couple.

But Skyler still wanted that. He wanted to have all the same options as he would have had if he were straight. He wanted the chance to get all dressed up solely with the intention of taking Trevor out and showing him off. Wanted to post annoyingly cute pictures of the two of them on Instagram. Fuck, he just wanted to be able to hold his boyfriend’s hand in public.

Maggie’s threats scared the shit out of him because he didn’t want to look like the bad guy. He didn’t want everyone to believe that he thought he was better than the band.

He only wanted to be able to live his truth, and she wasn’t letting him. So underneath his worry, there was a strong undercurrent of rage.

As he’d waited for Trevor, he kept telling himself Trevor would understand. Trevor would take charge and fix things like he always did. Trevor would be on his side. They were a team.

Except now he realized that had been the alcohol talking. In the harsh light of day, he had to admit that Trevor’s reaction wasn’t all that surprising. Trevor’s stance hadn’t changed. And while he’d convinced Skyler it was for the best for them to keep playing their management’s game for now, to wait for the right time to take a stand, a part of Skyler was starting to suspect that Trevor would never decide it was the right time.

And he didn’t know if he could be okay with that.

All he could do now, though, was grit his teeth while he waited for their cue and hope his stomach wouldn’t betray him in the middle of a song. Hope he could fake his way through this. The pain was mostly emotional at this point.

As he performed, Maggie watched him like a hawk and Trevor kept shooting him concerned glances. But fuck Maggie, and Trevor didn’t get to be concerned now. He should have been concerned last night when Skyler told him what he was feeling. He should have taken his side and said, Okay, let’s both do this together. But he didn’t.

So without planning it, Skyler ended up staging his own little bitter rebellion. First, he made one tiny lyric change during “Summer of Me and You.” And probably no one even noticed. But then he made another in “18 and Mine.” And another, bigger one, in “Love Me Like It’s Easy.”

As the rest of the guys caught on, Trevor avoided him even more than he was already supposed to, Jermaine gave him one disappointed look, and Noah glared at him any time they made eye contact. Skyler should have felt bad for putting them all on edge, but he didn’t.

Oli, at least, found it amusing. He even started changing some pronouns in his own parts, laughing at himself like it was all a joke.

But it wasn’t a joke to Skyler.

He would surely pay for this later, but in the moment, he needed the catharsis. Screw the consequences. This was all he could do to pretend like he was in control.

In reality, though, he’d never felt more like everything was spinning so wildly out of control in his life.