Page 12 of One More Made Up Love Song (Midnight Rush #2)

Which, rumors are just rumors. And most of the time, they don’t matter.

But Margot has…shall we say…a complicated reputation.

She’s known for throwing days-long parties wilder than anything any normal person could imagine.

She’s been arrested multiple times on a variety of charges—shoplifting, driving under the influence, malicious destruction of personal property.

The list is long, but not as long as the line of zeroes at the end of her father’s bank account balance, so she’s never been held accountable. At least not publicly.

The point is, with Freddie’s newly rehabbed reputation, the last thing he needs is for his name to appear in a headline anywhere near Margot’s. Which means Carina needs to get away from Margot—the sooner the better.

I switch back to my text thread and send another message.

Ivy

Hey. Are you with Margot? Carina, it’s not a good idea. Can you call me? Wherever you are, I can help you leave. Send a car. Buy you a plane ticket. Whatever you need.

Back on Instagram, I click over to Margot’s account.

I can’t find anything else that suggests she and Carina are still together, but Carina’s lack of response is still concerning.

The photo of the two of them was posted just yesterday.

It looks like they’re at a beach, but the background is generic enough that it could be any beach.

East Coast, West Coast, or anywhere else.

I could always just call Margot and ask where they are. I doubt Freddie still has her number, but he could get it if he wanted it.

But if word got back to Margot that Freddie was looking for her, he’d never hear the end of it. And neither would the paparazzi. I’ve never known any celebrity—if you can even call Margot a celebrity—who leans into tabloid attention more than she does.

Which means—maybe I just leave this alone?

Carina’s an adult. She’s got enough sense in her head to take care of herself.

But she’s usually pretty good at responding to text messages, so her lack of response is more concerning than not.

I turn off my phone and lean my head back against the crate, closing my eyes. The bass from Freddie’s show reverberates through my body, making my ribs rattle, but I’m so used to it at this point, I hardly notice the noise.

“Thank you,” Freddie says to the crowd when a particularly loud eruption of cheers comes to a stop. “I’m liking the energy here tonight, but we’re going to slow things down for a minute. Do we have any couples in the crowd?”

Another cheer fills the stadium.

“A few, then,” Freddie jokes. “What about right here in the front row? The two of you? You’re together?”

I can’t hear the other side of Freddie’s conversation, but it’s easy enough to follow along.

It helps that he does this every show—finds a couple in the crowd before singing his first single from his first solo album.

As far as love songs go, it’s pretty perfect.

Freddie is tagged in wedding videos multiple times a day by couples who use it for their first dance, even years after its release.

It’s still trending on TikTok, and rightly so.

Even though Freddie’s music is strongly pop, “Only Always” has a more timeless vibe to it, and the lyrics are smart enough that they don’t really get stale.

I tend to get tired of music really fast, cycling stuff through my playlist regularly, but even I still like this song. Which is saying a lot.

“How many years have you been together?” I hear Freddie ask. “Ten?” he says, after another pause. “And tonight is your anniversary?”

I stretch and climb off the box, knowing that the next time Freddie is backstage, he’ll ask me to get a gift basket to the couple in the front row.

It’s become somewhat of a game for me to anticipate when and if Freddie will request one, mostly so I can give him a smug look when he asks and I get to tell him it’s already done.

I always have a few ready just in case, but I’ll need to personalize the card and coordinate with security to make sure it’s delivered to the couples’ seats before the end of the concert.

“Happy Anniversary,” Freddie says. “And thanks for celebrating with me and one hundred thousand of my friends.” The crowd laughs, then Freddie adds, “Melanie and Jared, this one’s for you.”

“How did you know I was going to ask for a gift basket?” Freddie asks.

He’s lying on the couch in his hotel suite, and when he lifts his arms to stretch, a tiny band of skin appears at the hem of his t-shirt.

His pants are sitting low enough that I catch a glimpse of a swirl of ink just beside his hip bone, and I wonder if I’ve just discovered secret tattoo number eighteen.

But then he shifts and rolls over, tugging his t-shirt back down.

I clear my throat. “How could I not know?” I say. “You’re very predictable.”

“I’m not predictable.” He adjusts the throw pillow under his head. “Can you toss me one of the pillows from the bed in there?”

“Absolutely not,” I say. “Because then you’ll fall asleep on the couch, which is criminal when you have an entire hotel suite at your disposal. Also, you need to eat.”

“I didn’t eat?” he asks, and I let out a chuckle.

“Not yet.” I walk over and nudge the bottom of his foot.

Freddie is lean and lanky and over six feet tall, built more like Tom Hiddleston’s Loki than Chris Hemsworth’s Thor, but he’s still making the couch look tiny, his long limbs hanging off the end like it belongs in a Hobbit house.

“Come on. Sit up. Your food will be here any second.”

Right on time, a knock sounds on the hotel suite door.

I cross to open it, knowing it’ll be Wayne with the DoorDash I ordered.

“Thanks, Wayne,” I say as he hands over the food.

He nods. “No problem. He’s in for the night?”

“Pretty sure.”

“I’m going to do the rounds and check in with the security team, then I’ll be up.” He holds up a finger and points it at me. “Are you in for the night? Because if you try to pull another?—”

“It happened once, Wayne. Once. You’re worse than my dad.”

“It only takes once,” he says dryly.

I roll my eyes, even though I know he’s right.

The once he’s thinking of, I snuck out of a hotel in Kansas to satisfy a craving for Krispy Kreme and wound up running into a fan who actually recognized me.

That almost never happens. I’m pretty good at staying out of the limelight.

But I’m always traveling with Freddie, so his most serious fans know who I am.

Inside the Krispy Kreme, the fan cornered me and pestered me with question after question.

I was afraid to leave because I’d walked three blocks from the hotel, and I was pretty sure she would follow me back if I did.

I managed to text Wayne an SOS, and he came to my rescue, but he hasn’t let me forget how important it is that when I’m traveling with Freddie, I can’t go anywhere without a member of the security team .

Going into the CVS the other night stretched my leash about as far as Wayne will allow.

“It’s my job to be worse than your dad,” he says.

“Yeah, yeah, I get it. I promise. When I leave here, I’ll walk straight to my room and nowhere else.”

Since Freddie has a second show in Chicago the day after tomorrow, his entire crew is spread across a few different hotels—a blissful break from the tour bus and a little more downtime than we normally get.

“Good,” Wayne says. “Be right back.”

When I make it back to the suite’s living room, Freddie is sitting up, elbows propped onto his knees and his fingers pressed into his eye sockets. I drop the bag onto the coffee table.

“Your dinner.”

His eyes pop open. “Mushroom and Swiss?”

“With fries and cheese curds,” I say.

“Did you get the?—”

“It’s in the bag.”

He lets out a groan as he pulls out a Culver’s burger, followed by a container of cheese sauce because he’s a total weirdo and likes to dip his cheese curds in more cheese.

“I didn’t even have to tell you, and you still knew what I wanted.”

“I did,” I say. Because I always do.

He unwraps his burger and takes a huge bite, then lets out a low groan. “Ivy, I love you with my whole entire soul.”

I stumble at his words, catching myself on the back of the chair sitting opposite the sofa.

He looks up. “You okay?”

“Yep!” I say, my voice a little too high. “Just…tripped on the rug.” I walk to the mini fridge at the wet bar against the wa ll and pull out a water bottle, twisting the cap off as I walk it back to him.

“Marry me?” Freddie says as he takes the water, and I force myself to roll my eyes, even as a tiny pinch registers somewhere in the back of my heart.

I don’t know why I thought things might be different after what happened in his dressing room earlier, but this is a joke he’s made a thousand times. The fact he’ll still make it has to mean the interaction didn’t register for him the same way it did for me.

Which sucks because the deeper my real feelings become, the harder it is to hear him joke about having fake ones.

I sit down across from him, forcing myself to act normal. To pretend like there isn’t anything about this interaction that hurts. “I’m too good for you, Freddie,” I say, and he grins.

“Truest words you’ve ever spoken.”

“Have you heard back from your parents?” I ask. We have a Seattle show coming up, and Freddie asked me to keep a private box open for them just in case, but I’ll eat my favorite Converse if they actually show up. This won’t be the first time he’s played Seattle, and they never come.

He frowns before taking another enormous bite of his burger. “Yeah. Mom texted back. They’ve got something going on that night.”

“Of course they do,” I say dryly. “One of Harold’s tournaments?”

“Some sort of faculty something. I don’t know. She didn’t give me much detail. It’s fine. It would probably stress me out to have them there. I’d worry about them, and then I’d get all up in my head, and the show would suck, and for what? It’s honestly easier this way.”