Page 18 of One More Made Up Love Song (Midnight Rush #2)

CHAPTER NINE

Freddie

I see Ivy before Wayne does, running from the front door, her arm hooked through Carina’s as she drags her sister forward. Carina slips, falling to her knees and nearly pulling Ivy down with her.

I’m out of the car before Wayne can stop me, running across the seashell driveway to help.

I try to catch Ivy’s gaze, but she’s focused on the car, looking past me—maybe through me?—with singular focus.

“Let’s get you into the car,” I say, stepping under Carina’s free arm and shifting her into my arms. Wayne is out of the car now too, and he’s got the back door open and ready for us.

“Margot’s coming,” Ivy says as soon as Carina is in the backseat. She shoves Carina’s bag onto the floorboard behind the driver’s seat. “We need to go now .”

I nod but we haven’t made it two steps before Margot appears on the porch. She’s motioning to someone inside the house, then a man appears beside her, wearing a backward baseball cap and holding a camera in his hand.

I don’t always love that I’ve never known adulthood without fame.

But it’s taught me a lot, and right now, everything I’ve picked up from Wayne’s constant vigilance is helping me recognize all kinds of red flags.

It only takes me a matter of seconds to read my current situation and intuitively sense exactly what’s going to happen next.

Margot is walking toward me, in a bikini, with a purpose that immediately makes my skin crawl, while the man on the porch has his camera lifted, one hand adjusting the lens.

I have no idea why there’s a photographer camped out at Margot’s party in the first place—though I shouldn’t be surprised. It feels like a very Margot move to invite the paparazzi into her personal space. She’s always loved being seen.

Regardless of why he’s here, with the backdrop of Margot’s Malibu beach house, one photo of the two of us together would be tabloid fodder for weeks.

We don’t even need to be side by side. We only need to be in the same frame for Margot to use it to her advantage.

Rumors about the two of us vacationing together or having some sort of secret rendezvous. A hidden relationship, a one-night stand, however she spins it—and she will—it won’t be good for me.

So much of my audience is young. Teenagers. Even middle-schoolers. I’m a role model for them whether I want to be or not, and Margot is constantly mixed up in things that make that harder. Plus, I’m just so tired of her lying about me. And that’s all she seems to do these days.

My frustration grows at the futility of my situation, but then Ivy reaches out and grips my arm. “Do you remember that moment in CVS?”

I shake my head, struggling to understand why she’s asking me this now. “What?”

“When we pretended to make out,” she says. “This is just like that moment. Except, this time, you need to kiss me for real.”

I blink, still not fully processing what Ivy is telling me.

She reaches for me, wrapping her arms around my waist. “Trust me,” she quickly whispers. “This will work. We just have to give the photographer a bigger story than you and Margot together at a Malibu beach house.”

Understanding finally clicks in my brain. If I’m kissing someone else, a photo of Margot and me in the same frame won’t matter nearly as much.

I look back at Margot, who is closing in quickly. She lifts her hands to her bikini top, adjusting the straps as she walks.

Ivy’s right. This is the only move I’ve got.

So I lift my hands to my assistant’s face and press my lips to hers.

It’s a quick kiss—it has to be, because the gesture needs to seem like something we’ve done a million times before.

Like we’re together. Like I’m kissing her because I was worried she was taking so long, and now I’m happy to see her.

Like the only reason I came to Margot’s beach house was to pick up my very serious girlfriend’s sister.

But I don’t miss the zing of electricity that passes through me when my lips touch hers. All this talk of shifting feelings, all the moments of questioning—they crystalize into tangible certainty in a matter of seconds.

I like kissing Ivy Conway.

I lean forward, pressing another quick kiss to Ivy’s jaw just beside her ear. “We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” I joke. “Also thank you for saving me.”

I kiss Ivy one more time, two quick pecks, then we turn to face Margot. Ivy slips an arm around my waist, tucking herself into my side like a real girlfriend might.

“Hey, Margot,” I say as I turn to face her. “Thanks for hosting Carina. I’m sure she had a great time.”

Margot presses her lips together, not even trying to hide her frustration. “No problem,” she says dryly.

Ivy lifts her chin and looks at me. “I’m ready to go, babe.”

We really do need to get out of here. The quicker the better.

“I’m driving,” Wayne says, and Ivy doesn’t argue. She just climbs into the backseat next to her sister without another word.

Seconds later, we’re pulling down the driveway toward the security gate, Margot a disappearing figure in the rearview mirror.

I finally breathe out a sigh as I turn in my seat so I can look at Ivy. “That was amazing thinking on your part,” I say, but something feels off about her body language. She looks dazed, maybe a little frustrated? It’s hard to tell.

As happy as I was to kiss Ivy and thwart Margot’s attempts to co-op the moment for a photo, the reality is, I wouldn’t have thought to do it had Ivy not suggested it.

Once she did, agreeing seemed like a clear and obvious choice.

Having the world think I’m in a relationship with Ivy is worlds better than having them think I’m in a relationship with Margot.

But now I’m beginning to question my judgment.

Does Ivy have regrets? Was it so bad of a kiss that she wishes she’d never suggested it ?

Carina lets out a low moan, and Ivy reaches for her, shifting her sister so her head is resting in Ivy’s lap. Ivy runs a hand over Carina’s hair, but the movement is mechanical, her gaze locked on the window as the California landscape slides by.

Several moments pass before Ivy says, “You should probably reach out to Sloane. She’ll want to call Kat so she can come up with a plan before the photos of us are released.”

“ If they’re released,” I say. “Margot might persuade the guy not to sell them. He was there for her, after all. It doesn’t really serve her purposes for the world to know we’re together.”

“We aren’t together,” Ivy says, her words clipped.

“No, I know,” I quickly correct. “Just—if the photos are released, the world will believe we are. I know it’s not the same thing.”

“Freddie, no paparazzi is going to ignore an opportunity to sell photos of you kissing someone. Not for Margot. Her influence doesn’t come close to competing with yours.”

I sigh and sink into my seat, knowing that Ivy is right.

“The reality is,” she continues, “we don’t know what Margot is going to do or what the photographer will do. But you need to brace yourself for any possibility, and that means your team needs to know what happened.”

It’s not lost on me that even with her drunk sister asleep in her lap, Ivy is still calm. Still collected. Still thinking about what’s best for me. That’s why she asked me to kiss her in the first place. She was looking out for my image. My reputation.

I’m not sure I deserve that kind of loyalty.

And I can’t quite shake the feeling that I’ve knocked over the first domino in a cascade of consequences I can’t yet see.

Carina is awake but still woozy by the time we make it back to the hotel.

Wayne swipes his key card to get us into the private garage, then we wordlessly make our way to the elevator.

There’s no show tonight—I don’t perform until tomorrow—so for once, I don’t have anywhere to be or anything to do.

My plan was to spend the time writing, figuring out what I’m going to put on the next album, but now, all I want to do is talk to Ivy.

Make sure she’s okay.

Make sure what happened didn’t somehow ruin everything between us.

Outside of our working relationship, I also don’t want to lose my friendship with Ivy. She means a lot to me. Too much for me to have something like this screw things up.

I think of the way it felt to press my lips against hers.

In any other circumstance, a feeling like that might compel me to try for something more. To explore the possibility of a real relationship.

But it feels wrong to pursue something now when it feels like the relationship we already have is suddenly on the line. I don’t want to doubt what I felt when I kissed her, but emotions were high. I was thinking fast and acting faster. Who’s to say my judgment wasn’t clouded?

Even if my feelings are legit and Ivy happens to feel the same way, if a photo of us kissing is released, we will have lost the opportunity to explore something more in private. To see how we feel about each other before we find a way to make it fit with my very public life.

Our situation would have made dating complicated before, but I just took complicated and threw it into a blender with a side of stressful, a full cup of uncertainty, and two helpings of very, very public.

Ivy doesn’t even look at me before she peels off from the group and heads to her own hotel room, her arm wrapped protectively around Carina’s waist.

I follow Wayne to my suite, the ache in my chest shifting into frustration. I’m self-aware enough to realize that my frustration shouldn’t be directed at Ivy. But I’m frustrated with the situation, I’m anxious to talk to her, and I’m completely incapable of fixing any of it.

Wayne follows me into my suite, but something about his body language feels off, and it makes my skin prickle with annoyance. “What’s wrong with you?”

He shoots me a look. “Nothing.”

“Don’t lie to me, man.”

“What’s done is done,” he says. “There’s nothing to say. No reason to fight about it.”

I scoff. “What are you talking about?”

He gives his head a little shake. “Freddie, you kissed her,” Wayne says. “Did you think for two seconds about how that might impact her life?”

“I kissed her because she told me to,” I shoot back. “I guess I didn’t have to agree. But we’re talking about Margot here. She was trying to get close to me, and Ivy saw a way to prevent that from happening.”

“You’re right,” Wayne says. “You didn’t have to agree. Also, you could have stayed in the car.”

“Ivy needed help,” I insist. “Carina fell. I wasn’t going to just sit and watch her struggle.”

“ I could have helped,” Wayne says. “Better yet, you should have stayed at the hotel, man. We both told you that.”

“Right. Because that’s what my life is now.

Stay out of sight. Don’t go places. Hide from fans.

Do you realize how exhausting that is? How isolating it is?

Ivy is my friend, and her sister was in trouble because of me.

Why does everyone keep wanting me to do nothing?

That’s not living. That’s not caring for the people in my life. ”

Wayne sighs, his arms folded across his chest. “I get that. I do.”

He lifts a shoulder. “But she was looking out for you, and she put herself on the line to do that. And now, in a matter of hours, the whole world will probably know that you kissed her. Her parents. Her friends. The guy she’s been talking to.”

I frown, a hot flash of jealousy burning through my limbs. “She’s talking to a guy?”

“She could be,” Wayne says. “She has a life outside of you, Freddie. Sometimes I think you forget that.”

I drop onto the edge of the couch, elbows propped on my knees, and let my shoulders drop.

“I just want to make sure someone is looking out for her too,” Wayne says.

I run a hand through my hair, thinking through what this will mean for Ivy if the photos drop. Ivy’s right that I need to talk to Sloane and Kat. We’ll need to be ahead of the story so we can control the narrative.

Because there will be a narrative. People will look into Ivy’s family. They’ll dig into Carina’s past. They’ll pull up old articles about Daphne’s accident and splash them all over the internet. They will dig and poke and prod and speculate because that’s what people do.

And Ivy knows all of that.

And she was still willing to help me.

I reach for my phone, itching to talk to her. To thank her, but also to apologize .

Wayne is right. The kiss might have been Ivy’s idea, but she was acting to protect me. And I’m the one who put us in a position where I needed protecting in the first place.

I also can’t deny that when it comes to stuff like this, Ivy has the better brain.

She’s smart and logical and practical. She can always see the clearest path forward, the one that will minimize drama and have the least amount of collateral damage.

It’s one of the things I appreciate about her the most—she has good vision.

And she’s great at reading emotion, at guessing how people will react and steering focus to the things that matter the most.

But is that even fair? Can I truly expect her to advise me, assist me, when I’ve pulled her right into the middle of the drama?

I pull up our text thread, fingers hovering over my screen as I debate what to say.

Freddie

Hey. I owe you an apology. Once Carina is settled, can we talk?

She reads the message almost immediately, but she doesn’t reply. Little dots appear letting me know she’s typing a message, but then the dots disappear, and no message comes through.

I breathe out a sigh, then I switch over to Sloane’s profile and hit call.

Maybe I’ll get lucky.

Maybe the photographer won’t sell the photos. Maybe his camera was broken or the lighting was bad or Margot was standing in the way and he didn’t get any shots of me and Ivy kissing .

“What have you done?” Sloane asks as she answers the call, which can only mean one thing.

I didn’t get lucky, and the photos are already live.