Page 3 of One More Made Up Love Song (Midnight Rush #2)

CHAPTER TWO

Freddie

I pour a handful of Starburst Minis into my hand and sort out the yellow and orange from the pink and red. Ivy wordlessly holds out her palm to collect the unwanted colors.

“I don’t know how you eat that stuff,” Wayne says from the couch across from us. We’re in the lounge space at the front of the tour bus on parallel bench seats under the windows on either side.

“I don’t know how you don’t,” I say to my very grouchy security guard.

“Sorry, Wayne,” Ivy says as she tosses back a handful. “I’m with Freddie on this one.”

It’s nice to hear Ivy say something positive.

For the last half hour, ever since we left CVS, she’s been cagey and more defensive than usual.

I realize I made her job harder by wandering inside when she and Wayne both told me to stay on the bus.

But it was two a.m., and the parking lot was empty.

How was I supposed to know a couple of fans were wandering the aisles?

“Can we stock up then?” Wayne asks. “To avoid late-night snack runs?”

“Not a bad idea,” I say as I toss back another handful.

“Though I can’t promise I won’t crave something else next time.

” I nudge Ivy’s knee. “It’ll be fine. Ivy’s quick thinking saved me tonight.

It will next time too.” It’s a little pointed, as far as compliments go, but I want more evidence that Ivy is okay—that she isn’t still upset with me.

As much as we tease and banter and joke about getting on each other’s nerves, I care about what Ivy thinks.

“What does that mean?” Wayne asks before Ivy can respond. “Quick thinking? I thought you just hid in the diaper aisle until the fans left.”

I grin. “ We hid. Both of us together,” I say, watching Ivy, who seems much too focused on her phone. “And pretended to make out to throw them off our trail.”

“Okay,” Ivy finally says, dropping her phone onto the cushion beside her. “Do we really have to talk about it? I did what I had to do, and it wasn’t a big deal because you and me would never actually work.”

“What? Why?” I ask, suddenly feeling defensive. Not that it truly matters. I don’t have feelings for Ivy—we’ve only ever been friends. But I’m weirdly insulted that she’s so sure we couldn’t be more, even in a hypothetical sense.

“Because I know too much about you,” Ivy says, though she’s acting weirdly cagey, like she’s intentionally avoiding eye contact. “Plus, you’re completely insufferable.”

“I am not,” I say as I pour another handful of Starburst into Ivy’s hands. “Oh, wait…you got two red ones. I want those back. ”

She lifts her eyebrows, giving me a pointed look, and I grimace.

“Okay, bad timing. But you agreed to give me all the red and pink. If you want them, you can totally have them.”

Wayne chuckles. “You walked right into that one.”

I frown into my hand of color-sorted Starburst. An unfortunate side effect of my celebrity status is that most of the time, I don’t even have to ask to get what I want. People are lined up to give me things, to make my life easier, to smooth every wrinkle and eliminate every possible roadblock.

It’s probably good I have people in my life who bring me back down to earth when all that attention goes to my head.

But it still stings to hear Ivy’s assessment.

Even if I’m fully aware that we would be a very bad idea—because we would—for a split second in CVS tonight, holding Ivy in my arms felt…good. It’s not like I expect her to be as moved by all the friendly touching as I was, but she could at least not be repulsed by it.

My tour manager appears from the back of the bus looking tired to the bone, the bags under his eyes framed by deep creases in his sun-worn skin.

Even though Seth looks like a retired cattle rancher who spent his days on horseback, baking himself under an Arizona sky, that’s not anywhere close to the truth.

Seth grew up in Beverly Hills with parents who both worked in show business. The Wranglers and cowboy boots he wears are more fashion accessories than practical choices, but man, can he sell the look.

Last time I was in LA to film a couple of talk shows, we lost Seth for almost three hours because someone mistook him for an extra on a Western filming nearby and shuttled him to the wrong sound stage.

We still like to tease him about that one.

“You should get some sleep,” Seth says, using a fatherly tone that only he can get away with. “We all should.”

Ivy yawns beside me. “He’s right. You have an early start tomorrow.” She glances at her watch. “Or, today, really. In just a few hours.”

“Do I? What am I doing early?”

“A radio interview,” she says. “But you’ll be done by nine if you want to sleep a little more before soundcheck.”

I breathe out a sigh. Soundcheck, then another concert.

I love what I do, but this late in the tour, back-to-back shows are pretty draining.

Ivy nudges my knee. “Ten more days,” she says, reading me as well as she always does. “Then you’ll get a break.”

I run a hand through my hair. “Hardly a break,” I say, though that’s not entirely true.

In ten days, I’ll be back home in Nashville for two months.

No tour bus.

No traveling at all.

At the end of the break, we’ll kick off the second leg of the tour with a show in Nashville before hitting seventeen more cities in the eastern half of the United States.

Then we’ll head to Europe for ten more concerts there.

I’m looking forward to the Nashville show—I love performing to a home crowd.

Well, sort of home crowd. I grew up in Seattle, but my roots feel a lot deeper in Nashville than they do in Washington, even with my family still living there.

The point is, I’m supposed to use the two months we aren’t traveling to record my next album. And that’s the last thing I feel like doing.

Mostly because I don’t have a single new song I like singing. I have dozens I could record. But none that feel like what I want to record right now.

Ivy keeps telling me to trust the process. I’ve been in this position before, and inspiration has always found me. But something is missing this time.

I can sense it, even if I can’t quite put my finger on what it is.

Maybe I’m just tired.

Tired of gas station candy and tour buses.

Tired of made-up songs about made-up emotions.

How am I supposed to write about love when I have no idea what it feels like?

“Come on,” Ivy says. “Sleep. You’ll feel better in the morning.”

I let her tug me to my feet and guide me toward the back of the bus.

We shuffle past a set of bunks where Ivy, Seth, and Wayne will sleep tonight.

My band and the rest of the crew are on another bus somewhere up ahead, but I like to have Ivy and Seth close, and I’ve had enough run-ins with fans to know it’s best to have security on my bus at all times.

Ivy reaches around me and opens my bedroom door.

Even months into the tour, I still feel twitchy about having a private bedroom when everyone else has to sleep in the bunks.

Seth keeps saying it’s my right, since I’m the one paying the bills—including everyone’s salaries.

And Ivy insists the bunks are comfortable.

But I still don’t like it.

“Dude. Why are you dragging your feet?” Ivy whispers. “ Your bed is right there. You can literally just collapse into it.”

She tugs the bag of Starburst out of my hands and gives me a gentle shove toward the bed before turning away.

“Ivy, wait.”

She pauses and looks back, brown eyes wide. “What?”

“Nothing. Just—thanks for tonight. Sorry I made things hard on you.”

Her expression softens, her lips ticking up into a subtle smile. “Don’t worry about it. I’m used to it. And everything turned out okay in the end.”

I push my hands into the pockets of my hoodie. “Do you really think I’m insufferable?”

She breathes out a sigh like me asking the question only builds her case against me. “Yes,” she says. “But it’s actually kind of endearing.”

“Endearing?”

She leans against the wall. “The way you always assume that everyone already loves you. Or you trust that everything will always work out. I envy it, honestly. I tend to plan my way into feeling confident, which requires a lot more stress.”

“So…when you say I’m insufferable, you actually mean…I’m amazing?”

She rolls her eyes, then reaches out and pats me on the chest. “Sure, Freddie,” she says with a grin. “That’s exactly what I mean.”

“For real though,” I say, not wanting her to walk away just yet. “I probably wouldn’t be so confident that everything will always work out if I didn’t have you planning for me. So maybe the right conclusion here is that we make a really good team.”

Something flickers behind Ivy’s expression that I can’t quite read. “Yeah, I guess we do,” she says. “Now go to bed. Seth already took off his boots. That means it’s time to sleep.”

“I thought I smelled something,” I say.

“I heard that,” Seth calls, his voice muffled by the privacy curtain in front of his bunk.

I watch from my bedroom door as Ivy walks to her bunk.

She reaches in and pulls out a small zippered pouch, then crosses to the bathroom.

When she turns and sees me still standing there, she shakes her head, giving me an exasperated look before she picks up her hand, using two fingers to mime walking as she tilts her head toward my room.

As tired as I am, I don’t know why I’m so restless—why I’m resisting going to bed in the first place. If I were smart, I would have been asleep an hour ago. But after what happened in CVS, or maybe just after the conversation we had, I’m craving validation like I haven’t before.

From Ivy, specifically.

She was so quick to say that we would never work.

Why does that bother me so much?

When Ivy disappears into the bathroom, I finally turn and shut my bedroom door, sighing before I kick off my shoes and collapse onto my bed.