My Fake Boyfriend Is a Global Superstar novel · Chapter 2 of 24
Chapter 2: The Garage
Maeve and the stranger escape through the kitchen, Lila and Corbin corner them in the garage, Maeve stays by choice and strikes a sixty-day deal; Rex calls to say deny her by morning or the tour ends.
The lawn did not stay polite for long.
Phones were up, voices were rising, and somebody near the stage was already saying his name.
"Walk with me," Ashton said into my ear, "and don't look back."
He put his cap on again and hooked my hand through his elbow.
We moved through the crowd in a bubble of flashing screens.
Corbin said my name twice behind us.
I didn't turn around.
Ashton led me through a kitchen full of waiters holding trays and not asking questions.
A cook with a towel on his shoulder pointed at a back door without being asked.
"Thank you," Ashton said.
"Do I get a picture?" the cook said.
"Later," Ashton said, "I promise."
The door opened onto a service drive, and beyond it a three-car garage with its door half up.
An old green pickup truck sat inside with mud on the tires.
"That's yours?" I said.
"I drove myself so no one would know I came."
"Why did you come?"
"I was invited and I wanted to see something."
"What?"
He looked at me for a long moment, and the cap hid half of it.
"I'll tell you when I know," he said.
Footsteps clicked on the concrete behind us.
Lila Ardmore came into the garage with her heels in one hand and Corbin half a step behind.
Up close, her smile had gone.
Her eyes were flat and very clear.
"That was cute," she said.
"Lila," Ashton said.
"Don't." She didn't look at him.
She looked at me from my shoes to my hair.
"A vet tech," she said, in the soft voice she must save for private rooms.
"I'm told you clean teeth on cats."
"Dogs, too," I said.
"Take what he gives you, honey. He's a rental."
The words hit my chest.
"That's enough," Ashton said, in a tone I hadn't heard from him yet.
"I'm not done," Lila said.
"You wanted a scene on my lawn. You got one."
"Now you can go home to whatever apartment you've got, and I'll go back to my engagement party."
Corbin cleared his throat.
"Maeve, please. We can talk about this. I was going to tell you."
"When?" I said.
"Soon."
"When the ring cleared?"
He flinched.
"Fifty-two thousand dollars," I said. "Where is it, Corbin?"
"This isn't the place."
"It's a garage with three witnesses. It's exactly the place."
Lila laughed once, a small bright sound.
"She wants her money, Cor. Give her the money."
"I can't, it's not liquid," he said.
"It's on your fiancée's finger," I said.
Nobody said anything.
Lila turned her left hand over and looked at the diamond like she was seeing it for the first time.
"Then I suppose she can send me a bill," she said.
Ashton opened the passenger door of the truck.
"Maeve," he said, "I can drive you home."
I looked at the open door.
I looked at Corbin, who couldn't hold my eye.
I looked at Lila, who could, and who was enjoying it.
My apartment had two chairs and a dead plant.
It also had a bed I'd made that morning for a man who was never coming back to it.
"No," I said. "Drive."
I climbed in.
Ashton shut the door, walked around, and got behind the wheel.
He backed out so smoothly that Lila had to step aside to keep her toes.
We hit the street, and flashes lit the windshield from both sides.
He drove through them.
On the freeway, the noise died, and I realized my hands were shaking in my lap.
"Thank you," I said. "For not saying no."
"You're welcome."
"You don't owe me anything."
"I know."
"Did I make it worse for you?"
He laughed, and it was a real laugh, a little cracked.
"Maeve, in three years nobody has ever made Lila Ardmore look like that."
"Like what?"
"Like she'd been caught."
"Is that good?"
"I think it might be the best night I've had in a while."
I stared at him.
"You're her boyfriend."
"The internet says so."
"And you?"
"It's complicated, and it's mostly not what the internet thinks. Ask me in a week."
It was a bad answer, and I knew it.
But my whole body was shaking, and I had five years of Corbin's good answers to compare it to.
"Then I want a deal," I said.
"Go on."
"Sixty days. I'm your girlfriend in public, and Corbin and Lila have to watch it."
"At the end I get my money, and you get whatever you're after."
"What do I get?"
"A girlfriend nobody picked for you."
He was quiet for a mile.
"No kissing unless there's a camera," he said.
"Fine."
"No lies to each other."
"You just told me to ask you in a week."
"No lies about the things I do tell you," he said. "And either of us can end it with a single word."
"What word?"
"Ohio."
"Why Ohio?"
"It's where I'm from, and nobody ever says it on purpose."
I held out my hand.
He took it, and his thumb was warm over my knuckles.
His phone lit up on the dash, and the screen said REX.
He let it ring until the speaker picked up by itself.
"Where are you?" said a man's voice, flat and silver.
"Driving."
"Your girl from the party. I want her denied by morning, or I end the tour."
Ashton looked at me, and I saw him decide.
"Then let it end," he said.
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