My Fake Boyfriend Is a Global Superstar novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Ohio

Maeve spends the night in his house, trades barbs with him over breakfast, trends worldwide and meets her own new rule, 'Ohio'; at 7 a.m. Rex is in the kitchen with a pen.

His house was not what I expected.

I had pictured glass and marble and a pool shaped like a guitar.

It was a low white house in Los Feliz with a crooked porch, a dying lemon tree and a kitchen that smelled like toast.

"You live here?" I said.

"I rent it. The landlord won't let me paint."

"You're the biggest star in the world."

"On the internet. Here I'm a guy who can't get the landlord to return calls."

He turned on one lamp instead of the lights, and I understood why.

There were paparazzi at the bottom of the hill, and he was keeping the house dark.

I texted Dottie from the hallway: Don't ask, bring my bag, I'm at a famous person's house.

Her reply came right away.

WHAT FAMOUS PERSON

I sent the address.

She sent back a photo of a cast-iron skillet.

"What's that?" Ashton said, reading over my shoulder.

"That's my friend. She's coming with a weapon."

"Good," he said. "Someone should."

Dottie Ames arrived forty minutes later in her chef whites, with my duffel bag over one shoulder and the skillet in her other hand.

She walked past the photographers at the bottom of the hill by pretending to be a delivery.

She stopped in the doorway and looked Ashton up and down.

"You're taller in person," she said.

"People say that."

"People are right." She handed me the bag.

"Do I need the pan?"

"I don't know yet," I said.

"Then I'm keeping it by the door."

She put it by the door.

Ashton showed me to a guest room with a narrow bed and a window over the lemon tree.

"Bathroom's down the hall," he said. "Towels are in the closet. I don't know what else people need."

"Thank you."

"For what?"

"Not asking me to explain myself."

"I figured you'd done enough of that tonight."

He stood in the doorway a moment longer, one hand on the frame.

Then he said goodnight, and I heard his footsteps go down the hall.

I did not sleep.

I lay in a stranger's guest bed in a dress that smelled like a lawn, listening to Dottie snore on the couch downstairs.

At five, I gave up and went to find coffee.

Ashton was already in the kitchen in a gray T-shirt and sweatpants, hair sticking up, frying eggs with the focus of a surgeon.

He did not look like a man who sold out stadiums.

He looked like a man who burned toast.

"You're up," he said.

"You're burning that."

"It's called crisp."

I took the spatula out of his hand and flipped the eggs.

He let me.

"Rule four," he said.

"We have a rule four?"

"If you're going to cook for me, I'm going to say thank you."

"Thank you," I said, "for the weapon-grade eggs."

He grinned, and the chipped tooth showed.

I looked away and found my phone on the counter.

It had forty-one thousand notifications.

I scrolled until the numbers stopped making sense.

A video of me holding Ashton Reeve's hand on a lawn had been watched nineteen million times since midnight.

The caption said WHO IS THE GIRL.

The first reply said a name I knew, because it was mine.

Somebody had found my clinic.

Somebody had found my picture on the clinic's website with a golden retriever in my lap.

"Okay," I said.

"Okay," he said.

"This is a lot."

"It's about to be more." He turned his own phone toward me.

Lila Ardmore had posted at four in the morning.

It was a soft-focus photo of a candle, and a caption in lowercase.

ash isn't well right now. please be gentle with him. we love him very much.

Under it, three million people had written heart emojis and prayers.

"She's telling the world you had a breakdown," I said.

"She's telling the world I'm fragile and you're the cause."

"Can she do that?"

"She and Rex can do whatever they like. It's what they're good at."

I put the spatula down.

"Ashton, who is Rex?"

"The man who owns my first three albums."

"And what does he want?"

"For me to deny you."

"And you said no."

"I said no."

I looked at him, at the burned toast and the chipped tooth and the hair he hadn't combed.

"Why?" I said.

He opened his mouth to answer.

The front door opened.

I had not heard a car, and I had not heard a knock.

Dottie sat up on the couch with the skillet already in her hand.

A man walked down the hall as if he owned it, which, it turned out, he sort of did.

He was fifty or so, with silver hair and a black suit with no tie, and a gold ring on his smallest finger.

He looked at the eggs, then at me, and smiled.

"Good morning, Miss Larkin," said Rex Kotter.

He laid a folded paper on the counter and a fountain pen on top of it.

"Please sit down," he said. "I've brought you something to sign."

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