“I thought I was supposed to be myself,” he said.
“Yes. Well. You are, but only yourpublicself.”
“Is there a difference?”
She gave him a derisive look. “We’re going to watch this video of your last interview so I can show you where you made mistakes. That way you’ll be able to do better next time.”
Skyler frowned. He felt like he was back in school, being scolded in the principal’s office—except that had never happened to him because he’d always been a model student.
As they watched the footage fromMidnight Mania, she pointed out all the instances when Trevor touched him unnecessarily, and he wondered why Trevor wasn’t in here getting this lecture too. Not that he wanted Trevor to get in trouble. When they got to the part where the interviewer asked Skyler what he looked for in a girl, he knew before Maggie could say it that this answer was where he really messed up.
“Don’t think that fans aren’t picking up on every moment your eyes go to Trevor. And your face is giving away too much. You look like someone who is already in love, rather than someone describing what he’d like to find in a girl.”
“I can’t control my face,” he said. And apparently Trevor couldn’t control his either. Skyler hadn’t realized it during the interview, but now watching it back, he could see the fondness all over Trevor’s face as Skyler described him.
“Unfortunately, you’ll need to learn how to,” Maggie told him. “As much as we’ve tried to keep the focus off your and Trevor’s relationship, your fans are talking about it more than ever. With interviews like this one, you’re giving them all the fuel they need. But it’s important that we do everything we can to discourage this speculation.” She gave him a sharp look. “I think it would be best if you two no longer sat next to each other during interviews.”
“Is that really—”
“And,” she cut him off, “we’d like you to be seen out in public with a young, up-and-coming model. The publicity will be good for both of you.”
Skyler gripped the arm of his chair so hard his knuckles turned white. He didn’t understand what was happening. He knew he and Trevor weren’t supposed to talk about their relationship because their management and the label wanted to keep the focus on the whole band and their music. But they were on their second tour. The band’s popularity and sales had already exceededeveryone’s expectations. What did it matter if some people were talking about him and Trevor now?
“You want me to date someone else?”
He wouldn’t do that. How could she think he would do that?
“No, of course not,” Maggie said with an unconcerned wave of her hand. “All you have to do is go out to lunch with her and be photographed. The public will draw their own conclusions. I promise this will be good for your image. Half the teenage girls in the world already want you. They’re going to go crazy wondering if you’re dating this girl, and it’s only going to make them want you more.”
He didn’t understand the logic of that, but he asked warily, “What if no one photographs us?”
“Don’t worry. We’ll make sure the paparazzi know where you’ll be.”
This was crazy.
Yet when Maggie said, “You care about the band, don’t you? This will be great publicity,” Skyler found himself agreeing to it. Because of course he cared about the band.
It wasn’t until he was being ushered out of her office with a patronizing pat on the back that he realized why she’d brought him here alone. If Trevor had been here, he would have said no. He would’ve yelled and fought her on it. He would have somehow stopped this from happening.
But it was going to be okay. If all it would take was Skyler going out to lunch with someone to get management off their backs, then he could do it. It wasn’t that big of a deal.
TREVOR
“Would you put yourphone away? Don’t tell me you’re still looking at those pictures.”
Trevor glanced up from his place on the bed as Skyler walked out of the bathroom, freshly showered, and looking impossibly soft and innocent in his pajama pants with colorful donuts printed all over them. He wanted to reach for him, pull him closer. But.
He looked down at his phone again where there were five photos, taken at various angles, of Skyler looking awfully intimate sitting at a small café table with tiny, blonde-haired, blue-eyed Daisy Lindley.
They’d even found someone to fit Skyler’s meager physical description of what he “looked for in a girl.”
“How can I not look at them? They’re everywhere.”
The “date” had only happened yesterday, but practically every celebrity gossip site in the world was already running stories about it.
Skyler frowned at him. “If you’d put the phone down, they wouldn’t be here in this hotel room.”
Trevor knew he was being ridiculous. But he’d barely had time to wrap his mind around the fact that this stupid stunt was happening before the evidence of it had been plastered all over the internet.
