Page 78 of If the World Was Ending

“Okay. Cool?” He sounded unsure because he was. He understood the plan, he just still wasn’t sure he liked it.

But then again, today was shaping up to be fun. Maybe it was time to focus on this career and whatever it took, which was pretending to be a boyfriend to someone he really did like. Just not in that way.

“What? You’re all bottled up in that head of yours again,” Hannah said, still tugging him down the frozen river. “You do that a lot. Like there’s whole conversations and plot lines happening in your head that only you know about.”

“There kind of is,” Colby admitted. “Who I am in this band isn’t who I am inside. Not all the time, anyway. I mean I’m the same singer and musician onstage but… forget it.”

“But the label wants you to be the onstage guy offstage, and there is someone else that exists inside that wants that offstage time,” Hannah went on. “Someone quieter and maybe softer and someone who just wants to discover life without having to act like they already belong somewhere they’ve never been.”

Colby stopped trying to skate. His lack of forward motion jerked Hannah to a stop, too. She glided around, hand still in his, to face him. “What?” she asked.

“Those are lyrics. Are you using them?”

She laughed. “No. I wasn’t composing, I was just trying to commiserate.”

“You did, and it was genius,” Colby insisted. He pulled her into a hug, which would have been fine if he wasn’t balancing his entire six-foot frame on blades.

The slight momentum of her body pressing into his created a tilt Colby couldn’t control, and after a second of fighting gravity, he fell, his ass hitting the ice with a hard thump. Hannah fell with him because he hadn’t let go of her hand, and she had tried to save him but ended up on top of him instead. He laughed, and she did too, burying her head in the scarf around his neck. “You are hopeless at this.”

“I am. And I’m freezing. And now I’m inspired,” Colby said. “By your words. So can we go back to the hotel so I can write this song that’s started to take hold of my brain?”

She nodded. “I won’t interfere with creative inspiration.”

She rolled off him, and he got up first, reaching down to help her up. She looked gorgeous, dark hair fanned out on stark white ice. Big brown eyes squinting in the bright sun. God, he should want this to be real. She was perfect. He managed to help Hannah to her feet without falling again. And when they were out of skates and back in their boots, he pulled her in for another hug while they waited for their Uber back to the hotel. “Wanna hang with me while I write and figure out a melody? I could bounce stuff off you. Maybe even collab since they were your words?”

She looked surprised, but she grinned. “I would love that!”

The selfies with the fans at the Canal and the stalker pic from the restaurant patron were splashed all over socials by the time Hannah and Colby headed to the venue for the show that night. Captions like Cutest couple in music history. And Looks like a hell of a “night before,” judging by those smiles at breakfast and fan comments like “The rest of us will never achieve this level of perfection” And “It’s no longer will-they-or-won’t-they. They have, and they are” filled his screen, and Colby didn’t feel as icky as he had in the past when this ruse started. It was becoming normal, and having confessed the lie to Hunter probably helped.

Hannah had spent the day in his hotel room, helping him write the new song and giving him feedback on the melody. She was particularly helpful with the bridge, which he always struggled with. And then they accidentally took a nap. Together.

They were taking a break, lying side-by-side on the bed and talking when the binge drinking and restless sleep from the night before caught up with him and his eyes just closed. She must have been tired too, because when he woke almost two hours later, he was curled on his side, and Hannah’s hair was tickling his cheek as she was tucked in as his little spoon. And it was… nice. Fine. Good, even.

“Saw Hannah coming out of your room with JBF hair this afternoon,” Trevor said in the back of the dark SUV that Ford had rented to get them to and from the venue.

Ford was driving, Colby was in the passenger seat, Trevor and Kenner were in the back, so he didn’t miss the way Ford’s eyebrows shot up. He ignored it. “What’s JBF hair?”

“Just been fucked,” Kenner supplied helpfully, and Colby wrinkled his nose.

“Trevor, I dare you not to be a locker room pig for like one day,” Colby responded. “And she fell asleep while we were working on a song. That’s why she looked like that.”

“Yeah, I figured it was something lame like that,” Trevor replied. “I mean, I bet you don’t fuck good enough to mess up anyone’s hair.”

Kenner chuckled, and Colby lifted his hand and flashed them both the bird. “Sorry,” Kenner mumbled.

“But I snapped a pic and put it on Insta Stories anyway because it did make you look like a stud,” Trevor replied, and Colby’s head snapped around.

“What? No, you didn’t.”

“Yeah. I did. This is me helping the cause, bro.” Trevor held up his phone, and there it was, a shot of Hannah closing the door to his hotel room, her hair mussed and her cheeks a little pink. Trevor had written under it Some bandmates have all the luck.

“Take it down. Now. Fuck! Ford!”

“Take it down, Trev,” Ford said sternly, but Colby saw a hint of a smile on his face. “Leave the PR to professionals from now on.”

“That makes her look bad, you know that, right?” Colby snapped. “Fuck, why are you like this?”

“No, it doesn’t. She looks like she’s got a boyfriend. A nice, sweet one who doesn’t know what JBF hair is. That’s the fucking point,” Trevor argued. “And relax, it only got… a couple thousand views.”