Final Play (Fake Boyfriend 6)

They’re so in love with her.

Talon turns to me. “I may be rethinking our timeline.”

My face lights up. “Really?”

He nods. “I want kids now.”

I step forward. “Let’s just take this one.”

Matt laughs. “Nice try.” He takes the baby off Talon.

I shrug. “Worth a shot.”

Noah looks around the group. “So if Talon and Miller are having kids, which of you guys are next?”

All six of them put their fingers to their nose and say, “Not it.”

Noah snickers.

The official wedding photographer squeezes her way into the group. “We’re going to need to start getting photos before we lose the light.”

Talon smiles. “You can start right here with these guys. They’re our family.”

We didn’t do the whole wedding party thing, but if we had, there’s no doubt this group of guys would be it.

She moves us away from the ceremony area to a wall of flowers and gets us to line up.

It’s like herding cats, honestly.

But in the hustle of trying to organize us, the photographer takes candids. I already know the photo that will be framed on our mantel won’t be the last shot—the one where we’re all standing straight and smiling at the camera.

It’ll be the one where Talon has me in a headlock. The one where Matt and Noah are fussing over their baby girl. Where Maddox and Damon are kissing, Lennon’s looking up at Ollie lovingly, and Jet’s sticking his tongue out at Soren while flipping off the camera.

Because that’s the photo that’s us.

V

JET AND SOREN

Chapter Twenty-Two

JET

“Ah, we’re back in Fiji,” Soren says and holds his arms out.

The sand between my toes feels wrong, the breeze is weird, and this in no way feels like Fiji. Fiji is the place I fell in love for real the very first time. Not confusing love, not comforting love, but true love. The kind of shit Disney movies are made of.

“Fake Fiji,” I complain. “It’s not the same.”

Soren wraps his arm around me. “Hey, it’s the closest we’re gonna get anytime soon.”

The soundstage decked out to make it look like a beach with industrial-sized fans to create fake wind is nowhere near the same feeling of real Fiji.

With Soren’s team making it to the playoffs and then my band’s tour kicking off pretty much the minute the Stanley Cup was won—not by New Jersey, sorry, babe—we’ve barely had time to breathe let alone take another vacation.

Hell, we barely have time to go to Chicago to wish my niece a happy first birthday. We’re flying out of L.A. tomorrow to spend a few days with family before starting the European leg of Radioactive’s tour.

“You two ready?” the director asks.

Am I ready? Not really. This was a stupid idea to begin with. “As ready as we’ll ever be to splash our love story everywhere for the entire world to see.”

“There’s the spirit!”

Clearly, the director needs me to hold up a sarcasm sign when I speak.

When Harley, my ex and cowriter of this song, suggested this for the music video, I thought the label wouldn’t go for it. The song itself basically screams sexual-identity crisis. It’s called “Confusion” for fuck’s sake. Putting a same-sex couple in the video will only cement it.

There wouldn’t be a problem with that if this song was mine and mine alone, but it’s not.

Harley Valentine’s brand is attached to it, and he has spent so many years hiding his sexuality from the public.

And while he’s still technically engaged to a woman, I wonder how long that façade will last after this song comes out.

It honestly wouldn’t shock me if the label buries the song and never releases the video. I’m surprised it’s gotten this far. When they dropped it from his first solo album since splitting with the boy band, Eleven, I thought it wouldn’t see the light of day, but here we are, about to drop it into the world in a surprise release.

Soren and I get on a jet ski in front of a green screen.

One of my stipulations for this video was that Soren feature in it with me. I didn’t want some random model, especially when the storyboard is about us falling in love while Harley’s “character” watches from the sidelines.

It’s not exactly how it happened in real life but close enough. Also, awkward as fuck, but that’s a whole other issue.

I’d originally said no to the whole idea, because I didn’t want to be involved in their publicity games, but when I mentioned it to Soren, he jumped at the chance. Said it’d be something cool to show the grandkids.

Of course, that tripped me up, because to have grandkids, we’d need to have actual kids.

He said, “In the future. Duh.”

He hasn’t brought it up since.

I don’t know if I should be allowed to look after someone else. I can barely look after myself. I’m allergic to responsibility.