“I’m freaking out. I can’t believe you’re really here,” one of the girls said, fanning herself.

“Where are you from?” he asked.

“Portland. We’ve been camped out here all night.”

“Wow, thank you for coming to see us. We’re truly honored.”

“You’re, like, my all-time favorite guitarist,” a girl in glasses told me. “I totally want to be you when I get older.”

Her words hit me hard, right in the chest, and my throat closed up. “Thank you,” I managed to get out. “That means so much to me.”

“She is pretty amazing,” Jared agreed.

“Please tell us you’re together,” the first girl said, looking back and forth between us. “Please!”

“You…want us to be together?” I asked. Is this what Jared wanted to show me? Even though I’d wondered if some fans might want us to be a couple, I didn’t expect this reaction after all the nasty comments about us online and everything that had happened between us. But these girls looked like they might mash our faces together and force us to kiss in front of them.

“Yes! You have to be!” my fangirl said.

“You’re just so perfect for each other!” the third girl added.

“I agree,” Jared said and smiled at me. “We’re trying to figure things out right now. But I’m hopeful.”

The girls all clutched their chests and said, “Aww.”

I stared at him, completely speechless. For the first time ever, Jared wasn’t denying his feelings for me. He wasn’t saying he was single. He wasn’t saying we were just friends. Was he giving up the act finally? Or was he just joking around in front of these girls?

They all wanted photos with us and asked us to sign things, and the crowd around us grew. We carried on down the line, talking to all of the people who’d come to see our band, and encountered the same thing over and over. The fans loved our music, and they didn’t care about Jared’s player image. They wanted the fairy tale, the epic romance, the story of the reformed bad boy who fell in love with the good girl. Some people even had signs that read “Jared + Maddie” with hearts all over them, while others had drawn the Villain Complex logo on their arms and cheeks like tattoos. We even ran into some people wearing Villain Complex T-shirts.

“I didn’t even know we had T-shirts,” I said to Jared.

“News to me, too. How do I get one of those?”

“Here, you can each have one,” the woman said. “I made them.”

I held the shirt up to my chest. “Thank you, I love it.”

Jared and I both pulled them on over the shirts we were already wearing, and I thought the fan might faint on the spot.