Page 120 of How Good It Was (Excess All Areas 3)

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Willow plumped her pillow and turned to face Luke’s side of the bed. Surely it wasn’t the fact he wasn’t here that was keeping her awake. They’d only left for France the previous day. A mini promo trip for the album that was apparently crushing it over there.

She was too hot with the covers pulled over her, and too cool with them pushed down to her waist. And the skin on her stomach itched. Not obsessively, but enough to be irritating, despite all the cocoa butter she applied.

It didn’t help that Manchester was having a rare heat wave, and the apartment building, built to retain heat, felt like a toaster oven despite opening the windows wide. And hadn’t this damn country heard of air conditioning? Or at the very least, fly screens, so you could open the window without a million buzzing flies coming in and making themselves at home.

She flopped back to face the window and reached for her phone. Three a.m.

Holy shit.

That couldn’t be right.

Three hundred and seventeen messages.

As her heart began to race, she pushed herself up on the bed and turned on the lamp. It must be spam. Someone had gotten hold of her details and decided to prank her or something.

She opened her email, and holy crap. Major news network email addresses. What the ...

Clicking on the first one, her breath caught in her chest.

It couldn’t be right.

Putting her name into the search engine, article after article appeared.

Faking it: Why Willow Warner is the biggest social media fraud of all

Fallen angel: How America’s princess tried to buy fame

Nothing Shamazing about Willow Warner

She clicked on it and read the article.

Willow Warner, 23, has been paying rock star Luke Bryson to pretend to be her boyfriend after getting knocked up after an alleged one-night stand with the drummer.

Jesus.

She should stop reading. But she couldn’t. An insider saying she planned it all along. That she was blackmailing Luke. That her biggest collaboration deals were at threat of being pulled.

That she was mean.

That she didn’t help other content providers.

That while she’d climbed on others to clamber to the top, she would rarely lift a finger to help anyone else.

With shaking hands, she went to her own posts, to the last picture she’d posted, of the two of them on the hotel balcony as the sun set over the water.

Faker.

I always knew she was a phoney.

Can you imagine making this shit up for likes?

Who traps a man into being with them?

I’m waiting to hear from Willow before I decide.

We owe it to her to see what she has to say.

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