Actor—Conan Gray You learn quickly that Grayson Hawthorne doesn’t do mistakes. He doesn’t slip. He doesn’t falter. He doesn’t fall. But in April, you made him do all three. Nobody saw you in the hotel lobby that first night—the night you slipped your hand into his, tugging him past the concierge desk and into the elevator like you weren’t about to ruin him. Nobody saw when his control cracked the second the door clicked shut, when your back hit the gold-lit wall and his lips found yours, bruises blooming in places that would never make it to the cameras. Nobody saw the sweatshirt he gave you, expensive and plain, hanging off your shoulders when you ducked out the next morning. Nobody saw the way he watched you leave, eyes stormy, jaw tight, as though he already knew April would end too soon. It became your month. Four stolen weeks carved into the year like a secret. Hotel lobbies, coat checks, dark car rides with his hand brushing yours and his profile a sharp silhouette against the city lights. He told himself it was temporary. He told himself he could let you go. He told himself it was nothing. (He’s a Hawthorne. He’s good at lying.) But then July came. Now you’re gone—really gone. Not just slipping out of his hotel room with your hair still tangled and your throat marked with him. Not just leaving through the back door while he stays behind, putting the world’s neat mask back on. No, this time you’ve disappeared into the machine that raised you: handlers, co-stars, directors, PR teams who know exactly how to spin your silence into gold. And he? He’s left with the echo. Grayson Hawthorne doesn’t check his phone like this. He doesn’t obsess. He doesn’t refresh. But tonight, he sits in the dark, Hawthorne House stretching quiet and cavernous around him, and the only light is the glow of his screen. There you are. Ibiza. Sun-drunk and sparkling in filtered daylight, a champagne glass tilted in your hand. Surrounded by “friends” whose names he doesn’t bother to learn. Someone tagged the post good vibes only with three careless emojis. You look perfect. Effortless. Unreachable. The caption is clean, the smile rehearsed, the glass never quite touching your lips. The actress, playing her role. And Grayson hates that he knows the difference. Because no one else will notice how your gaze tilts just off-camera, how your fingers grip the stem of the glass a little too tight, how your shoulders don’t relax even when you’re supposedly careless. The world sees a girl drinking in Ibiza. Grayson sees you coming undone. He scrolls too long. Watches the thirty-second clip until it loops back, over and over, like punishment. Forces himself to lock his phone. Unlocks it again five minutes later. He should be better than this. He is better than this. But you’re the better actor. You always were. Because in April, you let him believe. You let him think you were just as lost in it as he was—that when you curled against him in the backseat of his car, when you whispered that you hated how quiet the hotel room got after he left, you meant it. You made him forget, for one impossible month, that Grayson Hawthorne doesn’t fall. Now you’re proving it was all performance. And he’s left choking on the fact that he can’t match you. The brothers notice, of course. They always do. Jameson makes jokes about how convenient your April vanishing act was. Nash eyes him the way Nash does—steady, knowing, not prying but waiting. Xander drops her name like it’s nothing, like it doesn’t split Grayson open every time. He keeps the lie alive. That’s what Hawthornes do. But when the house falls asleep and the halls stretch empty and the only sound is the blood rushing in his ears, Grayson Hawthorne is just a man sitting in the dark, replaying an April he isn’t allowed to keep. You’re in Ibiza now, champagne glass lifted, lips painted into a perfect smile. And he is thousands of miles away, bruises fading, hands empty, phone screen burning his eyes. You erased him. And he let you. Because you’re the better actor. Always have been. Always will be.