Love Goes Viral

by Alexander Berman, Camille Stochitch, Estelle Laure

Genres: YA Contemporary Romance; YA Romance

Synopsis

An internet star crafts a fake relationship with a small-town boy to rehab her image only to develop real feelings in this sweeping romance perfect for fans of Lynn Painter and Rachael Lippincott.

Love Thompson has it all: 50 million followers, brand deals, PR packages at her Hollywood mansion doorstep. Until…she doesn’t.

After she takes the blame for her influencer boyfriend’s mistake, the fallout goes even more viral than the video that skyrocketed her to fame. And even though she’s technically innocent, by the next morning she’s already lost sponsorships and 10 million followers. Love needs to rehab her image. Fast. And that means dating someone a little more homegrown.

Enter: Austin Grey. Austin is about as down to earth as it gets. His only followers are the regulars at his family’s struggling diner he’s doing his best to save. But everything changes when he gets a DM from an internet star from his past he never expected to cross paths with again.

When Love walks back into Austin’s life, they both think this is a purely online scheme with an expiration date. But as real feelings start to develop that keep them coming back to each other again and again, will either of them be willing to take a chance on something real?

Release date: January 6, 2026

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers

Print pages: 320

Sample

Chapter One: Love

CHAPTER ONE Love
Before I even really knew who I was, I wanted the world to know my name. I don’t remember learning how to sing or dance. It’s just something that I had to do to get where I was going, like crawling or walking.

That’s why I’m stretching for the second time this morning, studying my form in the mirror, as Mom’s voice rattles in my head—Every trophy’s built on busted ankles and bloody toes, baby. Nobody claps for the bruises.

She would know.

My hamstrings protest for a second before they give over and let me lay my torso flat on the ground in a full split. You don’t get anywhere by wishing. You dance through the hurt. And one day, soon, I’m going to dance through it right out of here. Los Angeles, by way of Nashville. That’s the plan. Making it is preparation plus luck, and I have to do everything possible to be ready when the opportunity finally comes my way. Which—judging by the fact that Mom had to pull yet another extra graveyard shift last night—needs to be soon.

I just have to finish high school first.

“Love! I’m back, hon. It’s almost seven thirty. We’re cutting it close!” Mom taps on my door as she calls out.

“I was waiting for you!” I pull myself out of my bendy state. “Just putting on my shoes!”

“Well, okay, but… oh, damn it.” Her phone rings, muffled. “Hello?” She drifts down the short hall, sounding upset, which means I have a pretty solid idea who she’s talking to.

I force myself not to think about him and open the closet, humming the bars to the Lil’ D song I’m going to be covering for the next upload to my channel. Lil’ D, or Damien Hunter to the fans as obsessed with him as I am, is one of my favorite artists, so I’ve been working extra hard on it. You never know which video is going to hit, but if this is the one, maybe he’ll actually see it. My voice is more fire-in-the-veins than technically perfect, but even I can hear the emotion in it, can hear how it’s different from what’s already out there. Only Damien Hunter matches my energy, which is why I’m planning something extra special to pay tribute to his music.

My closet is organized according to color, then subdivided into shirts, dresses, pants, and skirts, and it’s the one small bit of space I can claim as my own. I don’t have much, but I’ve spent hours and hours in Austin vintage stores, picking out the things that feel exactly me, and it always gives me happy shivers to see it all right where it should be. Except, when I retrieve my dance bag, looking for my lucky sneakers—

A pinprick of rage settles in my throat.

“That little knee-high pilferer,” I mutter.

My brother Forest loves to steal my shoes. I spent the entire summer working at the Cinnabon at Barton Creek Square in Austin, dealing with kids so much better off than me, to buy them. Perfect, beautiful, unscathed Air Force 1 sneakers in metallic gold. They’re like my ruby slippers, except for getting me out of here instead of going home.

I should have known better. Literally nothing is sacred in this house. One of the many (many) reasons I’m planning my escape.

I sling my bag over my shoulder, slide on my baseball cap, and rush down the hall, past the disaster zone my brothers call a bedroom, into the living room to confront the littlest menace.

I see Mom first though, still in her cute black scrubs, her hair a halo of frayed curls—as she unloads and puts away the groceries she must have picked up on her way home from the hospital. She must not hear me come up behind her, because she continues talking.

“I can’t reschedule, Will,” she says. “It’s your weekend and I need some rest!” She throws a zucchini into the crisper so viciously, it splits. “Oh, dang it,” she mutters. Then, “I do have a life. Well… that’s none of your business, now, is it? As I recall, you didn’t want it to be, and whether I curl my hair all weekend or go on twenty dates has nothing to do with you. So you can just f—”

She turns and catches sight of me and stops herself, grimacing instead.

Sorry, she mouths, and tilts her head toward the door, meaning she wants me to get the boys and skedaddle into the car to wait for her. She doesn’t like it when I hear her fight with the man who has major commitment issues and an empty wallet to go with them… aka my father.

She and my dad hate each other, is what I’m trying to say. She pretends they don’t, that they’re co-parenting or whatever, but it seeps out of her pores, out of her pissed-off hair follicles, even her tensed fingers, which are pressed tight against the refrigerator door. It’s kind of divorce textbook, I guess, but she would love it if none of us knew it. Then again, if she was really trying to protect us, she wouldn’t have this conversation in the kitchen.

I get on my own case for the unkind thought. It’s not like she has much choice when she has to get the cold things into the fridge before we go. For sure River isn’t going to help her, and Forest? Well, he’s four, so he’s not even a real person yet.

But he is a thief. Which returns me to my original purpose.

“You want me out of here? I’d love to oblige but… Have you seen my gold sneakers?” I stage-whisper.

She shrugs, as if she doesn’t know how much I need those shoes. I’m working on the dance routine for the cover song after school, and the last time I didn’t have them, I about broke my ankle. That would slow things way down if it happened now, and I don’t need them to slow down. I need them to speed up, which they will as soon as I graduate in—I steal a glance at the X’s counting down on the calendar pinned to the wall above the coffee maker—exactly one week. The path from here to stardom is as clear as can be.

One week until I board the on-ramp to the rest of my life, starting with my full-ride scholarship to Middle Tennessee State University. I’m going to be the first person in my family ever to go to college, and because of all the bruises and sacrifices, it’s going to be free! So many musicians who inspire me have gone there too, and I’m going to make the most of it, follow in their footsteps. Plus Nashville is right there. Showcases, songwriting groups, open mics. Only a matter of time before I get plucked out of the crowd.

But none of that is going to happen if I can’t find my shoes.

I point frantically to my socked feet.

“Sorry, honey, I haven’t seen them,” she says, rolling her eyes toward the phone. I can hear my father, his slow, raspy, Texas drawl, taking his time with every word he says, each one designed to ensure everything goes his way and nothing is his fault, like always.

Once he’s done with this fight, no doubt he’ll be at his favorite crappy watering hole at the stroke of eight a.m., getting lit with no kids to take care of and nothing to weigh him down, exactly as he likes it.

Which is why I don’t drink. Why would I?

He does it enough for the both of us.

“Okay,” Mom says, turning back to the call, “then what about the child support you owe me?” She waits, and when he answers, she lets her elbow fall onto the counter and her head collapse into her palm.

Mom tries to shoo me away again as she sniffles, but I’m not going anywhere now. When she lets him get under her skin like this, she ends up having to spend her one night off in bed with the door closed.

Or worse, she lets him back in.

That’s where Forest came from. It was fun being a family again for, like, two-point-five seconds, and then Dad was gone once more and Mom was left pregnant AF.

“No, you’re the ballbuster,” Mom says. “You are. You have no idea.” Her voice is so sad, so lost, I give in to my inevitable lateness and rest my hand on her back. She stands up right away though, shaking me off. “Go,” she says. When I don’t move, she says, “Love. Your brothers. Now.”

I would probably ignore her except for the fact that Forest chooses that moment to jet from his room into the kitchen, my sneakers on his feet, the shiny gold catching sunlight as he whizzes by. He shoots back down the hall, and I toss my bag on the ground as I take off after him. Forest speeds behind the couch, taking cover out of reach. Our other brother, River, sits on the couch, playing something loud and annoying on the TV that looks like Call of Duty, the game he plays instead of talking to humans face-to-face. His backpack is leaned against his knee like he’s ready to go to school, even though I know he didn’t brush his teeth. He has been a major douchebag ever since he turned fourteen, but I remind myself to focus.

“River, grab him!”

River barely moves his eyes in my direction.

“Can’t. On a team.”

I don’t know why I even try. I creep toward the couch myself. “Forest.” No answer. I soften my voice. “Forest, come on out. You know I need those sneakers.”

Still nothing. I finally get close enough to see him, knees up to his chin, hand over his mouth to cover what I’m sure is the world’s fattest grin. Pushing River to the side, I jump up on the couch, reach over it, and get up under Forest’s pits in a swift movement I’ve perfected in my years of being a big sister, before laying him on his back next to River.

“Hey!” River doesn’t spare us a glance, just pushes buttons, craning his head to the side to dodge us. “Not cool. I just got sniped!”

I hoist myself up to standing on the couch and pull at the sneakers, but Forest and his sticky little hands fight back with surprising vigor for such a little guy.

“I just wanted to borrow them and you never let me!” Forest shouts, grin gone. “Mom says we have to share and that means you have to share your shoes with me!”

I finally wrestle off the sneakers and clamber back to the floor. As Forest bursts into wails and runs toward the kitchen, River throws down his controller. “Can you guys ever shut up? I lost my game.”

“This is the living room,” I say as I tie my laces and wipe the smudges off my shoes. “You know… where people live. It’s not your personal space. And anyway, it’s time for you to get in the car.”

“You’re not Mom,” he says, but gets to his feet anyway.

“Well, maybe you should think about helping out every once in a while so you don’t become Dad 2.0.”

I am halfway back into the kitchen when I hear him say, “That’s low, Love, even for you.”

I don’t look back because it’s not like that’s some big surprise.

Let me tally it for you.

Mom hates Dad and Dad hates Mom.

Dad obviously has no love for us.

And Forest and River? Well…

Forest meets me in the hallway, face slathered in snot and tears. “Mom told me I should tell you about my feelings and I am.” He steels himself, balling his fists at his sides, then opens his mouth as wide as he can and screams, “I HATE YOU!”

My parents may have named me “Love,” but I’m a lot more familiar with hate.

If you thought that might change once I get to school, you’d be wrong.

My high school is a gleaming stone building that got plopped down in a giant field (all the better for the football) in the eighties. It’s in a community of pretty, bland, cookie-cutter McMansions, complete with pools and Chevy trucks and minivans. Riches abound… except for the Sweet Pea Mobile Home Park right at the edge of town, where we live. Mom rented the trailer instead of an apartment somewhere else because it’s in this school district. She thought I’d get a better education here, but I guess she forgot what it was like to be a teenager. That high school is so toxic, you need a radiation shower at the end of every day.

The path to the front doors is more dodging-snipers energy than red carpet, but there’s no other way into the main building. On rare occasions I make it through the gauntlet unscathed, but I can already tell that’s not going to happen today. As I approach Bryce Prescott, who’s sitting on a bench, manspreading aggressively, he shouts, “Waddup, Trailerina!” and all his equally annoying friends laugh.

The marquee outside the school reads “Congratulations, Graduates!” and graduation’s so close I can taste it, so I march straight ahead, keep my chin up, and search for my best friend Patty.

My only friend, I should say.

Most people at school hate me because Bryce hates me and they are lemmings. What they don’t know is that when we first moved here after Forest was born and I still had some new-girl cred, Bryce asked me out. When I told him no, he informed me and then everyone else that I was a trashy bitch, and that was that. I never even had a chance.

I know one thing for sure: A guy like Bryce never forgets a rejection, even with his girlfriend, Liberty, on his lap.

Fortunately, whatever insult he has planned next is interrupted as Patty, my Patty, runs over to me. She’s glorious, curvaceous, with short wavy hair and a nose ring, and I’m obsessed with her freckles. She has saved me every day since I got here.

“Hey, girl,” she says.

“Hey, Patty,” I say, and give her a smooch on the cheek.

“Fatty Patty! Fatty Patty!” Bryce calls. “Lift her over your head, Trailerina! Do a duet for us!”

“How’s this duet?” I say, sending up both middle fingers. “You like that?”

Bryce’s cheeks redden for a second before his smirk returns. “You’d probably get more likes for those than for any of your cringe videos.”

Liberty flashes me an apologetic look. But Bryce isn’t done.

“I mean, you don’t actually think that’s going to get you out of the gutter, do you?” He tilts his head. “Wait… you do think that, don’t you? Aw… poor little Trailerina.”

“You know what—” I start, but Patty ushers me away.

“Not worth it,” she says, so only I can hear.

“That’s right, Fatty. Get out of here and take your trash with you.”

Blood rushes to my face, but Patty gives me a pleading look, and we walk away in silence.

“You’re so beautiful,” I say. “Don’t listen to them.”

“Oh, I know,” she returns, unfazed. “And you are not trash. I promise you five years from now I’m going to be opening my bookstore/skate park and they are going to be wishing they were back in high school when they mattered.” She turns to me. “And you… you’re going to be bigger than Taylor Swift.”

My heart lurches with hope.

“Do we really have to do this?” Patty says, sighing as we reach the door.

“Graduate?”

“No,” Patty says. “This week. Can’t we just go now?”

I weave my arm through hers. “I’d say yes if we didn’t have finals. If we don’t stick it out for those, we’ll subject ourselves to another hellish year.”

“Yeah,” she says with a sigh. “At least I didn’t promise my parents I’d wear a floral minidress under my grad robe.” She rolls her eyes. “LOL, psych, I totally did. I’m going to wear my Hello Kitty undies to counteract whatever terrible things are going to happen to me from shaving my legs.”

Patty’s parents are rich, conservative, and incredibly well-groomed. I don’t even know where Patty came from but she’s the opposite of all of that and her parents treat her as such.

Dinner at their house is delicious, but no fun. Trust.

“So close,” I say sympathetically. “We’re so close now.”

The rest of the morning goes okay. Patty and I have all our a.m. classes together, so we form a barricade against the noise and focus on our physics and English finals. By the time it’s lunch and I can see the light at the end of the school-day tunnel, I’m thinking about my dance lesson, putting the new moves, which I’ve been working on whenever Forest and River are busy with things other than torturing me, into practice. In those moments when the house is quiet, the lights are down low, and the living room floor is mine, I can almost pretend I’m already famous. That I’m center stage, dancing not to someone else’s songs, but my own. Singer, songwriter, dancer. A true triple threat.

I repeat my mantra: Graduate. Nashville. College degree. Connections. Showcase. Los Angeles. Stardom.

“Spaghetti and terrible sauce accomplished,” Patty says, bringing me back to earth. The cafeteria is peppered with round tables, and the lunch line winds its way into the hall while she joins me at our table, as close to the exit as possible.

Patty pokes suspiciously at the teensy bits of meat that dot the pasta.

“Don’t forget iceberg plus gloopy ranch,” I say. I’m a vegetarian so I can’t eat the meat pasta and instead have tried to load up on as many veggies as I can from the salad bar, which equals tomatoes that taste like paper, the aforementioned iceberg lettuce, and three soggy cucumber rounds. Thankfully, I also have my reserve BiteRite protein bar and a Ziploc baggie of walnuts.

Patty swirls her pasta onto her fork just as Bryce and his asshat friends walk past us, heading for their table by the salad bar.

Bryce slows and lets his bulky butt take up the whole pathway to lean over right into Patty’s space and says, “Lighten up on the carbs, Fatty Patty.”

This motherfucker will not leave us alone today, and once again Patty is in his sights because she’s my friend.

“Sorry, Bryce, we can’t all survive on a diet of Muscle Milk and human misery,” I say, directing his attention back to me.

Of course he takes that as a compliment, flexing unsubtly. Not exactly my intention, but it soothes his ego enough for him to turn his attention to the girls at his usual table, who are very much watching the flexing. He struts over to them and plops his vanilla Muscle Milk down with a thud, spreading himself into his seat like a lord.

“He’s so heteronormative, it actually makes me want to vom,” Patty says. “How messed up is it that the rest of our class voted for him to give a speech at graduation? Like we need to hear any more out of his mouth.”

“Assholes love assholes,” I offer, as Bryce and Noah chest-bump, congratulating each other on their existences.

“I didn’t know he was capable of original thought.”

“Oh, I’m sure he’ll go for something real deep, like ‘cherish the memories’ and ‘you’re all the leaders of tomorrow.’ Like, at best.”

Patty chews a hearty bite of pasta before she says, “I wish, just once, someone would give an honest graduation speech.”

“Oh yeah? What would yours be?”

“?‘I hated you all as much as you hated me and I hope you rot in hell. Thank you!’?”

That makes me laugh, harder and louder than is allowed for subhumans like us. I’m immediately rewarded with a whack to the head. An empty Diet Coke can lands at my feet, and the same anger that reared up when Forest stole my shoes overtakes me. My forehead starts pulsing. One look at Bryce’s table and his stupid ugly smirk, and I know that’s where it came from.

I try to grab the spork off Patty’s plate, but she pulls it away from me. “What are you going to do with that, Thompson?”

“Gouge an eye out?” I suggest. “Slowly slice off a single ball?”

Patty eyes Mrs. Vasquez, the lunch monitor on duty today. She’s walking around, arms crossed, stopping to chat with students here and there, like a beat cop trying to be friendly with the neighborhood riffraff. Patty gently pulls my hand back down to the table. “Dude, ignore them. Four and a half days.”

“Yeah,” I say. Except I’m not going to ignore them. I’m not going to shake it off. I’m going to swallow it, and feel it burn in my stomach. I’m going to let it drive me. I am going to turn this anger into rocket fuel and use it to launch me to my destiny.

Wherever that is.

Because yeah, I know a whole hell of a lot more about hate than I do about love.

But someday, that’s going to change.

When the heinous school day is done, I take the bus into Austin, where the Sugarplum Dance Studio lives. Danny Roth runs the most desirable program in Texas there and I think he’s the only person besides Mom and Patty who actually believes in me. Danny is from Dallas but moved to Austin ten years ago because of his husband’s work. He says he found himself here and then he found me.

“Oh,” he says as I blaze past him and take my spot on the floor, the first one there like always. “Hard day?”

I nod. “Would you mind if we didn’t talk today? I would really like to just dance.”

“That’s my girl,” he says, lips shiny, green eyes piercing. He nods toward Raven, his assistant, a goth girl who definitely renamed herself. “Play something loud, would you, darlin’?”

As soon as the music starts, I feel the day start to metabolize. I draw each memory to the surface, spin it around, look at it for all it is and everything it means. I don’t try to make it go away; I transform it. My dad, Bryce, the school system, Trailerina, and Fatty Patty—I use it all. I make it work for me, burn it until I fade into the music and pain loosens its hold so that what’s primal and free takes over. By the time the other dancers arrive and class begins, I feel like I belong.

After it’s over, I stay for a private lesson to review the choreography for my next video. It’s complicated yet plays to my strengths. Danny works from what he knows I can do, then refines it to show off my best. He’s hard on me, stretching me to the edge of my abilities, tapping and clapping to the beat until I get it right, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. By the end, I’ve sweated through my clothes and still he has me run through it again. He disappears into the shadows at the back of the room so I can totally get into it, imagine it’s just me, and that the only people watching are the ones who can help change my life. When I finish the combination, Raven kills the music and the words “… get it to you next week” rip through the room at full volume.

My peace evaporates as I turn, chest still heaving, and see my mom at the back of the room, in pink scrubs with little hearts on them, mouth dropped open in surprise. She’s glancing toward me worriedly as Danny puts a comforting hand on her shoulder. His expression is strained though. Danny has me here on a partial scholarship, but he’s the best, and even with that assistance the classes aren’t cheap.

When we walk out after, the cool night air blows on my skin soothingly, but the guilt still has me. My mom has given up everything to give me everything. I’ve worked since I was old enough to get a job to pay for lessons, to pay for shoes, but at a certain point we realized I couldn’t go to school full-time, work, and develop myself as a dancer or a singer well enough to get to the top. We had to make a choice. She is betting everything that it was the right one.

When we get to the car, she wraps her arms around me and says, “This is going to be so good, baby. You’ll see. You’re special, Love, and the world is going to turn out for you.”

I look at her, really look. Forty, nails and lashes done, lips plump with gloss, but plagued with an exhausted slump. There’s a direct line between that look and the life she’s made for me, all the lessons she’s invested in instead of doing anything for herself.

My determination returns as I glance up at the full moon. Someday she’s not going to have to work anymore. Someday I’m going to take care of her. Make this all worth it.

“When I’m famous, I’m going to buy you a house,” I tell her, voicing for the first time the thing I usually think in secret. “And a new car, and a whole new wardrobe.”

“Oh, hon,” she says, “you don’t have to—”

“Yes, I do. I have now promised that big full moon up there.” I pause. “You watch me.”

Hours later, after a silent car ride home and when I’m done with the very last of my high school homework, I open my school laptop, the one I’ll have to give up in a few days. I slide on my headphones and pull up YouTube.

I type in the letter M, and the algorithm knows me so well, the song “Me Without You” by Lil’ D pops up first in the list of suggested videos.

I select it and wait, ready to watch and get inspired for my own upload.

There’s something about him. He’s…

Talented.

Perfect.

Successful.

Confident.

He’s everything I wish I was. No one would throw a can at his head. Everyone loves him.

But… he’s raw, too, in a way that makes him feel almost familiar to me, like I know him.

Salt on my lips reminds me of you, babe

Sun in my eyes makes my heart ache

He walks along the beach with a girl, wind tousling his blond hair. Beautiful, with his brown eyes, long muscles covered in tattoos. The lyrics might be a little cheesy, but there’s something in those eyes, a hunger that aches inside me, too. I do a rough blocking of my dance steps in my room, make sure I have the space I need, while I hum along to his words, warming up my throat.

Blue skies, all I see is blue eyes

Me without you is life without highs

Damien kisses the girl in the water. For just a second I can imagine it’s me he’s holding, me he’s singing to, telling me I belong there. That I’ll get there.

The house still smells like the eggplant we ate for dinner, River is still pew-pewing in his room, and our neighbor’s dog Sundae is outside, howling at the moon by the Adirondack chairs like she always does when it’s full. But things won’t always be like this.

In the meantime, I set up my phone, turn on the softbox lights I bought last summer, and get ready to hit Record.