Lux and Lies (Whitebird Chronicles Book 1)

by Meg Collett

  Foster laughed a belly-clenching laugh that almost sent him tumbling off the couch. “Oh, Vik,” he gasped. “She got you good. It’s funny, ya know, because it’s so damn true.”

  Vik flinched. She wasn’t proficient in guarding her emotions like Sloane had been. Pain etched across her face and settled into the hollows of her bird-like bones. Vik stood in front of Wren, damaged and broken. Sloane had played a large role in breaking her, and here Wren was, adding to her pain.

  No one deserved to hurt this much.

  “You shouldn’t pick her side. She won’t be spreading her legs for you with Roman around to catch her.” Fists clenched and her chin jerking from her ragged breathing, Vik started trembling.

  “Please.” Foster waved Vik off. “That’s why the twins are here.”

  “You think I’m desperate?” Vik said, spittle flying from her mouth as she turned back to Wren, her true enemy. “Look at you! Everyone hates you. Even Roman is dying to get away from you after you screwed Hazen Bafford!”

  Wren recoiled. The room went quiet. This was hallowed ground they were treading on. This was Hazen. This was VidaCorp.

  “That’s not true,” Wren said.

  Vik had glimpsed the chink in Wren’s armor, and she attacked with every ounce of strength she had. “The only time you’re civil to someone is when you’re trying to screw them, or if you’re about to gut them alive.”

  Vik had been gutted. The pain was right there in the way her arms were wrapped around her middle, desperately holding her together and protecting her against another attack from Sloane.

  She and Sloane had been friends once. And Sloane had torn her down to this level by selling Vik’s deepest, darkest secret to the world. For the first time, Wren didn’t like Sloane very much, because it was sad, this mad look in Vik’s eyes. She was a beautiful girl, but reduced to this, she looked like everything she was accusing Sloane of.

  Wren backed off. She didn’t want to battle this broken person. It didn’t feel like justice for people like her and Kruz anymore. Vik was like a half-dead animal snarling and lashing out at anyone within striking distance—all because of Sloane. Now Wren had to carry the burden of Sloane’s actions.

  Wren stumbled away, even as Maddox cued the handlers to turn her back to the fight. She pushed past them all with her head down, not caring as Maddox’s commands for her to come back and keep filming grew louder.

  “That’s right!” Vik shouted after her. “Walk away. Leave like you always do!”

  22:

  Wren picked up her pace as the cameras shifted behind her. Blindly, she searched for a black hall door, needing to escape, but found Roman instead. He leaned against the spiral stairs, hidden from view behind the massive fireplace.

  “Come with me. Hurry.”

  “You heard?” Wren asked, huffing as she tried to keep pace with his long strides up the steps.

  “Hard not to.”

  “I was awful.” She pictured her father and the rage that took control of his body and mind. “I don’t know what came over me. I was never like this before.”

  “You don’t have to explain yourself to me,” he said.

  But she did. The thought of him thinking her capable of cutting a person down to their knees crushed her. The fact that she had cut a person down crushed her worse. Despite knowing what Sloane had done to Vik, Wren had gone into the living room to pick a fight.

  They reached the third floor. Wren was thankful for Roman leading the way, because the tears in her eyes would have made navigating the maze of black hallways impossible. The tears threatened to spill down her cheeks, but she shoved them back, telling herself she didn’t deserve them.

  Roman got them to their room in record time. The door chimed and they slipped inside. The cleaning crew had already arranged the sheets and tidied the room. Wren sank onto the bed, wishing she could fall straight through the mattress and lose herself in the feathers.

  Roman crossed to the desk and pulled a large black-label bottle of whiskey and two tumblers from a drawer. He carried them over to the bed, the bottle tucked under his arm.

  “Eventful first day, huh?” He sat beside her.

  “Is it always like this?”

  He handed her an empty glass and balanced his own on his knee with practiced ease so he could open the bottle. “You bring out the best in Vik, but yes, it’ll be like this until the end. The worst part is you can’t hide out in here either.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked, alarmed. Her bedroom was supposed to be her safe place.

  Roman poured the amber liquid into the glasses until they were both half full. “Drink this. It’ll make what’s about to happen a little easier.”

  The glass was heavy, and the liquid sloshed in her trembling hand. “What’s about to happen?”

  “That fight could’ve been a lot more entertaining, but you ignored Maddox’s command. He’s coming up here with a slew of cameras, and we need to give them something better, or else he’ll make you go right back down there to continue with Vik.”

  “Shit,” Wren muttered, raising the glass to her lips. The whiskey’s scent assaulted her nose, but she downed it anyway without cringing. “Will they use what I said to her in the episode?”

  Roman sipped his drink and then said without an ounce of sympathy, “You can be sure of it.”

  “She said Sloane slept with Hazen. Is that true?”

  His expression remained neutral as he poured her another drink. “I’d heard that, and honestly, I don’t know. Sloane used her body like a weapon. Everyone around here has the scars to prove it. Drink up.”

  Wren threw back the liquid. It went down easier this time. The burn was more like warmth folding in around her. Roman sat their glasses on the bedside table and stood. He pulled back the sheets. “Get in.”

  Wren froze. “What?”

  “A show, remember? We have to give them something better than that fight with Vik, and the only thing better than a juicy fight is juicier sex.”

  Wren shook her head. “That’s not happening. That’s so not happening.”

  Roman cocked an eyebrow at her. “Wren, I’m not going to have sex with you on camera. We’re just putting on a show. Faking it. Sloane and I did it all the time, even when we were too pissed to look at each other.” Roman gestured to the bed. “After you—unless you want to go back downstairs.”

  Wren’s gaze roved between the bed and Roman, her lip caught between her teeth. “No sex?”

  “I’ll barely even touch you. Scout’s honor.”

  Quickly, before she could change her mind, she slid beneath the pile of blankets. Right as she settled back against the sheets, heavy footsteps sounded in the hallway outside, thudding closer to their door.

  Roman climbed in bed and straddled her, his arms on either side of her face and the covers pulled up over his lower back. In the half second she hadn’t been looking, he’d taken off his shirt.

  He leaned closer to her mouth, his eyes locked on hers. His body’s warmth consumed her, but he was braced above her so their skin barely touched, just like he’d promised. “Listen to me, Wren. Are you listening?”

  Wren nodded jerkily, her throat too tight to speak.

  “Sloane Lux was never a victim of anything but her own insatiable appetite for destruction. Don’t feel bad for her, and never, ever feel bad for those assholes out there. Okay? Now take off your shirt. Hurry.”

  She yanked her shirt over her head. Her fingers fumbled it, but she managed to tear the wireless mic from her bra strap.

  Roman threw her shirt and mic on the floor and bowed back over her, his lips barely an inch from hers. His eyes were dark, shadowed under his brows. “You trust me?”

  “Yeah,” she whispered without thinking, because certain truths didn’t need much thought.

  “I’m going to kiss you, and you need to sound like you like it.” He hovered over her, keeping his bare back between her and the door. The white fur covers draped across his hips were like
a curtain around her, shielding her.

  “Okay,” she whispered.

  The door’s thumb reader chimed as Roman said, “It’s all a show. We’re just giving them a performance.”

  Her first kiss—all for show. Her heart gave an almighty thump.

  He lowered his mouth onto hers right as two camera teams barreled into the room, filling the small space like toxic gas. Maddox was in their midst, headset pressed to his ear and teeth gnashing antacids.

  Roman dragged his lips from her mouth to the skin beneath her ear. “Look at me,” he whispered against her skin.

  She shuddered, but her eyes found his above her, and if she focused on him as though the only things in the world were his hips stacked on hers, his chest brushing her lace bra with each breath, and the silk sheet sliding against her bare back, she could fade Maddox and his crew into the blurry periphery of her vision.

  Roman’s lips returned to her mouth. He cupped her cheek, and his fingers brushed the sensitive flesh of her neck. His kiss was nothing like the wild ones Wren had seen Mak partake in with her girlfriends. Roman’s kiss was deliberate. Orchestrated motions meant for show, with no feeling behind them. She moved her lips only in response to his, too scared to do something wrong and mess up his rhythm. Her hands clenched his shoulders.

  Shifting from her mouth, he fanned kisses along her neck. Her spine flared with tingling heat, and she unconsciously arched her back off the bed, pressing into him, hips to hips. Lights burst across her eyelids as he nipped her collarbone. She gasped.

  “Louder,” he breathed.

  Her stomach dipped. The backs of her arms prickled with goose flesh. This was kissing. She shouldn’t have been enjoying it, the last shred of logic in her brain told her, but she was. She really, really was.

  Roman’s tongue slid along her collarbone, retracing the path his kisses had blazed. She gasped again, and this time, the sound filled the room. The cameras jolted to get a better angle.

  Roman shifted, his hand on her face, moving to block her from the cameras. No one was shielding him, though. She threaded her fingers through his hair, dragging him back to her mouth. Surprise flashed across his eyes, and when he kissed her, it was anything but a show.

  He lost his careful control and kissed her without holding back. Her hand wrapped around the back of his neck and pulled him closer so his weight pressed into her. She moaned loudly into his mouth, and he paused—until she smiled against his lips, urging him on. He echoed her groan with his own, a grin tugging at the corners of his mouth as he pressed feather light kisses against her lips.

  “That’s it,” Maddox said. “Stop the cameras.”

  Roman leaned back enough to look into her eyes, searching for answers about what had happened. She smiled up as his unguarded surprise, her breath coming out in a shaky exhale. He tore his gaze away and swung his body off the bed in a fluid motion that left her covered by the blanket.

  “What? You didn’t like it?” Roman asked Maddox. He stood beside the bed opposite the cameras and crossed his arms over his bare chest as it heaved with more intensity than his chilled voice and wolfish eyes suggested.

  Wren tucked the blanket beneath her chin and sat up against the headboard.

  “You two better start taking this seriously, or you’ll regret it. I mean that.” Maddox directed the last part at Wren.

  Her smile vanished, the feeling of Roman’s lips on hers drying up. Maddox meant the threat. People likely always underestimated him, but she never would; she knew the overlooked and unappreciated were often the most dangerous.

  “Won’t happen again,” Roman hissed through gritted teeth and took a predatory step toward the camera guys. “Now get out.”

  “Go,” Maddox barked at the crew, needing them to leave on his command, not Roman’s, even though it was a lie. He followed on their heels, snarling commands into his headset.

  Once the footsteps had faded, Roman’s shoulders slumped. “He meant it.”

  “I know,” she said.

  Roman settled into the desk chair, his head in his hands and fingers gripping his hair. “I’m sorry you’re in this situation.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You shouldn’t be here.” He groaned, the sound similar enough to the one he’d made against her mouth that she blushed. He lifted his head. “But you are, and you’re caught in the middle of this shit show.”

  Wren had chosen this to save her life, and she didn’t regret the decision. But with each passing day, she realized Hollywood wasn’t all glittering gold and full of beauty and perfection like she’d thought from Sunshine Heights’s side of the hologram.

  “Why are you here?” she asked. “Why even do this show?”

  So much had changed between them since that first day in Sloane’s penthouse, and it resonated in his unyielding focus on her. He’d felt it too during their kiss. The truth was in his eyes and the way he was still breathing hard. Everything had changed.

  “I’m here to make a difference. I’m here to change my role in this city’s narrative and come out the other side with a better existence. I don’t want to be the guy who has to have fake sex on cameras anymore. After Sloane … it’s just not worth it.”

  They both wanted a fresh start. Something so simple, yet so impossible.

  “And you? Why are you really here, Wren?”

  The answer to that question, like so much else, had evolved.

  “I’m just trying to survive,” she whispered.

  23:

  That evening, Wren hid in her room with the curtains open to a creeping sunset and her television set to a vampire movie marathon.

  She didn’t know where else to go after Roman had disappeared into the black hallways. No one had come looking for her to film scenes. Fearing Maddox’s wrath—and Hutton’s once she found out about the stunt with Roman—Wren had stayed buried in bed, trying to catch her breath in the white fur blankets that smelled like him.

  A knock sounded on the black hallway door. Wren waited a beat, and when Hutton didn’t barge in, she called out softly, “Come in.”

  Bode came inside. In one glance, he took in the vampires making out on screen and her huddled form on the bed. He grinned. “Chicken.”

  Wren poked her head out farther from the blanket’s edge. “I am not. How about you go get some alterations and try taking on those people. They’re crazy!”

  Laughing, he sat on the edge of her bed. “You’re right about that.”

  “What’s going on? Does Maddox need me?”

  “The press conference is in an hour, and Hazen wants a debrief on anything you found out today.”

  Groaning, Wren pressed her face back into her pillow. In the chaos, she’d completely forgotten about the press conference. Not to mention she’d only questioned Kruz. Her investigation was off to a sloppy start. How in the world was this only the first day of filming?

  “This is insane.” Her pillow muffled her words.

  “You’re doing a great job, though.” Bode nudged her side with his elbow. “I know it’s overwhelming—”

  A laugh clawed its way up her throat to throttle her. When she lifted her face to Bode, his amusement had disappeared, replaced with concern, complete with a heavy frown and furrows between his brows.

  “Overwhelming?” she asked incredulously. “You think it’s overwhelming for me?”

  Bode studied her face, the cowlick in her hair from the pillows, the red imprint of her hand on her cheek, her smudged mascara. Over her shoulder, on the television screen, a vampire shifted into a bat with a hiss and flapped away. His worry faltered.

  He snorted, then coughed. Neither worked to hide his laughter. Finally, he just let it loose as Wren glared at him. “You do look pretty overwhelmed,” he managed.

  “You know,” she grumbled, “it wouldn’t hurt for some people, who are supposed to be my friend”—she gave him a pointed look—“to give me some freaking sympathy!”

  Bode closed his mouth, though he was s
till smiling broadly, his eyes dancing with mirth. “Your friend, huh?”

  Wren grabbed a pillow and chucked it at him. He caught it easily.

  “Don’t make a big deal out of it or anything.”

  “I remember when you wouldn’t even get in my car.” His grin softened to something a bit different, something more smoldering. Wren’s smile froze on her face. “I told you I would win your trust, didn’t I? What are the spoils for winning the bet?”

  “There was no bet,” Wren said, the faintest hint of nerves dancing in her belly.

  Bode leaned forward, the mattress dipping beneath his weight. The muscles along his forearms and biceps flexed. “Are you sure? I think there was a bet.”

  Before today, Wren had never been kissed, but she’d seen the look on Roman’s face when their harried scene had become more than just a performance. The look was so fresh in her memory that she immediately recognized it.

  Bode was thinking about kissing her.

  She shoved herself upright too roughly, and the pillows and blankets slid off the bed. “I think I’d remember making a bet like that!” The words were too bright, like she was trying too hard. She tacked on a giggle at the end, hoping it might help. It didn’t.

  She would never look at Bode that way. Not with Roman around.

  But he recovered quickly—so quickly Wren thought she’d imagined the entire thing or misread his intentions. He gently cuffed her shoulder. “We better get downstairs before Hazen sends a search party.”

  : : :

  Hazen hadn’t left his office since Wren and Bode had been in there very, very early that morning.

  His clothes from yesterday were rumpled in a corner, and he was just buttoning the collar of a freshly pressed shirt when Bode and Wren entered.

  “This is a disaster.” He jerked his collar up and started tying a red tie around his neck with brutal, yanking motions. “I read through your report on the crew. There was nothing. These people are cleaner than a flesh-feed’s browser history.”