Secret Things
A Hollywood Secrets Novel
Nazarea Andrews
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The author makes no claims to, but instead acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of any wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction including brands or products.
Copyright © 2016 by Nazarea Andrews.
Secret Things by Nazarea Andrews
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States of America by A&A Literary.
Summary: Camden thought he had everything he wanted with the girl and the show and the fame. Turns out he was wrong.
1. Hollywood romance 2. M/M romance. 3. Contemporary romance
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
For information, address
Nazarea Andrews, 14207 Ridge Court, Upatoi GA 31829.
www.nazareaandrews.com
Edited by Owl Word Editing
Cover design by Melissa Stevens of The Illustrated Author
Cover art copyright©: Nazarea Andrews
Ebook Formatting by Nazarea Andrew
For every love story that made my heart ache and for my favorite love story.
Love you, Mister.
About:
Camden is on top of the world.
He’s dating his best friend and co-star. He has a top rated TV show that just got renewed for a seventh season. It’s what he’s always wanted.
And he’s fucking miserable.
Dimitri is living the life he always wanted. He and Victor, his high school boyfriend, are social media darlings. His part just got renewed on his hit TV show, and the charity foundation he co-founded is taking off. It’s everything he ever wanted.
And he’s fucking miserable.
The only time either seem happy is when they’re together. And both of them are ignoring the attraction between them. There’s too much at risk. The show, their significant others, a friendship that is more important than a quick screw.
Oh, and Camden is straight.
Right?
But attraction isn’t always easy to ignore, and a lot can happen that isn’t meant to. When one of Dimitri’s fans gets involved, both men will have to decide how much and who they want.
Chapter 1.
Posted on Fractured Realms Message Boards
@SilentSisterFraley: Did anyone else see them at the @SilenceScreams concert last night? ALL of them were there!!
@TrashyGrimmShips: Pics or it didn’t happen, @SilentSisterFraley.
@BeyondGrimmPages: Didn’t Camden say they’d be touring with Silence of Screams this summer, after the cons wrapped up? I think it’s cute, they vacay together!!
@Victri4ever: Camden and Carissa need to figure out something to do with their time that doesn’t involve following Dimitri all over the country. How lame.
---
There’s a sense of motion that wakes me. And noise.
I inhale and get a mouthful of Cari’s hair, and I snort, spitting it out.
“Super sweet,” she mutters into my throat, and I huff a little. Tug her closer and let my eyes drift closed. It’s comfortable here, and now that Cari’s awake, I’m grounded enough I can remember where the hell here is.
“They’re moving,” she mumbles. I nod and she presses a kiss to the skin of my chest. “Think Vic found coffee?”
I snort. “Do you think Dimitri would be that fucking happy if he didn’t?”
She laughs against my chest. Even through the door and over the sound of the road, we can hear Dimitri’s clear voice, teasing and laughing with the others out there. I stretch and it shakes Cari off me. She whines a little and burrows closer, and I let her. Neither of us ever sleep well in new places, and this is, even if it’s Dimitri’s space. But she sleeps better close to me, pressed up to my chest, with my heartbeat to lull her to sleep. I should probably have gone to bed with her last night, instead of sitting up with Dimitri and Vic, but she’d crashed hard and fast after we got on the road, and we both slept like shit for it.
We lay there for a while, until someone bangs on the door to the master bedroom. “Get out of my bed, you lazy fuckers!” Dimitri yells, and I smoother my smile. Cari breathes a curse and forces herself upright.
“Go deal with him,” she orders, glaring at me. She’s known me long enough to see the smile I’m hiding, and bitchy enough in the mornings to not put up with it.
“I’m going,” I say mildly. I tug on some sweat pants, and rub a hand through my hair. I wish like hell I could cut it. “You want coffee?”
She hums into the pillow, a wordless affirmation and I grin at her back as I slip out of the tiny bedroom.
Bedroom is a bad name for it. It’s a room, with a bed, and some shelving. About half-a-foot between the bed and the door, which opens into a hallway lined with four bunks.
And that opens up into a wide open area, which is where I find them.
Victor is sitting on the couch, the rest of Silence of Screams scattered around him, in various stages of undress. I nod at them. It used to be a little awkward being here. This is their space. Their home. I’m just a guest.
“How’s the princess?” Brenden, the bass player, asks.
I ignore him and Dimitri emerges from behind a chair where he’s plugging in his phone, frowning at it as he straightens and turns to look at me.
He’s all messy, dark hair and bright, gray eyes. Scruff and a sharp smile that he directs at me before sliding into Victor’s lap, nudging aside the guitar as easy as breathing.
For them, maybe it is.
Victor and Dimitri fascinate me. Before I met them, I didn’t know there were people like them, sure as hell not in our world. But then I met Dimitri, and he dragged me and Cari into Victor’s world because you can’t know Dimitri Blackwood without knowing Victor Vanes.
“You should get that to her,” Dimitri says, nodding at the cup of coffee steaming on the counter. He’s well-versed in Cari’s coffee addiction and her aversion to mornings, something that is an endless source of amusement to him.
“Did you switch the sugar for salt again?” I ask warily, a little concerned he’s being so nice.
Dimitri gives a slow smirk, and my stomach does this weird roll. It’s not nerves. It’s this…thing…that’s been happening more and more with Dimitri.
I’m not stupid. I know what it is. And it’s bothering the hell outta me.
“Camden?” he asks, shifting forward, away from Victor a little to peer at me with concern.
I smile at him. Shrug a little. “I’m good, man. Hey, we’ve got that meeting with KP this afternoon. What else do we have today?”
“Show tonight,” Victor grunts, as Dimitri leans back into him. He huffs a little, and scowls at Dimitri’s head. It makes me vaguely uncomfortable. Because Dimitri and Victor don’t look at each other like that, and yet it’s happening.
Dimitri is lounging in his boyfriend’s lap like it’s natural, but ignoring him, all of his focus on me, and that damn coffee I still need to take to Cari.
“Ten minutes, and we’re stopping!” the driver, a big burly dude named Charlie shouts, and the band makes some quiet noises of acknowledgement.
“What time is it?” I mutter, just now realizing I don’t know.
This is what happens, every time I hang out with Dimitri off set. He sweeps in like a fucking force of nature, knocks everything out of its neatly ordered place, then
sits back and smiles smugly while I pick up the pieces.
“Noonish. We’ve got about three hours before we get to the venue,” Dimitri says, stealing some of the muffin Victor is nibbling at. “The band is gonna be busy so we’ll do our thing with KP and then I think Cari wanted to find a bookstore?”
He’s making plans, and none of those have anything to do with Victor, which makes me nervous. Victor and Dimitri revolve around each other, and the rest of us kind of fall into their orbit.
I catch Dimitri’s eye but he doesn't take the bait. With anyone else I'd assume he didn't get it. But this wasn't anyone else. It is Dimitri and I take the hint. He'll talk when he was ready. Victor shifts and dumps Dimitri onto the couch next to him, smirking when his boyfriend yelps. “We’re gonna practice, while you entertain the princess,” Jase, the drummer, drawls from behind us.
“Don’t call her that,” Dimitri and I snap and for a second, silence settles over the bus, and I catch Dee’s eye before he shakes his head, a tiny little not now.
Dammit. Huffing under my breath and summoning a false smile, I stand. “I'll get Carissa up.”
Ten minutes later, the bus pulls up to a Denny’s, and the band piles out, leaving us behind. It's not that they don’t like us, per sa. It's more that we are Vic’s guests. They like Dimitri, tolerate his presence, but a lifetime ago, Dimitri sang and performed with them. Cari and I aren’t extended family. We are friends of Dimitri and thereby connected to the band through Vic, and that makes us his problem in public.
The problem is us. In public.
When Dimitri first threw the idea out at us, it sounded great and far-fetched.
Three best friends on a summer adventure was shit high school students and frat boys on spring break did.
It's not something thirty-somethings with commitments did.
It sure as fuck wasn't something that three actors did, not when Fractal Ends was in the running for Best TV Drama and Small Things was getting national attention.
At least, that's what our publicist informed us of when she caught wind of our summer plans.
“Absolutely not,” KP laughed, when we first brought it up. “There’s no way to run security for that. No.”
She’s shaking her head and moving on to the next thing on her list when Dimitri says, “I travel with the band every summer. You’ve never had a problem with that before.”
She sighs. “It’s different when you travel with them. You and Victor are together. The fans expect it. But if the three of you go on the great American roadtrip? That’s the show, on the road, or how it will be perceived.”
“We aren’t gonna be doing signings, KP,” I protest. “We’re gonna get drunk and act like roadies.”
“Without the heavy lifting,” Dimitri interjects, lazily.
“The answer is no. Too much of a risk. Sorry.”
Cari looked up from her phone, a small smile on her lips.
My sweet Cari, with her pretty, blonde curls and bright, blue eyes and sugar-sweet innocence. Everyone always underestimated her. “Contractually, we’re yours until filming of episode twenty-one. We’re contractually obligated to attend the Grimm Pages in London in May, and After the Ever After in June. But between June twentieth and when filming resumes on July ninth, we aren’t contracted to do any appearances.” She glances up and her smile turns mischievous. “And according to this the only thing we are contracted to not do is cute Cam’s hair and attend unsanctioned conventions.” She glances at me and Dimitri. “Boys, think we can avoid that?”
“You need a haircut, Cam,” Dimitri mumbles into his coffee and both KP and Cari pin him with a dirty look.
“So we go. And we’ll be fine.”
Which is how we ended up here. On a bus that’s only a little bigger than my trailer on set. With my two best friends, and a band that tolerated us, and enough alcohol that even Josef Grimm would be a little daunted.
Carissa blinks as she emerges from the back bedroom. Dimitri has found a shirt, somewhere, and tugged it on, with a ball cap and I’m sitting in the same captain’s chair I always take, when it’s free—the one that can view the whole fucking room with very little effort. She arches an eyebrow at me.
“Where’s the band?”
“They left us. And unless you want to be left at a Denny’s on the Ohio turnpike, I suggest you move your pretty ass. They won’t stick around when they’re done.
Cari shoves her phone in her pocket, and Dimitri leads the way off the bus.
By now, the fans who always seem to gather around Silence of Screams have dispersed, and it’s almost peaceful as we slip into the noisy diner.
Dimitri and I find a table while Cari darts to the bathroom, a look of bliss and determination on her face.
“I think KP overestimated our mass crowd appeal,” Dimitri observes dryly as we sit there, ignored by the waitresses.
I smother a laugh, and he grins at me, all bright eyes and wide smile, and it’s the first real smile I’ve seen today. “You and Vic ok?” I ask, because I don’t want to ask.
And lately, with Dimitri, the thing I don’t want to do is probably the safest option.
His eyes skip up to mine, and he frowns, a tight pull of full lips before it’s gone and he’s grinning. “Perfect. You and princess?”
I blink at him, a little lost. “What the hell kind of question is that?”
I’m here, with my two best friends. How could I be anything but perfect?
Chapter 2.
Posted on EndersHollow Message Boards
@Vicitritrash: A few pics are circulating. Anyone seen them? CCD did breakfast? C’mon, I’m dying, Enders.
@CaridenIsLife: Apparently, Cari still likes fruit and stealing food from her man. Look at how she’s laying all over him! [photo attached]
@ScreamersEnd: Do you think Dimitri will sing tonight? I heard he was gonna perform one of Vicitri’s early ballads.
@LucyLovesDimitri: Where @ScreamersEnd??? Where did you hear that??
---
My phone buzzes. It’s been on silent all morning, but a few people can get through to me. KP. Cari and Camden—but they’re here, so it’s not them. My mom, but she’s at that spa I sent her to for her birthday. My agent and our director. KP.
And Victor.
Since I have a meeting with KP in two hours and spoke to my agent yesterday that rules them both out. Cari’s phone hasn’t gone off, which means it’s not our director or producer.
Which leaves Vic, and I ignore it.
“Did you read the first script?” Cari asks, taking a neat bite of her yogurt parfait. She does this thing, when we eat together, where she’ll order something appropriate.
Like that fucking yogurt and fruit bullshit she’s eating.
And Cam, he orders a little more than he can eat, more than he wants, or the blueberry pancakes, even though he hates blueberries.
Later, when pictures of our breakfast surfaces, it’ll be cute how she steals from him and how he doesn’t even notice. How she’s all dainty and proper and everything an actress is supposed to be, while still stealing bacon and joking about life on the road with a band.
“You said you’d tell me what to expect,” Camden accuses around his coffee and she gives him this fond, exasperated huff.
She toggles up something on her tablet and swivels it to me and Camden. He cranes his head to read it and when that doesn’t work, moves to my side of the booth.
And I freeze for a heartbeat.
It’s not a big booth. I mean, it’s not small. But it’s not meant for two men, both over six feet tall and well built, to cram into one side. So I’m pressed up against him, from hip to our shoes, our arms pressed tight through the suddenly too thin cotton of my t-shirt.
And I can smell him. That scent that is gum and clean sweat and soap, and a hint of flowers that clings to him from Cari.
Goddammit.
When I suggested we spend the summer touring with Vic, it’d been a poorly thought out idea. I di
dn’t think. I just looked at the calendar, and saw almost two months of nothing but the band and Vic, without the quiet smiles from Camden and Cari’s sharp wit and grins.
And I panicked.
Next thing I knew, we were in a meeting with KP and working out details and Cari was calmly painting the show into a corner that left us free for the summer.
Even then, it didn’t seem like a bad idea.
It didn’t actually register what a cluster fuck of nope this was until he showed up three weeks ago, outside Vic’s tiny LA apartment, with a bag at his feet and a big grin on his face, and no Cari in sight.
It had taken a lot to not drag him into my bed and kiss the hell outta him, but I managed. We were both in relationships, and happy and Camden was my best friend. My very straight best friend.
The fact that I wanted to fuck him shouldn’t really matter, and most of the time it didn’t.
“Dude. This shit is insane,” Cam says, nudging me, and I blink out of my thoughts to actually read the premiere episode.
It was. Insane.
“They’re separating you two,” I mutter and glance up at Cari. She’s licking her spoon with slow precision that makes me wonder if that’s how she licks Cam’s dick.
If that’s he how he likes it.
Nope. Not thinking about that.
“We get separated pretty regularly,” she observes.
Camden shakes his head. “Not like this. Usually in the season, a little, when Ann gets pissed at Josef. Not to start the season, and it’s sure as fuck never been because Ann decided to fuck Farley.”
She flushes a little. “Does that mean I have to kiss you?” she whines, and the cool cucumber façade falls away, leaving the grump sweetheart I fell in love with the day she showed up at my trailer door with a lollipop in her mouth, a sly smirk on her lips and a bucket of water she threw on me, right after she cheekily announced that she was Carissa Aukes, and she was fucking thrilled I was on set.
Secret Things Page 1