Fame And Secrets (Lords Of Lyre Book 2)

by Cora Kenborn

  “But, Julian…”

  I tried as best as I could to not lose my shit. “Please, Phoebe…just do it. I promise I’ll explain in the car.” She finally nodded and descended the stairs. Once I heard the front door close, I pulled my phone out, hit redial, and waited for the same voice mail. “Forget calling me back. Unlock your fucking door, we’re on our way.”

  Tearing out of the room, I flew down the stairs and slammed the front door behind me.

  ***

  “Damn, stop knocking, I’m coming!” Turning the bolt, he swung the door open. Our eyes collided and he smirked. “What the hell, Jag?”

  I shoved Zane’s shoulder, tearing into his living room, dragging Phoebe behind me. With her arm still caked in blood, he raised an eyebrow and called after her.

  “Phoebe, what the hell happened to your arm?”

  I let go of her hand and reached into my pocket, pulling out the piece of metal. Pressing the release button, a shiny blade appeared, and I held it up to his face for inspection. “Missing something?”

  Zane stared at my hand. “I can explain, brother.”

  I took two steps, forcing him against the door. “Explain what? Why your knife was in my guest room? Or why blood is all over my goddamn house? Maybe also why my window is busted? Go ahead, I’m all fucking ears.”

  Zane tried to take the knife out of my hand, and I pulled my arm back. With a low growl, he reached for it again, his hand barely missing the handle. “Give me my damn knife, man.”

  “Come and get it.”

  “Julian, stop it!”

  We both faced Phoebe, her hands wrapped protectively around her stomach. I kept my voice as even as I could. “Stay out of this.”

  Zane snorted. “Yeah, like that’s gonna happen.”

  I turned back and sneered. “You, shut up…and don’t talk to her. You talk to me. You tell me why you were at my house with a knife. Then, maybe, you can have it back.”

  “Fuck you, bro.”

  I rolled my eyes and lifted the knife higher. “Is that the best you can do, Z?”

  “Julian, stop being an ass.” Phoebe’s voice cut through the masculine warfare.

  My eyes shifted toward her, every muscle in my body clenched. “He owes us an explanation.”

  “I told you in the car he’d have a good reason for it.” She faced Zane, her features softening. “Don’t you? Don’t you have a reasonable explanation for your knife, and the blood, and everything?”

  Zane’s face twisted in hardened indecisiveness, and he stared silently at us.

  I shook my head in disbelief. “Man, we’ve been friends for a long time, but I swear if you don’t answer her, I’ll punch you in the fucking eye.”

  Zane darted a glance from me to Phoebe and back again. Shoving his hands in his pockets, he dropped his long beard to his chest. “I dropped it.”

  “I gathered that much, Einstein. Why were you there?”

  With his brow furrowed, he growled in obvious avoidance, “Jag, I swear, if you don’t stop being such an asshole, I’m gonna put my foot up your ass. I said I dropped it.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “What were you doing in my house?”

  The room remained silent, three pairs of ears waiting for a response. Two of us waiting for an explanation for the hell we’d just left.

  With every ticking second, I grew more agitated. Dropping the knife on the carpet, I grabbed Zane by the collar. “What the fuck were you doing in my house?” He never fought back, never spoke, and never shifted his glance.

  “He came after me, Julian.”

  All eyes turned to the staircase. Faith stood at the top, her hand gripping the railing as her wild blond hair fell down her shoulders. Blood caked her arms and legs. I let go of Zane’s shirt, glancing at him as he rubbed his forehead, his eyes closed.

  “Faith, go back upstairs,” he ordered.

  I glared at him. “The hell she is…” I turned my attention toward the top of the staircase. “What the hell happened to you?”

  “You don’t have to answer that, Faith.”

  “Why don’t you let her answer for herself?”

  Taking three more steps, Faith lowered her eyes. “It’s okay, you don’t have to hide me.” With the last step underneath her bare feet, she clung to the railing post. “It was dumb, Julian. Zane and I had a fight, and I couldn’t go back to my house, well, for obvious reasons.” She glanced up at Zane, and he looked away. “Phoebe gave me a key to your house after the whole hospital thing and with her picking you up at LAX, I knew you guys would be gone for hours with freeway traffic.”

  “So you just, what, Netflix and chilled at my house?” Anger threatened to overflow again.

  “I don’t know what I planned to do, I just needed time to think.” She sighed and gripped the banister. “When I got there, I saw the window had been broken. I tried to clean up the glass, but I tripped and fell into it. I cut my hands and legs to hell. I was bleeding, so I called Zane to help.”

  Phoebe spoke up. “But that doesn’t explain the blood upstairs.”

  Faith sighed again. “Well, shocker, when he got there, he started being an asshole.”

  “What the hell did you expect? You called me and said you were bleeding, Faith! You scared the shit out of me!” Zane exploded.

  “As I was saying,” she said, cutting her eyes at him. “We fought again, and I ran upstairs. Unfortunately, I was still bleeding badly and it got everywhere. I’m sorry, you guys, I’ll pay to have your house cleaned. I’ll pay for new carpet if I have to.”

  “She needs stitches, but she won’t…fucking…go!” Zane roared, punctuating his last words.

  “Must be an epidemic,” I muttered, tossing a look at Phoebe.

  Zane motioned to the front door. “If that’s all, you can get the hell out now.”

  I almost backed out. Everything had been cleared up, and Phoebe and I could leave without any more drama. But if I’d learned one thing, it was everything came back to bite me in the ass. She’d confessed to visiting Elisabeth Cayden’s dump site, and if I withheld this right now, it’d be a guaranteed way to lose her. With a deep sigh, I sat down and rubbed my eyes.

  “I’m going to tell her, Z.”

  He regarded me cautiously. “Tell her what?”

  “Your friends. Hough. Everything.” Dropping my hands, I bounced my eyes from him to Phoebe, both wide-eyed and quiet.

  “I’m listening,” she said, backing against a wall for support.

  If I owed her one thing, it was to look her in the eye as I destroyed her. “You’ve been under surveillance for weeks by some not so legal people employed by him.” I nodded toward Zane. Her hand backed against her mouth as I delivered the final blow. “Your father murdered Elisabeth Cayden, and he’s been tracked to Los Angeles.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Phoebe

  “You haven’t said anything in over three hours, Phoebe.” Julian’s tentative stare burned the side of my face but I refused to look at him. We sat across from each other on the deck of our house after the flurry of activity had quietened. Upon returning home, Julian immediately filed a police report for the break-in and had the window repaired. Faith insisted on paying for carpet cleaning.

  The events of the last six hours weighed heavily on my mind as I glanced at the shoe dangling off the back of my foot as I sat, legs crossed in proper debutante style. I’d been forced to wear slip-on sneakers since I’d found myself unable to tie my own shoes in the past couple weeks. In fact, I’d found myself unable to do a lot of things the past couple of weeks: scratch the backs of my thighs, shave my legs, or get comfortable in any sort of sleeping position. Everything that seemed so monumental this morning now appeared frivolous. After the bomb that’d leveled my world hours earlier, nothing mattered except the phrase repeating itself on a loop in my head.

  “Your father murdered Elisabeth Cayden, and he’s been tracked to Los Angeles.”

  Down deep I knew it all along. Hell, I’d been the o
ne to admit it to Julian in the first place. I’d been the one to sneak out to Griffith Park, just to prove to myself that it wasn’t true—or was. I didn’t know on the way which answer I’d been seeking. Inside, the little girl who’d taken beatings quietly in fear of harsher ones, and the young woman who believed the monster from her dreams would someday emerge back into reality, knew Elisabeth Cayden and I shared a twisted kinship.

  Once more, he’d stepped out of the shadows. Another showdown was on the horizon.

  It took me three tries to find my voice. “You asked me to trust you, but you also swore you’d never lie to me. You looked me in the eye and lied when I asked you if you knew something about Elisabeth Cayden or my father.”

  Julian came to life, swinging his chair around to face me. “Hell, Phoebe! What was I supposed to do? You’d just been released from the hospital. The last thing I wanted was to be the reason you delivered early. How would I have forgiven myself?”

  I pulled at my hair like a crazy person. “This isn’t about you. We’re a team. How could you keep something like that from me?”

  “I thought I was protecting you.”

  “Damn it, Julian. We’re supposed to be learning from our mistakes, not repeating them. Don’t you see that? You thought you were protecting me in New York by not telling me you had a stalker. Not only did that separate us, it almost got us killed.”

  Defensiveness flared in his darkened eyes. “That’s not fair.”

  Boiling over with anger, I grabbed his hand and held it across my belly. “I did the same thing. Don’t you remember? I thought I could stop her from hurting you by keeping my pregnancy a secret. But I realized I’d stolen something you’d never get back. We swore to each other in that hospital room after Tanna attacked us there’d be no more secrets.” I tried holding my composure, but my voice cracked. “Since we left New York, there’s been nothing but secrets. I can’t marry you, not knowing if you’re being honest with me.”

  “What the hell do you mean you can’t marry me?” I winced as his voice sharpened, and twisted the diamond on my hand. “Don’t you fucking take that ring off.”

  Pressing my thumb against the smooth solitaire stone, I sighed heavily. “Tell me right now if there’s anything else I don’t know. Come clean, Julian. There won’t be a second chance.”

  “Is that a threat?”

  I ran my fingertips over my dry lips. “I’d never threaten you, but I also won’t live with deceit.”

  His mask of fury dropped, revealing a man on the verge of devastation. “You can’t take my own kid away from me.” The quiet phrase shattered my heart.

  “My god, Julian,” I choked through a sob. “Do you really think I’d do that? I know I’ve made mistakes, but regardless of what happens, I’d never deny your rights as a father.”

  He moved his hand from my stomach and gripped the sides of my chair, pulling it toward his own until our faces touched. “I don’t want to just be a father. I want to be a husband.”

  “I know,” I said quietly. Silence fell and a shiver started from the base of my spine. It didn’t surprise me when his chair violently pushed away and he stormed into the house. After everything that’d happened, I didn’t have strength to chase after him. Cradling my head in my palms, I lowered my elbows onto my lap.

  Then, my senses filled with him, as the soft thud of his knees hit the ground in front of me. The familiar scent of soap and spice assaulted my lungs. “Do you still love me?”

  “Julian…”

  “Do you still love me?”

  “Why do you—”

  “Do…you…still…love…me?” he demanded.

  There was only one truth. “I’ll never not love you. It’s impossible for me not to love you.”

  The first touch of his calloused fingers on my arms burned a trail with every brush of his hand. When I didn’t protest, his other hand ignited a path down across my cheek, and I closed my eyes, memorizing the grooves in his fingerprints. One touch and he’d enveloped me in a protective shell.

  His lips pressed against my ear with warmth and a rasp in his voice. “I’ve loved you from the first minute I saw you. As long as we remember that, princess, we can get through anything. I promise I’ll win back your trust…if you’ll let me.”

  His words hovered around my heart. My body was drained, as if every weight of the world converged in my undoing. Julian exposed his heart in a way that’d never been purer. The guilt he’d placed on his own shoulders was his promise, and he knelt beside me, a broken man on the verge of losing it all.

  A tear dangled from my nose before running down the corner of my mouth. We locked eyes, and I traced his lips with the pad of my thumb. Neither of us said a word, as if speaking would sever our connection. I began to pull away. As soon as my thumb shifted, he wrapped his hand around my wrist.

  “Don’t.” His voice cracked. “I’ll walk away from all of it for you. I’ll do whatever it takes.” He gathered my hands in his. “I won’t stop until I get what I want.”

  I tilted my head. “What do you want, Julian?”

  “I want vows, Phoebe. I want it all.”

  “Why is it so important to have a piece of paper to prove what we feel?” I tried to pull my hands away, but he held firm with one hand, cradling the back of my head with the other.

  He hesitated as he glanced toward the ground. Finally lifting his chin, dampness glistened in the corners of his eyes. “What are you afraid of? Why are you scared to marry me?”

  “I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “I want to marry you, but it scares the shit out of me. I wish I could give you a better answer, but that’s all I’ve got.”

  He traced the trail of tears down my face. “Baby, I’m not going anywhere. If you promise to keep that ring on your finger, I won’t push.”

  “It shouldn’t be this hard,” I sobbed, shaking my head.

  “Phoebe, anything worth having doesn’t come easy. We’ve fought like hell for what we have. That’s what makes us special.” I nodded as he placed a hand on each of my cheeks. “You listen to me, Miss Ryan, we’ll fight your father head on together—no secrets and no lies.”

  Without another word, he pulled me into his arms. Willingly, I became engulfed in him, and he once again became my shelter. With his lips buried in my hair, unspoken words neither of us wanted to hear lingered.

  History was about to repeat itself.

  And with that realization, silence became golden.

  ***

  At first, it sounded like someone let a hungry, pissed-off hawk loose in the bedroom. I alternated between fear for my life and an intense desire to beat the window workers within an inch of their lives for fucking up the repairs, when my brain registered my phone was ringing. I knocked everything off the nightstand until I dragged it back to the warmth of our eight hundred thread count cocoon.

  “If this isn’t Channing Tatum, go to hell,” I croaked, still half asleep.

  “I’m beside you, you know,” Julian mumbled into his pillow, and rolled over.

  The snort from the other end of the line was so loud, I pulled the phone away and glanced at the caller ID. Rolling my eyes, I shoved it back against my ear. “What the hell, Faith? Do you own a clock?”

  “As a matter of fact, I do,” she said, way too damn chipper for seven a.m. “And as the official coordinator of your baby shower, there are decisions that needed your immediate attention. Unless you want a fun-filled baby shower at Shenanigan’s, I suggest you wake the fuck up.”

  “Fine.” I propped against the headboard and rubbed my eyes. “Shoot.”

  She took a deep breath as if she were about to hit me with some serious shit. “Okay, I know it’s a sore subject, but since you and Julian weren’t able to find out the gender, and there’s no baby name…”

  “Yeah?”

  “What color and theme am I supposed to use for the party?”

  I sat blinking, waiting for her to finish the rest of her thought. With nothing but silenc
e between us, my mouth dropped open. “You’re kidding me, right?”

  “I don’t kid about party swag, Pheebs. This is Hollywood. It’s all about publicity. Julian Bale cannot have a lame-ass party.”

  Closing my eyes, I counted to three before answering. “Faith, I don’t care what color you decorate with—use black, purple…fucking puke green for all I care. It’s just the band and friends. If paparazzi show up, you might as well invite the LAPD, because I’ll stun everyone’s balls off.”

  “Pheebs—”

  “Goodbye, Faith, love you.” I threw my phone on the floor and flung myself onto the mattress.

  “Fight with the bestie?” Julian mocked, facedown into his pillow. Pulling my own pillow from behind my head, I smacked him with it. “Ah, fuck!”

  “Oh, please, you big baby. That didn’t hurt.”

  After our emotional warfare yesterday, we’d had a quiet dinner and snuggled in bed, watching movies all night. Neither one of us had the energy for make-up sex. I didn’t even remember the last half of the movie, only being held against his bare chest with the melodic beat of his heart lulling me to sleep.

  The husky laughter behind me cleared the rest of my cloudy head. “Still not a morning person, huh, princess?”

  I closed my eyes and pulled the covers over my head. “Why do people call at such ungodly hours when they don’t have a boss? Faith is the boss.”

  I held the blankets tighter as he worked to remove them. After getting a good handful of blanket away from me, he jerked it down to my waist, and I took in his amused eyes and crooked grin. “Seven a.m. is hardly ungodly. So, whose balls are in the line of fire now?” I watched as he dropped his head into the palm of his hand with his elbow propped beneath him. He twirled the ends of my hair around his index finger.

  “Julian, we’re having a baby,” I blurted out, deep in thought.

  “If you’re trying to shock me, you’re about six months too late.”

  “Ha-ha, very funny.” I smirked. “The baby will be here soon, and Faith reminded me we haven’t talked about names.”