Lux and Lies (Whitebird Chronicles Book 1)

by Meg Collett

  “Let’s get started,” she said, feeling determined.

  Roman went to the bookshelves along the side wall. “I thought we could use Sloane’s old scripts to act out some scenes,” he mused as he scanned the books. “Maybe improv.”

  “No.”

  He turned around, frowning. His dark eyes glinted in the barely lit room. “What? You don’t want to practice?”

  “Hutton can show me all that stuff.” Wren gestured at the shelves behind Roman. “I want you to help me understand Sloane. I want to know her.”

  Her thoughts drifted back to what Hutton had said today about not trusting Roman and how he hadn’t known Sloane as well as he thought he did. But if her boyfriend of several years hadn’t known her, who had? Perhaps Hutton, but Wren knew the surly assistant would never spend the necessary time to let Wren get to know Sloane. She had the sneaking suspicion Hutton didn’t like talking about Sloane on a personal level because it hurt her; she was still mourning the loss of her best friend.

  More than anything, Wren wanted to know the woman she was to become, or, failing that, pretend to be.

  “Okay,” Roman said slowly and walked back toward the desk. “Did you have something in mind?”

  Wren ran a hand through her hair, her fingers working through the small tangles at the ends. Drinking nutrient-dense smoothies and taking her pills every day for over a week had left her hair healthier. No longer did it fall out in clumps. Its gleaming silkiness was a marvel Wren couldn’t stop touching at times.

  She glanced back at the computer in front of her, her lip caught between her teeth. “What about these?” she asked, pointing at the pictures on the screen.

  Roman walked behind the desk to see what she meant. He went silent, his big body completely still. “What do you mean?”

  “Tell me about them.” She swiveled around in the chair and looked up at him. “Tell me the stories behind them. Good or bad. Just something more than cheesy interviews and fake magazine articles.”

  Roman shifted his weight back onto the heels of his boots. A flicker of uncertainty flashed across his face, and he started twisting the ring on his finger. “I guess I can try. This is really how you want to go about this?”

  “It is.” Wren spun back around in her chair and pulled up the earliest photo. It filled the screen, and the date stamp said it was from three years ago. It was an image of a younger, softer Sloane in a white coat and blue jeans, her arm threaded around Roman’s waist at a theme park in the city. They were both laughing and smiling; Roman wore a goofy tall hat that threatened to tilt right off his head.

  Roman sucked in a long breath. “That was our first date,” he murmured.

  Wren traced the line of Roman’s arm flung around Sloane’s shoulders and the way he pulled her into him, the arc of her body, the shine in her eyes as she laughed. They gravitated toward each other. Even through a picture, Wren saw their chemistry. “You both look like you were having an amazing time.”

  Roman pulled a chair around the desk and sat down next to Wren. He leaned forward, his shoulder brushing against hers, and studied the screen. From the corner of her eye, she spotted the twitch of his mouth, as though he might smile.

  “I was at lunch with some friends earlier that day, when suddenly, this napkin was plunked down in front of me. My friends went quiet and I looked up. She was just standing there, her eyebrow cocked at me like I’d done something wrong, but her eyes were brimming with so much … I can’t explain it. But that expression right there?” He pointed at Sloane’s smiling face on the screen. “All that life in her eyes made her a superstar. When she looked at you like that, you thought if you could just stand a bit closer to her, you might feel a fraction of what she was feeling. It was amazing.”

  Wren hadn’t looked back at the picture once Roman had started talking about Sloane; she couldn’t pull her eyes off him. “What was on the napkin?”

  He couldn’t have looked away from the screen if a Link had pointed a gun to the back of his head. A bubble of laughter spilled from his mouth. “It was Hutton’s number. Sloane said if I was going to stare at her the entire time she ate her lunch, then I should call her assistant to schedule a date.”

  “Were you staring at her?”

  “Everyone stared at Sloane Lux, especially red-blooded men.” Roman slumped back in his chair. “In time, I’d come to hate that, but right then, man, she had me. I told her I wouldn’t bother calling her assistant. I would take her on a date right then and there. She said yes. We spent the rest of the day riding rollercoasters and eating cotton candy until our mouths were stained blue.”

  Wren’s heart squeezed as though it were caught in a vise. Sunshine Heights was barely fifty miles away, but it could have been a separate world from Hollywood. This sort of life was alien to her, along with the look on Roman’s face in the picture. Maybe that was why the people of Sunshine Heights lived for the moment they came home and turned on their favorite reality show. The stars on the shows lived a life filled with more than they would ever have.

  Focusing back on the screen, Wren switched to the next picture. It was another one of Sloane and Roman at the park. The next ten were more of the same.

  “What happened?” she whispered. “How could she change so much?”

  Roman’s hand skimmed hers as he reached for the touchpad and flipped back through the pictures until he came to the first one again. “I wish I knew. I wish I could have stopped it. I wish I could have made the world judge her less. I wish I could have been more for her. But this city crushes wishes.” He angled his face toward Wren, the computer screen casting light across half his face, leaving the rest deep in shadows. “You need to remember that, Wren. Keep your wishes like secrets.”

  She was close enough to count his eyelashes and see the ragged, raised edges of his scar. “When did she start serking?”

  Even in the shadows, Wren caught Roman’s grimace, the deepening of the slight wrinkles around his eyes and the set of his mouth as if he were fighting not to gasp for air like a dying man. It was the rawest surge of emotions she’d ever seen on his face.

  “Two years into dating, I noticed something had changed. Hutton and I found out a few months later. We thought we could help her. I stayed with her through the rehabs and relapses.”

  His fingers trailed across his scar, his eyes faraway, and Wren had the horrible thought that perhaps Sloane had given him the scar during one of her serking episodes. Had he kept it as a reminder? For him? Or her, when she’d been alive?

  What had she felt, staring at that scar every day?

  “But nothing was working. I thought if I left, she would get it together. Hutton begged me not to leave Sloane, but I thought I knew her better. The night I left, she overdosed for the first time. I didn’t …” His fingers swiped over the touchpad and the computer went dark, casting them in complete darkness. “When Hutton called and told me the doctors were at the apartment and Sloane had already flatlined once, I got straight into my car. I thought I was going to her apartment, but I ended up at the airport. I left. I just … flew away.”

  “You left her?” Wren couldn’t hide her judgment. Part of her didn’t think she should.

  “I stayed away for a few months. Then VidaCorp’s television network pitched Glass House to my manager. Sloane had already signed on, so I passed. But we started talking again, and she seemed so different. More like her old self. This was just a few months ago. We got back together. Things were okay. Not like they were in the beginning, but better. I didn’t know she was back on serk until the night she …”

  He didn’t finish. He couldn’t.

  But Wren didn’t need him too. In the months leading up to Sloane’s death, no one—at least not Hutton, Roman, Hazen, or the show’s producers—had noticed her decline. The night she overdosed, her security guard had thought she was well enough to be left alone. A mistake that, coupled with countless other reasons, had cost Sloane her life.

  Wren turned the computer’
s screen back on for the light but closed the pictures. “Who was her bodyguard? The one assigned to her by the show?”

  Roman’s knuckles cracked as his fists clenched. Wren heard his teeth grinding together. The muscles along his jaw ticked. “That asshole got her killed,” he growled and twisted in his chair to face her, his teeth flashing beneath his snarling lips. “Don’t trust him. He’s a snake, just like his brother.”

  Wren’s shock turned her fingers ice cold. “Who?”

  But she knew. She knew the name Roman would say.

  “Bode fucking Bafford.”

  15:

  Hutton’s breath rustled the hairs along Wren’s temple. In her heels, the handler stood four inches taller than Wren, and as she pressed closer against Wren’s back, she leaned down, her face right next to Wren’s cheek.

  “Hey, baby,” Hutton crooned. Her fingers trailed up the side of Wren’s bare arm. “What ya got for me today?”

  Hutton smelled of her expensive lotion—rose petals and vanilla. Too sweet for the way she turned her face into Wren’s hair and inhaled deeply.

  In the two weeks since her alterations, Wren’s voice had mostly healed. She wrinkled her nose and said dryly, “If you worked on your music half as much as you worked on getting in my pants, it might actually be bearable to listen to.”

  Across the living room, Hazen and Bode chuckled from their positions on the couch. “That’s so true,” Hazen said. “Foster is such a dick.”

  “He’d take it as a compliment since that’s his most valued possession.” Bode leaned back on the couch and crossed his arms behind his head.

  Hutton ignored their comments. She’d taken her position back in front of Wren with her tablet in hand, her shoulders squared, and her spine achingly straight. “That was pretty good. You didn’t get too rattled this time.”

  Wren fought the urge to roll her eyes. She hadn’t been rattled the last time Hutton had caressed her; it had just taken her by surprise. When it came to teaching Wren how to interact with each cast member, Hutton went into full character. It was unnerving to watch her switch into the performance faster than Wren could blink.

  Wren tried to understand how she did it. Hutton said it was simply practice, but to Wren, it was more a magic trick.

  “Foster speaks with his body, not his mouth. He should have been a flesh-feed actor so he could actually get paid for all the sex he has,” Hutton said.

  Wren had learned more than she wanted to know about each cast member, but Foster Banks, rockstar and sexual savant, grossed her out the most.

  “If you don’t know what to say to him,” Hazen said without taking his attention off a muted Beau Montgomery campaign commercial playing on the television, “just wiggle your boobs in his face. He won’t hear a word you say.”

  Bode winced. Since Roman told her Bode had been Sloane’s guard, Wren had struggled to figure out how she felt about him. She was torn. She really liked him for his compassion and easy-going nature, but she couldn’t help blaming him for his role in Sloane’s death. Roman’s anger had rubbed off on her.

  “She doesn’t need to shake her boobs. She’s smart enough to figure out what to say to him.”

  Hutton’s compliment shocked Wren so much that she almost missed Hutton transforming into the next cast member.

  Her face shuttered behind a new mask. Her lips pouted out, and the corners of her mouth twitched down into a sour scowl. She squinted at Wren, her expression hungry and poisonous. It was Viksyn Viper to a T.

  Wren hated working on Vik the most.

  “Maybe you should go eat a burger, you anorexic whore.”

  Inwardly, Wren withered at the brutal words. Hutton had promised Vik would hold no punches when it came to Sloane. Vik was a certified sea monster with a taste for blood. In all the time they’d practiced Vik—the hours she’d spent staring at Hutton’s rendition of Vik’s lip-altered sneer—Wren had never come close to cutting deep enough, at least in Hutton’s opinion.

  Wren arranged her features to pull out Sloane’s special eyebrow lift, creeping smirk, and frosty bite to her eyes. It was coming easier to her, but it wasn’t second nature yet. “You’d know all about burgers, wouldn’t you?” She eyed Hutton’s waist, pretending there was an inch of fat anywhere on Hutton’s body.

  From the couch, Hazen clapped. “Good one!”

  But Hutton’s face darkened. She stalked toward Wren, moving like vapor—just like Vik moved in the interviews Wren had watched—until they were almost nose to nose. Hutton cocked her head, perfectly imitating Vik’s carrion bird expression.

  She opened her mouth to fire off something even more horrible, but Wren recalled Hutton’s first lesson about interacting with Vik: Viksyn Viper was a husk of mean words and dry skin. Crack her apart with Sloane’s special brand of apathy, and she’d blow away on the breeze.

  Wren held up her hand, cutting Hutton off. “Vik, if millions of people around the world can’t be bothered to care about you, why should I have to listen to whatever’s about to come out of your mouth?”

  Hutton paused. Then, just as magically, her face transformed back to pure Hutton. Wren got goose bumps.

  “Good.” Hutton nodded. “That was good.”

  Wren rubbed her hands up and down her arms. “You should have been an actress. You’re amazing.”

  “Ah,” Hutton said, fumbling her words for the first time ever, “I—”

  “Don’t inflate her ego more than it already is,” Hazen called over from the couch. “Hutton would crumble in front of a camera, but give her a spreadsheet and she can organize the shit out of your day.”

  Still laughing at his words, Hazen unmuted the television. Another mask of sorts fell over Hutton’s face, the one she often wore: cold and unflinching, an ice queen’s facade. Every time Wren thought she got close to thawing Hutton’s frosty heart, something ruined it for her. Hutton checked her tablet for the next exercise she had planned, but Wren thought she could trace the sting of Hazen’s words in the hard press of Hutton’s lips and the quick way she blinked as if tears might be stinging her eyes.

  “You should have replaced Sloane,” Wren whispered so Hazen or Bode couldn’t hear. Hutton’s attention snapped up from the tablet. “You would have been perfect, and you wouldn’t have had to waste all this time training someone else.”

  Hutton’s mouth tightened, forming little wrinkles at the corners of her lips. “It never would have worked. Hazen is right. I choke in front of cameras.”

  She smoothed back her hair and shifted into the next cast member.

  : : :

  “What happened between Sloane and Vik?”

  Roman had his long legs stretched beneath Sloane’s desk, with his ankles crossed and a bottled water in his hand. Slivers of moonlight threaded between the gaps in the curtain and across the office floor. “What do you mean?”

  “The way Hutton says they fight is too personal to be a casual dislike of each other. Whatever happened between them, it went deep.” Wren tucked her bare feet beneath her legs. They were in their normal nightly spot behind Sloane’s computer. They’d almost made it through all her pictures, and the image of Sloane in Wren’s head was filling out, becoming more than just glossy pictures and printed words. Sloane was finally becoming real.

  “You could ask Hutton.”

  “Right. And she would tell me I don’t need to know the past to call Vik a washed-up bitch, because that’s all she is and that’s all I need to know about her.”

  Roman groaned and rested his head against the back of the chair. “Hutton always hated Vik. Almost as much as Sloane did.”

  “So …” Wren said, drawing out the word, “what happened?”

  “Hutton would be happy for you to think Vik is just a bitch, but she isn’t. Vik grew up in Hollywood. Her parents put her in every commercial, magazine campaign, and show they could get her on as a kid, but she always fell short of the right role in the right movie or the right campaign for the right designer. When Sloane a
nd I were broken up, she and Vik auditioned for the same lead role in a blockbuster action movie. Vik got it.”

  Wren wished she hadn’t asked, because the answer would chafe against her image of Sloane. She wanted to see Sloane as a victim of Hollywood, a glimmering star who got a little tarnished along the way. But she forced herself to ask, “What did Sloane do?”

  “Vik’s brother used to molest her when they were younger. Her parents refused to believe her until the evidence on Vik’s body was so obvious her manager threatened to file charges. Vik’s parents shipped her brother off to a hospital in Denver. They wouldn’t speak to her after that. Sloane leaked the story to the press. Her family hired a lawyer and sued Vik. It was ugly.”

  That was more than a little tarnish. It was ruining someone’s life. “Did Sloane get the part after that?”

  “Maddox was slotted to direct, and he’d played a key role in casting Vik over Sloane. It wasn’t enough to just take Vik’s spot in the movie. Sloane had to make them all pay. The production company pulled the movie after all the bad press, and Maddox went back to producing reality shows.”

  Wren drew her knees up beneath her chin and wrapped her arms around her legs. Her dinner smoothie turned oily in her stomach.

  “Sloane and Vik hated each other by the end, but when Hutton insists you tear Vik down, just remember there isn’t much left of Vik to tear.”

  Wren wouldn’t need to remember; she could never forget.

  Sloane Lux wasn’t the woman Wren had desperately wanted her to be.

  16:

  Wren sat in the guest bathroom’s red chair, with her usual beauty team bustling around her. She blinked up at the bright lights, her head tilted back over a portable sink as someone rubbed her scalp, fiercely determined to wash out the dye.

  Water trickled into her eyes. Before she could wipe the drops away, Hutton appeared above her and swatted away the faucet nozzle. “Tell me, Miss Lux, is it true Roman cheated on you while filming his last movie?”