Star Bright (Bright Young Things Book 1)

by Staci Hart

  “He knows who I am.”

  Had there been an abundance of air in our little nest, it would have been sucked into her lungs when she gasped. “You’re kidding.”

  I shook my head and rolled onto my back, letting the blanket settle over my face so I could hide. “He found my planner—”

  “I can’t hear you.”

  With a huff, I flipped back over. “He found my planner. No, he didn’t find it—he fucking picked it up and opened it.”

  Her jaw came unhinged. “That motherfucking snoop.”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “I can’t believe he read it.”

  One of my brows arched. “You can’t?”

  “Ugh, I can,” she realized. “Fucking fuck, Stella. What’s he going to do? Oh God, the magazine.” Another gasp, this time coupled with bugged-out eyes. “Oh God. Warren.”

  I rolled over again, pressing the backs of my hands to my eyes.

  Betty flipped the covers back. “Where’s my switchblade?”

  I couldn’t even muster a tiny little bitty smile. “He threw Cecelia Beaton in my face, playing like I was just as bad as him. He had the fucking nerve to act betrayed, Betty.”

  “You have got to be fucking kidding me.”

  “I wish I were.” I stared at the pipe, wondering absently if the joint leaked, would it make the rust weenie look like it was coming? “He said he didn’t go looking for it. Like, he didn’t have any intention to snoop on me.”

  “But he did.”

  “But he did,” I echoed.

  “Do you believe him?”

  I sighed. “I don’t know.”

  Joss’s door opened, and she glanced in, frowning when she saw us. She climbed into bed. “Scoot.”

  We shuffled around until I was comfortably bracketed by my friends. Joss looked like she’d just stepped out of makeup even though she didn’t have a smidge on. When she asked what happened, I met Betty’s eyes, and she launched into the brief explanation. Color splotched Joss’s cheeks, her eyes big and sad and glimmering.

  “Goddammit,” she whispered. “What are we going to do?”

  “Do about what?” Zeke asked from the door, his brows drawn. “Move over.” He climbed in, literally on top of me, and shimmied his way between me and Betty.

  “Ow! You’re on my hand, Zeke!”

  “Spoon me,” he commanded, ignoring her. “Why are we all nuzzly in your bed, Star Bright?”

  “Nosy fucking Levi found her planner,” Betty answered.

  Zeke stilled. “No. No, he didn’t. You’re fucking with me.”

  Our eyes met. His face fell.

  “Oh, hell no he didn’t. I’ll burn his house down.”

  “Oh good, I was worried I’d have to do it alone,” Betty said. “He said he didn’t go looking for it, like that excuses him from opening something that was none of his fucking business.”

  “Right, just like Roman said fucking that bitch was an accident. You don’t slip and fall your way into somebody’s ass. I’m just saying.” He waved a hand, composing himself. “This is not about me. This is about that fucking liar. And you. How are you?”

  “I’m … everything. I feel all the things, and none of them are good.”

  “What do you think he’s going to do?” Joss asked.

  “I can’t see him telling anyone, I really can’t, but what the fuck do I know? I never saw Dex blackmailing me either. In fact, I never see anything because I am a gullible fool.”

  “I wonder if it would have gone down this way if Dex hadn’t threatened you,” Joss mused, “if he hadn’t betrayed you only to have Levi uncover your secret. It doesn’t do much to build faith.”

  “My track record sucks, and the only takeaway is that I am a terrible judge of character, and I can’t trust myself. I think I’d buy anything Levi sold me just so I could keep him. And even if he didn’t have intent, he still violated my privacy and stole my biggest secret. I forgave him once, but a second time? How many chances do you give someone who’s lied to you? Why isn’t there a rulebook or something for this?” I took a shaky breath. “I want to believe him. I should. Shouldn’t I? Don’t all the things he’s done since then and now count for something?”

  “When someone shows you who they are, believe them. Maya Angelou,” Zeke said. “I want to believe him too, but trusting his intentions are good after all of this is dangerous.”

  “Okay, don’t get mad when I say this,” Betty started, and I gave her a warning look. She made hard eye contact with Zeke. “But Stella, you were planning on telling him, just not yet. He was going to find out, and you trusted him enough then.”

  “But it’s not about the knowledge itself, don’t you see? It’s how he came about it. I was going to tell him when the articles were through and I was sure he wouldn’t use the secret against me. But he stole it instead.”

  “You didn’t have control over the situation, and that was your only weapon,” Joss said.

  The sting of tears nipped the corners of my eyes. “Instead, all I have is my fear and the hope that he won’t share the secret he took from me. But without trusting him enough to back it up.”

  “So what are we going to do now?” Zeke asked.

  “Please, no arson,” I said, then sighed. “What are my options?”

  “Ask him if he plans to tell anyone,” Joss said. “Then ask yourself if you believe him.”

  “If I do feel like I believe him, I won’t trust myself.”

  Joss’s eyes softened. “Then it sounds like it’s over.”

  Pain burst from my rib cage when my heart broke.

  “I think you should listen to him,” Joss continued. “Hear him out.”

  “And then you’ve got to protect yourself,” Zeke added. “You’ve got to find out the price for your secret and pay it.”

  I laid my hand over my eyes, willing myself not to cry.

  “Hear me out,” he said. “This isn’t your first rodeo, Spencer. You know what’s at stake. So if you don’t think you can take him on his word, you need to secure that information.”

  “God, that stresses me out,” Betty said. “What if it was all a lie? An elaborate game? Like, did he come into this with the intent to use you? Jesus, seriously, where is my switchblade?”

  “And what if,” Joss added with a frown, “what if you decide to trust him, to believe him, and then he exploits it when he gets mad, like Dex?”

  No one had an answer to that.

  “You’re right, all of you. It’s easier this way.” I tried to convince myself. “Just call it off, pay him whatever it will take, and walk away. Because it doesn’t matter if he did it on purpose or not—that’s what I’m realizing. More than my name was exposed, so was the fact that I don’t trust him. Even though he apologized for lying, even though he promised me honesty, I didn’t have time to get past that lie before this happened.” I swallowed hard and lied my face off, pretending like I didn’t realize I was doing it. “I mean, whatever, guys. It’s no real loss—I barely know him, and he’s leaving. We were a total shitshow from the start. It’s fine. C’est la fucking vie or something.”

  Zeke’s brows came together in a disapproving look. “Don’t pull that shit. Don’t do that thing where you pretend like it’s not a big deal and just skip on. It’s not fucking fine—you cared about him, things got fucked, and nothing about that is okay. So let yourself not be fine, for fuck’s sake.”

  A sob broke out of me. Joss was the first to curl into my side and rest her head on my shoulder. Then Zeke. Betty, feeling left out, rolled over Zeke to a chorus of giggles to lie on top of me, putting me smack in the middle of a love burrito.

  “It’s gonna be okay, Stella,” Zeke said with such certainty, I almost believed it.

  Almost.

  25

  The Hope Trap

  LEVI

  The office buzzed and hummed with its usual noise, but I sat at my desk in a vacuum, reading over my article again.

  I’d turned i
t in before Stella and I imploded, with her approval. It was a recount of the Disco Chicken pub crawl and our arrest, though I’d left out the personal account, citing it as if I hadn’t been there for it. But the tone was clear in its accusation of Commissioner Warren and the question of why. I hadn’t planned on bringing up the speculations about Warren, not wanting to make it political, not wanting to detract from the group itself, but I was too curious and too fucking pissed to stop myself.

  Yara had eaten it up like fresh pastries. Wanted me to slide into that angle, see what I could dig up.

  What she didn’t know was that I’d lost my in. What she’d never know was that I knew who Cecelia Beaton was.

  I’d replayed the fight a hundred times, then a hundred more for good measure, considering every possible potential outcome and thing I could have done differently. I shouldn’t have looked. Once I knew, there was no way to keep it to myself—that lie felt so much worse, like I had something to hide when I didn’t. I’d told Stella no more secrets, and I wasn’t about to start with that one. And while I understood why she didn’t trust me with the information, what I couldn’t fathom was how she’d sent me away without even trying to talk it through. Without giving me even five minutes to explain.

  Of course, I’d asked her for five minutes once before, and she’d granted it. But we were, I supposed, in a fool me once situation, one wherein I’d used my extra life and damaged the bridge of trust, weakening it to the point of collapse. And under the first sign of pressure, it crumbled and fell into the ravine.

  But in the end, I’d fucked up again. And I owed her an apology for that.

  I shouldn’t have been surprised that she thought I was lying, but I was, fully and completely. Maybe it was because I was telling the truth that I couldn’t fathom her disbelief. It wasn’t an unreasonable assumption or too far a conclusion for her to jump to. But the truth of my heart told a different story, one of hurt and loss and no small amount of frustration. Because she’d lied to me too. Sent me away without discussion. Hadn’t reached out in the two days we’d been apart, and I was starting to wonder if she ever would.

  And that was the hardest part of all.

  Never seeing her again wasn’t something I could stand for, even if only to have a fucking adult conversation about it and to say goodbye. But being shut out and shut up never did sit well with me. She had a few more days to take her space before I put myself back in it. I only hoped she came around sooner.

  And more than anything, I hoped I wouldn’t lose her.

  I sighed, pushing back from my desk with the day’s big task at hand—tell Yara I’d been permabanned from the Bright Young Things.

  When I knocked on the doorjamb, she looked up from her computer and smiled. “Hey, I was just about to call you in and get a plan together. Marcella wants a strategy for uncovering whatever’s going on with Warren through the last articles. And her plan for the big article has shifted too—we’re going full-on war against Millennials and how the fight has climbed all the way up to the upper echelons of our local government.”

  I’d taken a seat while she spoke, my frown deepening with every word. “That wasn’t the plan.”

  “Well, plans change. So adapt.”

  “It’s not that simple, Yara. Even if I wanted to write the piece she wants, I can’t say it’s true. I have a hunch something else is at play here, something bigger than a generational gap.”

  “Then figure out what it is and write about that. Just keep going to the parties and start leaning in that direction so we can end it all with pyrotechnics.”

  I shook my head. “The second problem—I lost my in.”

  Her face flattened. “What the fuck did you do?”

  “Stella and I fell out, and I don’t know that we’ll fall in again.” My ribs squeezed my heart like a fist. “Parties are off the table.”

  “Goddammit, Levi. Do you have any idea how big this story is? Our circulation is up and multiplies exponentially every time a new article posts. You have to figure out how to fix whatever you fucked up and get back in there.”

  A dark anger swept over me. “I’m not exploiting her, if that’s what you’re asking. And if that’s a problem, Marcella knows where to find me.” I stood, not wanting to discuss it any further than that. “I’ll write a closing piece, but that’s it.”

  “She’s not going to like it,” Yara said to my back as I walked out. “She’ll pull Syria, and you know it.”

  I turned to level her with my gaze. “Let me say this one more time—I’m not going to use Stella’s feelings against her, not now and not ever. So do me a favor and send out the fucking memo, Yara.”

  She didn’t answer, and I didn’t wait for her to before storming out of her office. Once back at my desk, I dropped my head to my palm and leaned in, eyes closed and mind on fire. The weight of her threat bent my shoulders, filling me with dread and inevitability. Because I wasn’t going to put any more of this on my relationship with Stella—that was burdened enough as it stood. And if there was one thing I knew, it was that I would never betray her trust again, no matter what she thought. I couldn’t stomach even the thought of bullshitting her for an in, never mind doing it. Lying to her wasn’t an option, and it never would be.

  That undeniable fact could cost me everything. And there was nothing I could do about it but fucking wait to lose what was left.

  I only wished I’d have Stella when it was all said and done. But that was looking as impossible as my ability to hang on to both my job and my morals.

  My phone buzzed in my pocket. With a sigh, I leaned back, extending a leg so I could retrieve it. I was so deep in my thoughts that I didn’t even consider who might have messaged me.

  Stella’s name rang like a bell in my mind, my pulse doing double-time.

  Hey, can we talk?

  I stared at the message like it was written in hieroglyphics. Once past the hopeful shock, I stared at it some more, assessing it for anything that would indicate whether talking was a good or bad thing. I decided to respond as vaguely as I could in return.

  Anytime.

  Little dots popped up while she typed, then stopped. Then, they popped up again for a second but paused once more. And I sat there, watching the tease with my ribs in a vise.

  Come by whenever you’re free. Just text when you’re on your way.

  Without hesitation, I stood, heading for the elevator with my fingers typing out a response.

  Heading to you now. Be there in fifteen.

  The dots showed up again, but when they stopped, they didn’t start up again. No message came through. So I shoved my phone in my pocket and hoped, putting together a speech that—if I was very, very lucky—would absolve me. If nothing else, it would give me the best chance of bringing her back to me.

  I didn’t want to do without her, not unless I had to.

  And she’d be the judge, jury, and executioner of that.

  It was as hot as a fucking griddle, so hot that the wind licked at me like flames as I sped to her place, bringing no relief from the temperature. Oppressive was what it was, a hellish heat indicative of my situation. But when I walked into her building, it was to an unnerving chill, the stony cold of a tomb.

  I brushed the thought away. This is it. Maybe she wants to talk it through, set things right. Apologize and hear you out. An hour from now, you’re going to have her in your arms, and all of this will have been worth it. Manifest it, asshole.

  When I got to the door, I knocked, staring at the keypad while I waited, wondering if I’d ever use it again. Maybe she’d already deactivated my code. God, I hoped she hadn’t, just for what it would mean if she had.

  I thought I heard her before silence fell. Just when I’d convinced myself I imagined it, the door swung open, and Stella stood on the other side of the threshold.

  On a glance, everything about her was soft, from the gentle waves of her golden hair to the freshness of her face. Her sundress was the palest blue, an abundance of fabric p
rinted with a tiny pattern and shot with silver thread, giving her just the slightest bit of shine, just like she always wore. But when our eyes met, they were cold steel, armored for battle.

  And my hope seeped out of me like rainwater.

  She stepped out of the way. “Thanks for coming.”

  I walked past her, wishing I could touch her, my brain working on a new strategy. Because this wasn’t going to be easy, if it was possible at all. “I’ll always come when you call, Stella.”

  The door closed, and when I caught sight of her again, she was in the process of tamping down her emotion. In a breath, she was stone. I followed her into the living room, my disquiet rising when she chose an armchair, putting an unreachable distance between us.

  I sat on the couch, unsure how to start, unsure what to say, the speech I’d carefully composed discarded and useless.

  So I landed on keeping it close to the vest. “What did you want to discuss? Because I had a list, but I have a feeling you don’t want to hear it.”

  She didn’t react but for a flash of pain behind her eyes. “I’ll listen. But it won’t change anything.”

  “You haven’t heard my argument yet. I’ve been told I’m incredibly convincing.”

  I didn’t even get a shadow of a smile.

  “Levi, we’ve been a train wreck from the beginning. We started off on a lie. And even if we tried this again, we can’t ever go back. This will hang over us. And then you’ll leave. We need to call it before it gets any worse.”

  I wanted to argue, but I wasn’t sure that she was wrong. That knowledge didn’t make me hate it any less.

  “You want to call it, regardless of how you feel about me?”

  “My feelings are the last thing I can listen to when it comes to you.”

  I swallowed the gravel in my throat. “That’s too bad. They’re the only thing I can listen to when it comes to you.”

  Her chin flexed, her color rising. “We have a bigger issue, one that puts too many people at risk, myself more than anyone. The information you have is a commodity that can be bought and sold, and I need to secure its safety.”