Page 145 of Songbird: Black Kite
“You wouldn’t be so tired if you’d stop staying out all night,” Gavin reprimanded Alex, eyes closed as his own makeup person worked their magic on him.
Not that he needed it, pretty bastard. Somehow, Gavin always looked like he’d gotten a full eight hours’ sleep no matter what we’d been doing the night before.
“What are you even up to these days, man?” I asked, arching an eyebrow and looking at Alex suspiciously. “The only time we ever see you anymore is if Mick has us booked for something.”
Pressing his lips together, Alex made a face that looked like he had just bitten into a lemon, but didn’t reply.
“You’re seriously not going to tell us where you’ve been going at night?”
“Nope,” Alex said breezily, but I could tell it was difficult for him. As much as we teased him, Alex really was a share everything kind of guy. He wasn’t a gossip or whatever, just excitable. He loved life and he loved to talk about what he loved.
So for him to be holding back now was more than suspicious, but after the hard time we’d given him about not being able to keep a secret, he wasn’t letting it go.
“Alright, fine. But you better be careful.” Gavin’s gaze darted to me quickly before he went on. “Things have been heating up, and the paps are out in full force for all thingsBlack Kite. Watch your back.”
Gavin wasn’t wrong; since that photo of Wren and me had broken the internet, it was like the guys and I were chum in the water for the press in L.A., and it was seriously getting old. There was a group of photographers outside my house at all hours, and they followed us wherever we went. The only reason we had managed to get to this photo shoot without anyone seeing us is because Mick had arranged a decoy car to leave the house first, and the leaches had followed it like the idiots they were.
Thinking of Wren and Cooper brought a familiar feeling of discomfort to my chest. Wren had texted me yesterday. One simple word in response to my line of desperate messages, but when I’d tried to respond to her, she’d ghosted me again. I wasn’t sure what to fuckin’ make of it.
I was even more worried about Cooper. She’d already been in bed the night I’d left, exhausted from her ordeal with the creeps at the door, and I hadn’t gotten a chance to properly say goodbye. I had asked Wren about her, several times, in fact, but without Cooper’s number, I was unable to reach out to her on my own to check in.
The whole thing was just shitty, and I hated myself for leaving more and more every day.
I thought about Wren through the entire photo shoot—which included three outfit changes for some goddamn reason—and by the time it was done, I was more than ready to get the fuck home. The guys and I were all crammed into the back of the SUV, once again hiding behind tinted windows, as Charlie drove us back to my place in the hills, and I was doing what I did most of the time these days—watching Wren’s Instagram videos. I didn’t even need the sound anymore; her words and notes were embedded in my brain from the number of times I’d spent watching them on repeat in the lonely hours between sunset and sunrise.
Alex wasn’t the only one not sleeping these days, I guessed.
“You’ve got messages,” Alex said casually, his head popping between the seats from the third row where he sat. “How can you stand unopened messages?”
“What messages?” I asked, frowning at my phone. “I just checked, and I have no texts.”
“Fuck, you are such an old dude, bro,” Alex laughed, and I lifted my hand, casually smacking him in the arm for his remark.
“Stop talking shit and tell me what the fuck you’re talking about.”
“Your DMs, man.” When I continued to stare at him blankly, he physically grabbed my hand and held up my phone before our faces. “Right there in the top corner? The big flashing red number?”
Looking at where he indicated, I raised my eyebrows in surprise.
“Those are messages?” I asked, staring at the number in the box. “Since when?”
“Since forever,” Alex bemoaned. “You never keep up with technology. It’s amazing you even learned how to play on an electric guitar. Seriously. It’s like you’re afraid of progress.”
When Charlie snorted from the driver’s seat, I flipped him off, pressing my finger to open the messages.
“Callie Arizona,” I breathed, seeing the now very familiar lake in the small profile photo. “Cooper!” I said excitedly, looking up at Alex with a grin. “Cooper’s been messaging me!”
“A lot, by the looks of it,” Alex murmured in my ear, noting the long thread of unanswered messages. “She’s pretty mad, bro.”
“No shit,” I said, realizing that I had more than a little damage control to do when it came to my girls.
But just as I started scrolling to the top, ready to do my penance and read dozens upon dozens of scathing messages from an angry teenager, my phone began to ring, Mick’s name flashing across the screen.
“Yeah?” I groaned, putting him on speaker and dreading what event he had lined up for us this time.
“Did you see it?” he asked, the tension in his words palpable.
“See what?”
