Page 142 of Songbird: Black Kite
“This is private property,” Daniel shouted, his voice booming over the shouted questions. “You all need to leave, now, before I call the authorities.”
Of course, no one listened, instead shouting even more horrific things at me while I tried to reconcile what the hell was going on.
“Someone must have leaked your identity,” Daniel said once we had reached his office and closed the door. “I’m calling the sheriff.”
I leaned against the closed door, my whole body shuddering, while Daniel picked up his cell phone and went to make a call, freezing when whatever was on his screen caught his attention.
“Wren,” he said, and something in his voice had my blood turning to ice in my veins. “Wren, there’s a photo.”
“What photo?” I asked, pushing off the door and lunging for his phone. I’d left mine in my desk drawer, and judging by the noise, there were still photographers in our lobby, so there was no way I was going back to get it. “A photo of me?” The very idea had my stomach churning.
I’d seen it a hundred times before; we all had. The media was relentless when it came to gossip. Once they found a topic they thought would sell papers, they dug and dug until they exposed a person’s deepest, darkest secrets.
And I only had one secret worth protecting.
The only one that mattered.
“No,” Daniel answered, his voice dire as he held up his phone to show me the home page of a popular national gossip site. “It’s a photo of Cooper.”
Chapter eighty
Wren
Present
'HawkJamesonSecretLoveChild.'
The words screamed at me from the screen, making me want to throw up and cry at the same time.
Under the damning headline was a photo of Cooper, my beautiful girl, her face red and tear streaked as she exited my car that very morning.
Grabbing the phone from Daniel, I tried to read everything at once, my eyes skimming the article as fast as I could. They speculated that Cooper was Hawk’s and that she and I had been the reason for the divorce of Rock ‘n’ Roll’s Golden Couple five years ago. They went on to say that Hawk was embarrassed by his infidelity and so he’d left us in a small Midwestern town, away from prying eyes to hide his shame.
“Holy shit,” I breathed, my heart racing in my chest. “She’s gonna see this.” Looking up at Daniel, I could see the pity on his face, but I didn’t have time to be angry about it. “Daniel, she can’t see this!”
Cooper was already under the impression that Hawk didn’t want her anymore; if she got a look at these headlines, she’d be completely crushed. She was too young to understand that the media was made up of liars and profiteers, only looking to make a buck off her pain.
“I have to get to her.” My panic was riding me hard, making the room spin as I hyperventilated. “Daniel, how am I going to get to her?”
“Okay, breathe,” he said, his hands brushing up and down my arms, distracting me. “Wren, come on, now. Deep breath with me.”
I copied him, feeling the breath shakily exit my body as my thoughts swam. This was a disaster. Being the subject of local gossip was one thing. I had been dealing withthatmy entire life, and I knew what to expect.
National headlines were a completely different thing all together. I’d been in enough comment threads and Subreddits to know that the internet was not kind. If Cooper and I had caught their attention, things were about to go from bad to worse.
“Alright,” Daniel said when my breathing had returned to a normal pace. “Here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to distract that crowd of trespassers out there, while you sneak out the back.”
“The back?” I asked stupidly. I knew there was a back door, even though I’d rarely ever used it.
“Yes, the back,” he repeated patiently, pulling me along behind him as we moved toward the emergency exit out of his office. “Then you are going to go to the school, get Cooper, and go home.”
“I still have to do the files for the—”
“No, you don’t. You’re done here.”
“Are youfiringme?” I asked, my panic rising again. “Daniel, I need this job. Please, you can’t—”
“You’re not fired, Wren. Jesus.” Taking a step back, Daniel went to the window of his office, twitching the blinds apart to look out into the street, shaking his head at whatever he saw there. “But realistically, it might be a while before this blows over, Wren. You need to stay out of the spotlight, and I can’t have my business disrupted because you happen to know someone famous.”
