Page 2 of Where the Little Birds Go (Little Bird Duet 1)

Little Bird.

Turns out, I was wrong.

“Well?” Liv presses.

“Hmm?”

“What’s your opinion on Kinley?”

That’s a loaded question.

Besides the film industry, my oldest fascination has been the shy girl who preferred journaling on her own over going out with friends. She has a scar on her left cheek from when her family’s chow-chow bit her. Once she tried covering it up with makeup, but it was the dead of summer and the shit melted off and made it more pronounced. Any flaw she thought she had was my favorite part of her—scars, aversion to people, and all.

“She seems like the kind of woman who won’t fall for Buchannan’s tricks,” is what I opt to settle with after thinking on it for too long.

She laughs, letting it go.

“We’re filming in two,” Buchannan yells from his chair at the other end of the set. Next to him is Kinley’s seat, which is placed a little too close to his. I tell myself it wasn’t her who put the chair there, but it doesn’t ease the irrational irritation bubbling under my skin.

Liv gets up and puts the chair back how she found it, shooting me a wink before swaying her hips provocatively where she’s supposed to start the scene by the counter. I roll my eyes at her as I settle on the chair as cued, resting one arm on the edge of the table while watching her closely. My legs are spread, my teeth are digging into my bottom lip, and I study her like I studied Kinley Thomas before I fucked everything up.

“And, action!”

Olivia grabs a wine glass and glances over at me. Her eyes are lust-filled as they scan down my body, landing on the slight bulge beneath my zipper.

“I have a feeling you’re going to be a bad influence,” she says, delivering her line as she begins filling her glass with Pinot Noir.

Swiping my bottom lip with my thumb, I shift in the seat and stare at her exposed ass. “I don’t think you have a problem with that.”

She fights off a grin. “There’s a special place in hell for people like us, you know.”

“People in love?”

She lifts the glass to her lips. “Cheaters.”

Chapter Two

Kinley / Present

The blended mixture of red and yellow across the California skyline is dulled by the glow of skyscrapers lining the distance. Heart racing as I take another step further onto the tenth-story balcony attached to my hotel room, I absorb the noise of a nightlife I’m foreign to. For the first time in years, I think about how much I miss the middle of nowhere I grew up in.

Closing the outer door, I back into the main room of the prestigious suite that Tyler Buchannan set me up with. Everything is white, modern, and sleek—far from the odd mixture of farmhouse-meets-contemporary that litters my three-bedroom townhome in Upstate New York.

When the opportunity came, I couldn’t distance myself from the place I called home for twenty years. How many times had I told everyone I’d get out of Lincoln? Move? Go somewhere farm animals didn’t outnumber humans? Yet, the house I purchased almost four years ago is mere hours away from the family I thought I’d long since said goodbye to.

A soft knock at the door has my brows pinching, especially when my name is called following room service that I never ordered. Though I considered taking advantage of the free food Buchannan offered me on the movie’s expense, my stomach has been too full of eerily familiar flutters since seeing Corbin Callum parading around set like he owned it.

The annoying thing is, he did.

He is the epitome of Ryker Evans.

Sex appeal.

Confident.

A vulnerability so few people see.

Tugging on the hem of the AC/DC sweatshirt that I slipped on over my pajama pants, I look through the peephole at the pepper-haired man in hotel uniform. My outfit isn’t very public friendly, not that I necessarily care about what strangers think of me. But the sweatshirt is a well-worn keepsake that I hate myself for wearing. I don’t remember packing it, but the second my eyes landed on the holey fabric and faded letters, the anxiety I felt since landing in California eased.

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