Silver Smoke (#1 of Seven Halos Series) (27 page)

The wine library was different than anything Pilot had ever seen. Instead of books lining the shelves, there were wine racks with some of the finest wines on the planet, including information about how they were made and what foods they should be paired with.

The cruise was a like a packaged blockbuster movie—expensive, with great special effects, but lacking in story lines that audiences could care about. James, Brie, and he each went their separate ways into quiet corners of the yacht in the late evening. Only excursions and pre-planned tours forced them together during the day. The night before, they had boarded the yacht in Lahaina, a historic city in Maui. From there, they'd come to Moloka'i, an island smack between Oahu and Maui. They spent most of today trudging around the Kalaupapa Trail on mules, then exploring the nearby native reservation. Pilot wasn't sure what the point was, since Brie and James weren't speaking, and neither enjoyed the outdoors either.

Pilot's thoughts often turned to Kennedy, whom he wished had joined him on this "holiday." He had tried to hang out with Brie, but she was sullen and cranky about being forced to be there. Pilot couldn't hang out with James because they didn't have much to talk about—James hated sports, and Pilot had no musical abilities to speak of, plus he loathed the heavy metal that James' band put out.

Instead, James hung out with the crew and spent hours talking to them about their families, their countries, and their lifestyle. Brie sulked in her room, only appearing for meals. When she finally showed her face, she seemed antsy, like their family time was delaying the rest of her life. Pilot drank a lot of wine and tried to look on the bright side—no school, no homework, and no water polo under Justin's regime. Still, he couldn't wait for the whole ordeal to be over.

Technically, he still had homework—Annie had collected it for them before they left—but Pilot was too distracted to focus on it. Instead, he spent a lot of time wondering where Kennedy was. Still in Los Angeles, working? Or had her awful sister sent her out on another secret mission? He remembered her unspoken promise that she wasn't using him, and how he let her into his bed the night before she left, her exposed body pressed against his in the darkness. He had tried to call her a couple of times since she left, but she never answered her phone. Was he supposed to wait around until she appeared again? Or was it over between them?

Pilot lurched out onto the open part of the main deck, meandering slightly drunk from restlessness.

Lights from other ships twinkled in the distance as twilight turned to darkness and the stars took over.

The air was the cleanest he had ever smelled—the type of air that made one wonder what he was inhaling all the other times he had breathed in his life. The night brought silence, aside from the waves'

metronomic pounding against the hull.

Brie's shrill laughter somewhere above him broke the rhythm of his thoughts. He looked up to see her sitting backwards on the railing of the second floor deck on the phone, twirling the cord that attached it to the wall.

On the emergency phone?

He climbed up a makeshift rope ladder that hung from the cabin deck.

"No. It's just James and me." Pilot swung himself over the rails. Brie looked up, annoyed. "And Pilot."

She swung her legs over the rail and faced the ocean, her back to him. "I already told you, I'll visit in December for your birthday."

Pilot heard a high-pitched voice on the other end, speaking rapidly. He couldn't make out the words or place the voice, but he assumed it was one of Brie's pretty friends from school in New York. In other words, a conversation full of vacuities, unnecessary on an emergency phone.

"Well, I'm sorry you can't get into Juice without my stunning credentials. Maybe your dad should switch industries."

Pilot glared at Brie, twirling his index finger in loops in the air, signaling to her to wrap it up. Brie returned his icy stare with one of her own, then childishly stuck her tongue out at him.

"I have to go. Pilot is giving me an evil eye." Brie paused, then pulled the phone away from her ear and pressed her hand over the receiver.

"La la la," she said loudly into the mouthpiece. She held the earpiece to the side of her head. "Please for the love of God don't ever put that mental image in my head again."

Pause.

"If it happens, and you tell me, I'm going to throw up on your favorite Louboutins."

Pause.

"Whatever. Muah." Brie kissed into the phone and killed the line.

Pilot folded his arms in disgust. "That phone bill is going to be ridiculous. James might even make you pay it."

"With his credit card?" Brie jumped down from the ledge. She was wearing this ridiculous old-fashioned dress that Annie had packed for her. Brie spent the entire first day of the cruise complaining about the contents of her suitcase, claiming her entire wardrobe came from the 1950's.

"Besides," she said, "it was one phone call. Isn't that what people get in prison?" She set the receiver on its base. "And who pays for that, the inmate? I think not."

Pilot threw his head back in annoyance. "Whom were you talking to?"

"Adele."

Adele was a tiny girl from New York with a pinch of a nose and over-sized eyes. She reminded Pilot of a doe, but not in a good way. Her father was James' lawyer, and she had been Brie's best friend for as long as Pilot could remember. "How is she?"

"Still Adele. She says 'hi.'" Brie paused, her head tilting off-axis. "Well, sort of. She didn't say those words specifically."

"Tell her I said 'hi' the next time you talk to her."

Brie laughed. "I'd rather not. The girl has no filter, and she either has a crush on you or she's trying to torture me."

Adele was exactly the type of girl Pilot used to date; the exact opposite of Kennedy. "Probably the latter."

"Aww, don't be so hard on yourself." Brie gave him a tap on the shoulder with her fist. Her spunky attitude oozed with confidence reminiscent of her former self, back in New York before they had lost their mom. Pilot wondered if this was a sign that Brie was happier, or if it was just an aftereffect of catching up with her best childhood friend.

"I just know her motives," Pilot said. "Wanting something and getting it is only good if you had good intentions for wanting it in the first place."

"That's deep," Brie sashayed toward him. "You should write a Facebook update to immortalize those words.

Or you can borrow Rykken's notebook and jot it down there."

The mention of his best friend perked Pilot's senses. "Yeah, speaking of Rykken."

"Are we?" Brie asked innocently, her smile crashing. In an instant, she'd flipped a switch, going from the unabashed girl she was in New York to the uncomfortable, out-of-place girl she was in Honolulu. Pilot realized that even with cheerleading and her new friends, Brie still had a long way to go before she would ever call Honolulu home.

"The Homecoming dance is all blurry to me. What happened? I can't remember anything from that night, but I feel like the parts I'm missing are hints about what's going on with Rykken."

Pilot didn't think Brie's eyes could get any sadder, but they did. "I doubt it," she said. "I do remember you seemed a little confused, but nothing out of the ordinary happened. Rykken wasn't even at the dance.

Justin dropped Cora off at her house, then he dropped you and I off." She sat down. "You went straight to bed I think."

"I can't remember if I was supposed to do something with Rykken that night. I think he's really mad at me. He won't talk to me at all. He doesn't want rides to school from me anymore and he quit the polo team

—"

"Pilot!" Brie grabbed Pilot's shoulders, jostling him back and forth. "This isn't about you. This is the way Rykken deals with all his problems—running away, quitting, giving up. Haven't you noticed that?"

"Running away," Pilot said, confused. "What gives you that impression?"

Brie dropped her hands from his shoulders, backing away in silence. "I can't think of a specific example," she said finally.

Pilot nudged her. "You must have something specific in mind. Why else would you say it?"

Brie gave him a manufactured smile. "Forget about it. I'm not sure what I meant by that comment."

"Great. This conversation has been
extremely
helpful." Pilot felt irritation pulsing through his veins.

He still had a funny feeling in his stomach, like he was missing something big. He spun around. "Are you sure you're not hiding something from me?"

"Of course not. If Rykken were talking to someone, it wouldn't be me. We can barely stand each other."

Pilot looked at her skeptically. Brie was good at acting for the media, which was a lot like being good at lying to anyone she needed to. Including him.

"We aren't supposed to be on this deck. Have you been hiding out up here for any particular reason?"

"Yeah," Brie said, twirling her hair around her finger. "James. I thought that was obvious."

"You do realize the reason we're even here is because you refuse to talk to him, and he won't force conversation on you."

"No, he'll just trap me on a tiny boat with him for a week." Brie raked her fingers through the ends of her hair. "Nothing forceful about that."

"He wants to spend some time with you," Pilot said. "Maybe if you get it over with now, we won't have to go on another family vacation next month."

Brie cast him an iron-clad glance. She swung her legs over the rail, twisting and wriggling until she found her footing on the rope ladder. "Where is James now?"

"Top deck," Pilot said. "In the hot tub probably."

Brie gave a loud sigh. "Great," she said as she disappeared below the railing. "I've been looking forward to some father-daughter bonding on this trip."

*****

"What is that?" she asked, taking a seat on a nearby lounge chair.

"A manuscript," James said. He tried to wipe his surprise from his face, but his voice gave him away.

"I'm writing a book."

Now it was Brie's turn to be surprised. "Have you been writing it this whole time?" she asked. She hadn't seen James on the computer much since he'd gotten back from recording in LA, but that didn't mean much since she'd been avoiding him.

James smiled, his eyes crinkling. She hadn't looked at his face this closely under the light in a long time. He looked older than what she remembered. "I've been in the recording studio, doing a series of interviews that got turned into transcripts." He held up the manuscript. "My editor sent me the first half of the book, based on my interviews. I'm reading through it now."

Brie thoughts were paralyzed; she wasn't sure what to say. She simply felt empty, like she was talking to a stranger in a foreign country.

Her shock wasn't lost on James. "I thought you knew about the book already. I'm almost sure we've talked about it before. The book gives me a way to work from home for a little while."

Brie thought of an angry retort, but she didn't have the heart to say it. James seemed so happy and vulnerable in that moment, she didn't want to destroy the few seconds of peace they had left, before she got down to business.

"You don't need to stay here, you know. Pilot and I can take care of ourselves."

"I know that," James agreed. "You've done a good job taking care of each other."

James flipped through the manuscript pages, letting the silence sink in all around them. He was waiting for her to make the next move; and of course, she had to. She was the one who approached him. If she wanted information out of him, she needed to make an effort to have a conversation with him.

She sighed. "What's the book about?"

"The book is a reflection on my life and all the regrets I have." He set the manuscript down next to his coffee. "How fame changes people, and forces people to choose. How I lost everything important to me.

How I haven't been a good father—which you remind me of almost every day."

"You haven't been a
father
," Brie cried, her body shaking. "The 'good' is extraneous." She had no idea he was writing a tell-all, exposing their pathetic excuse for a family to the media so soon after her mother's death. After everything he put them through, he had the nerve to make money off of his children's misfortune?

James got out of the hot tub. He retrieved his mug of coffee and sat down on the deck in the lounge chair next to her, lying back into it. "Every time I look at you, I see your mother." He sipped his coffee.

"Sure, you look like her, aside from those eyes. Jade, like mine." Brie bristled at the sparkle in James'

eye as he spoke, upset that they had anything in common, even if it was something as simple as their eye color.

"But it's not even the physical resemblance," he continued. "You have the same spirit as her, calm and composed in crowds, but keeping what's going on inside from the people around you."

Brie felt that anger again, rising from her chest. Her lungs felt tight and her stomach felt clenched.

"Don't worry about me."

"How can I not worry about you? James rubbed his neck, the spiny veins popping out underneath his skin.

"Pilot thinks things are getting better for you, but I think they're getting worse. You don't have to do everything by yourself. I've been young, and I've been in the press for most of my adult life. I know I haven't been around much, but you can talk to me about whatever is happening to you."

"I said I'm fine." Brie choked back her tears. "I have people to talk to."

"I feel like you've got something bottled up, and I'm afraid it's going to break you. You're keeping secrets."

"Secrets." Brie caught a tear from her nose with the back of her hand. How could he tell how broken she was? She wished she could crawl into James' arms, like a three year old, and cry into his shoulder. He would probably let her if she wanted to, but she didn't—she wasn't a child anymore. "You're one to talk about secrets."