“Stop it!” Chloe shrieks as the first foot flies into my gut. They’re everywhere, like flies, raining knuckles, heels, and knees into my body. I manage to grab one foot, pull and twist it. Someone cries out and a thud follows. That’s one.
But there are too many. I’m assaulted feverishly, and all I can do is curl up and try to protect my head and face from further strikes. Something hard collides with my rib cage, and I hear a sickening crack. The pain is instantaneous, and I clamp my teeth together to stifle the howl of pain I’m moved to release. I won’t give them the satisfaction of hearing me whimpering like a beaten dog. Eventually, some hands pick me up and throw me against a wall. I hear one of the girls scream again as I slide to the floor in a heap of aches and blood.
“Jack? Jack!” a familiar voice cries out. “No, get off of me!”
Cherie. She’s there, somewhere, but her words spark a new fear in me. What are they doing to her? Where are the twins?
I peer up and see Caz, Dominick, and their thugs in a scuffle with her and the twins. Cherie is desperately trying to get to me, struggling against someone’s hold. The twins are cursing and shouting as they fight to free her. The guys look like they aren’t afraid to hurt the three of them, or do much worse, and I’m not going to let that happen.
I don’t know where the strength to stand comes from. Parts of me are broken, I’m sure. But I won’t let them touch Cherie or my sisters.
“Is that the best you can do?” I taunt, getting to my feet, my words practically slurred by whatever they already did to my jaw. Dominick and his minions turn and look. “I’m still standing, Furst.”
Dominick looks to Caz, and they share a quick laugh. They abandon the girls to their goons and come for me. Cherie screams my name, convinced I’ll be killed. She’s probably right.
Regardless, I mock them. “It’s real easy to attack a man when there’s four on one.”
“What man? I don’t see a man,” Dominick scoffs, and Caz chuckles to his right.
“Maybe I should squat down so we can be on eye level,” I reply stiffly, wiping at the blood on my lips with the back of my hand. I look down at the red smear across my skin and grow a little woozy.
Dominick snorts and snarls, “How about my bodyguards here just break your legs?”
I look toward the goons, who release the girls and come forward, and I know he’s not kidding. Just when I think I’m done for, I hear a familiar scream-roar, followed by a loud thud, and one of them goes down at my feet. Claudia stands behind him with one of the fancy liquor bottles in her hand, breathing hard.
“What the hell!” Caz cries out. Claudia swings the bottle at his head, as he dodges it and jumps aside. She hurls it at him, and it collides with his back, causing him to cry out and stumble. She raises her other hand, producing a second bottle, and she holds it like a bat over her shoulder and prepares to swing at anyone else who approaches as the other guys stare at her.
Chloe emerges from the background and charges toward the other thug with her mini-can of pepper spray that Jim never lets them leave home without. As she sprays it into his eyes, I feel dumb for making fun of it once upon a time. The bodyguard screams like a girl and covers his eyes, running from her. Her weapon is fierce and dirty and so New York, and it horrifies as much as it delights me at the same time.
The people who had been in other parts of the house all this time are suddenly clustered in the doorway of the living room, watching in awe. The guy on the couch is no longer disinterested but on his feet and pressed against the farthest wall in cowardice, not wanting any of the chaos in the room to turn to him.
Cherie approaches Dominick and Caz, who can’t make any sense of the scene unfolding around us. “I’ve called the police and Derek from Dirterazzi,” she says, waving her phone. “Your careers are so over!”
Caz gawks at her. “You bitch!” He lunges for her.
“Don’t touch her!” I shout, reaching out to grab a fistful of his collar and jerking him backward. I use all of my strength to throw him, head first, against the wall to my right. There is a loud crack!, and he trips backward, holding the front of his head. Blood gushes from a fresh cut in his forehead and pours down the front of his face. He grips the wall, practically fainting from the sight of his own blood. I hear Danika curse from somewhere across the room.
“Cherie, what are you doing?” she cries out.
Cherie turns to her ex-assistant and commands, “Stay back, bitch! I never should have trusted you – any of you!” Claudia moves beside her cousin, wielding another empty liquor bottle, her weapon of choice. Chloe stands in the corner, holding her pepper spray up to the eyes of the bodyguard she’s managed to corner, who still can’t see after her first round attack.
Dominick realizes my guard is down, and he charges, flying through the air toward me.
“No!” Cherie screams, but she can’t act fast enough.
I’m knocked to the ground, trapped beneath his heavy frame. Fresh pain ignites within my torso, and now my left arm is limp and burning. I gasp for air, but it’s hard to breathe, especially with him on top of me. He sits up, draws back, and lands the punch that puts me out.
DIRTERAZZI.COM
EXCLUSIVE: JACK HANSEN IN CRITICAL CONDITION AFTER GETTING JUMPED BY FARRELL, FURST, AND BODYGUARDS
Caz Farrell’s Santa Monica beach house was the scene of a major brawl early this morning, according to police. Our reporter was on the scene just as Jack Hansen, 17, was getting carried away in an ambulance to Cedars Sinai. It all started when Hansen’s twin stepsisters, Claudia and Chloe Goldman, 16, found themselves stranded at Farrell’s residence while Cherie Belle partied the night away. Too young and drunk to drive, the girls called Hansen to pick them up. Being the good big brother he is, Hansen jumped in the car and came to the rescue. Little did the Goldman/Hansen kids know, the entire party was a setup designed to lure Hansen into the house so Dominick Furst could exact revenge for the shiner Hansen gave him last weekend at Club Fly. Words were exchanged, and Furst and his bodyguard, along with Caz Farrell and his bodyguard, attacked Hansen.
We’re told Cherie and the twins entered the scene at some point and broke up the beat down by attacking the men with…get this… liquor bottles and pepper spray. It’s like a gang war straight out of West Side Story, y’all! The dirty battle raged on for several minutes as onlookers watched in horror. Finally, someone called the police, but not before Furst managed to land a few final punches that left Hansen completely unconscious. Sources present for the scene say Furst was pried off of Hansen’s limp body by the girls, who formed a protective wall around their fallen hero until help arrived.
Farrell and Furst, along with their bodyguards, were arrested at the scene for assault and battery on a minor, as well as criminal negligence and endangerment of a minor. Both actors have already been released on bail, but something tells us that their time behind bars may not yet be over. These charges carry serious weight, especially due to the ages of the victims involved.
Again, Dirterazzi just wants to know: Where the hell are the guardians in all of this?
Update, 6:37 a.m.: The Goldmans have arrived at the hospital’s emergency room and were quickly shuttled inside. We have not yet received word on Hansen’s condition, but we will keep you updated.
CHAPTER 38
Lights are flashing. Dark shapes surround me. Someone is asking me questions. I can hear them, and occasionally I can see them, but it’s not consistent. My mouth hurts so much that I can barely answer them. I fade in and out to red lights, white lights, blurry figures. I’m bound to something. I’m moving. I feel things bump and jerk and slide beneath me. Nothing seems clear, but I can’t ask what’s happening. I don’t need to because the pain is overwhelming any questions I could have.
Sharp pains and dull aches numb my other senses and throb sporadically throughout my body. I don’t think I can move if I want to, which I don’t. I just want to lie here, as still as possible to avoid hurting any more than I a
lready do.
I imagine Cherie. I wonder where she is and what she’s doing. When I picture her face, I can smell her. I can hear her laugh. I can’t feel her though. I can only feel pain. I slip back out of consciousness.
When I come to again, there are voices around me, hushed and murmured, accompanied by sniffles and rustling. A faint, steady beeping grows louder. Other sounds become clearer. The pain is not as prominent. Maybe I can open my eyes.
As I do, I’m met by a sea of familiar, concerned, and tear-stained faces. I see my mother rise from her seat beside me, awash in white light and looking haggard.
“Hi baby,” she coos, wanting to touch me, but afraid to rest her hand anywhere other than on mine.
“Mom?” I croak. I look around. It looks like a hospital room. It feels like a hospital room. What the hell happened?
“Where am I?” I ask, my voice ragged.
But she’s turned and calling to Jim. “He’s awake. Get the nurse.” She looks back at me. “Hey baby. You’re okay. You’re in the hospital, and you’re going to be okay.”
“Where’s Cherie?” I say, trying to get up.
“She’s fine, you just – ”
As I start to move, pain shoots through my left side and shoulder. I cry out and fall back.
“Oh, God!” Mom tears up, but she tries to stay calm. “Don’t move baby, okay? The doctors are coming; they have to examine you.”
I can’t argue with her. I can’t move; I’m actually afraid to move. My heartbeat spikes. I realize my arm is in a cast. Something is tightly wrapped around my torso. My face aches and feels hot when I reach up to touch it with my good hand. Memories of the fight come flooding back through my hazy mind, and I panic that I could be badly hurt. Mom strokes my hair. I close my eyes and try to just breathe.
My mom won’t stop apologizing, even after I tell her it’s okay and that I know why she didn’t believe me. She babbles on and on, shaking her head at her own failures. “Danika and Carl and Betsy, they had everyone fooled, even Derek the reporter. How were we supposed to know these people, who had been in Cherie’s life all this time, would go to such extremes just because she wanted to quit the industry?”
“People will do anything to squeeze one last buck out of a celebrity like Cherie, even endanger them,” says an officer who comes to question me. He asks a few questions about last night to corroborate Cherie and the twins’ stories about the events at Caz’s beach house. He doesn’t interrogate me too much because I don’t really make a lot of sense with the painkillers I’m on. My memories are sort of hazy and broken into puzzle pieces that I can’t connect properly.
“It’s okay, son,” he says as he gives up and turns to leave. “We have all the evidence we need to move forward with an investigation for now. Maybe we’ll catch up a little later, when you’re feeling better.”
They won’t let Cherie see me yet, even after the doctors and the officer leave my room. I wonder if I look that bad, or if they just don’t want us around each other. When my mother steps out to talk to the doctors about whether or not I need to stay in the hospital overnight, a young nurse comes in to introduce herself and tells me she’s my night nurse. I have no idea what time it is, but I’m guessing I’ve been here almost a full day.
“Can I have a mirror please?” I ask with as much charm as I can muster. Her lips form a tight, pitying smile, but she complies.
“Here you are,” she says gently. I take it in my good hand and prepare myself to be horrified by my own reflection.
But it’s not so bad. It actually feels a lot worse than it is. The right side of my lip is busted and blackened with dried blood and a few stitches. Purples and reds cover my right cheekbone, and a deep, red and black wound stretches from my forehead down across my left temple. My hair is kind of messed and even has some dried blood in it, too. It’s kind of badass, even better than having a beard. I look a little like the guy at the end of an action movie who walks out of the burning building, wrecked but alive and victorious.
All I need now is the girl, I muse to myself. I put the mirror down and try to lay still. The doctors weren’t concerned about my face. They were more worried about the internal bleeding, two broken ribs and cracked left collarbone. I guess I should be, too.
Someone knocks on the hospital room door, and I raise my head weakly to look over. Cherie steps inside hesitantly, peering toward the bed. As our gazes meet, she tries to smile through tears that immediately begin to fall.
“Hi,” she sobs. She covers her mouth as if the sight of me is too much for her to handle.
“It’s not as bad as it looks,” I say quickly, wincing as I try to turn more in her direction.
“Don’t move!” she scolds, quickly rushing to the chair at my side. She runs her eyes over my body and sighs, “Oh, Jack.”
I follow her gaze down my bruised and bandaged torso and shrug my good shoulder. “Eh. I’ll live.”
She shakes her head. “I am so sorry. This is all my fault.”
“No, it’s not,” I say. “Things just got out of hand. You actually saved me for once.”
I smirk, but Cherie just locks eyes with me. “No. I caused this. Don’t give me any more free passes. I’ve spent two months making messes that other people clean up. This time, all it did was get you hurt, and you deserve better than that. You deserve better than me. I am so sorry.”
I shake my head. “You know I don’t care about this,” I say, gesturing to my bandages. “I’d fight for you any day. I’d take a bullet for you, Cherie, and you know that.”
Her face falls and I continue, adding, “I know now that Danika was the one leaking everything to the media. At first I thought it was you, but now it makes so much more sense – ”
She puckers her lips as if she’s about to speak then pauses and thinks for a silent moment.
“What?” I press.
“I – It wasn’t all Danika.”
I swallow hard. “Huh? What do you mean?”
“I did a very bad thing, Jack.”
My stomach twists. “What is it?” Her eyes dart away from mine. She stays quiet. “Tell me.”
She leans back in her chair. “Danika…yes, Danika did tell the press a lot of stuff the last few weeks. She was responsible for most of the stories the media knew. I had no idea. But…the phone call between us the other day… You see, sometimes, when we need to do damage control, we stage things with reporters we trust. They call it a ‘very close source,’ but it’s really just us telling them.”
The sun rises on the awful memory of our phone call. “So when you said we couldn’t see each other…”
She nods. “Carl and Betsy arranged a meeting with Derek Santos, and they made me wait for you to call. They knew you would. They wrote down my responses and everything.”
I nod. “I thought so. I knew that wasn’t real.” I stare into space for a minute before searching her eyes for reassurance. “Why would you do that to me?”
She looks up as two tears stream down her cheeks. “I didn’t want to say any of that, Jack. I wanted to come home the second you told me you wanted to see me! And you told me you loved me – I knew you meant it because I could hear it in your voice, in how you yelled at me. No one has ever talked to me like that. Please believe me; I didn’t want to let Derek listen in and hear you – ”
“Then why did you let them? You have the right to say no to people, Cherie. Do you have any idea how much it hurts to be stabbed in the back like that?”
She sniffles and wipes her tears. “I thought Carl and Betsy were just trying to clean up the image I was getting in the press, and they told me you’d be the best person to pin it on after what happened at the club. They told me I had to or I was going to bring bad press to everyone; Kidz Channel, the movie, them. I – I didn’t know what to do. Carl said you wouldn’t be there forever, that I was only hurting one person who might be out of my life in a year instead of hurting everyone who’s been there for me all of this time.”
“A year?” I guffaw. “What – where is he coming up with that?”
She shrugs. “You’re going to go off to college soon. You said so yourself last week. Carl said – ”
“I don’t care what Carl said!” I snap, irritated. Getting angry is becoming painful as parts of me start to throb. I try to calm down and soften my tone. “Look, Cherie, I’m not going anywhere, no matter what anyone says – Carl, your uncle, Danika – they didn’t know what was happening between us. They still don’t, right?”
She nods quickly. “I haven’t said anything about that night.” She blushes a little and looks down.
I breathe deeply. “Well, maybe it’s time we tell them.”
“No, Jack! We can’t!” she whispers, her green eyes wide and frightened.
I shake my head. “You need to decide what you want. If you want me around, I’ll stay, and I’ll never leave you. But I won’t be a secret anymore. I want you to get the help you really need and go back to your normal life, and I want to be by your side every step of the way.”
“You have always been there for me, and look what’s happened,” she whimpers. “I didn’t want this – I didn’t want to drag you into my drama! Don’t you get it, Jack? You’re going to get tired of it eventually and leave, and then where will I be?”
I sigh and reply, “Cherie, don’t you see the pattern here? Every time you push me away, I come back. I’m always going to be here for you. I’m not just giving up and leaving you alone. If you don’t want me, I’ll respect that and live with it. But if you’ll have me, I’m going to be there for you no matter what you do to me.
“But it’s your choice to make. Not Carl’s, not my mom’s, not the producers of your movie. I’m here, and I’m not going anywhere unless you say you don’t want me around.”
Cherie rests her eyes on mine and then looks down at my bandages, her lips pressed tightly together. A fresh tear rolls out of the corner of her eyes.
“Of course I want you around – you’re the only person I’ve felt truly safe with. I just…I thought you’d walk away once all the publicity got too hard, and then I’d be all alone again.”
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