Acting Brave (Fenbrook Academy #3)

by Helena Newbury

  I was half a block from the police station by now. I pulled out my phone and called Nat. I couldn’t tell her what was really going on, but at least I could vent about some of my other problems.

  ***

  An hour later, we were sitting in Harper’s, the deli cafe just down the street from Fenbrook. I was staring at my salt beef sandwich (rye bread, pickle, heavy on the mustard mayo)—normally my go-to food when I’m feeling bad. But today I just gazed at it.

  “Five hundred dollars?” asked Nat. “Just to borrow her uniform for a half hour?”

  “She didn’t even let me take the gun,” I told her. “But it did get me the part. But I’m not going to see any money from that for months, and I still need to fit in classes and do the cop training stuff with R—with my partner. I can’t take on any more bar shifts. I may even have to cut some. That leaves a big hole in my rent money.”

  Nat reached into her bag. I didn’t guess what she was winding up to do until she started counting out bills.

  “What are you doing?!” My voice had risen an octave. “Put that away!”

  Nat looked at me blankly. “What? It’s fine. Five hundred, right?”

  “It’s not fine! I can’t just—”

  “Why?” Nat sighed. “Look, let’s be realistic. I’m okay for money now. Very okay. You need some. It’s fine.”

  I blinked at her. “Nat, it isn’t fine. Not that much money.”

  “You can pay me back if it makes you feel more comfortable.”

  My eyes bugged out. “Well of course I’d pay you back! My God, you were going to give me five hundred dollars as a gift?!”

  She sighed again as if I was being stupid. Was I? I mean, I was very grateful for the offer, but didn’t she see I couldn’t possibly accept? Clarissa was rich—maybe not Darrell and Natasha rich, but seriously well off—but she’d never have dreamed of offering me money like that. The problem was that Nat was new to all this. Not so long ago, she was as poor as me.

  “It’s very generous,” I said carefully, “and thank you. But no. How’s Darrell?”

  She leaned forward. “Great! I mean, I have to drag him away from his work, still, but he’s doing it because he loves it, now, not because he feels he has to.”

  “What’s he working on, again? A solar-powered….”

  “A solar-powered aircraft that can stay in the air for months. It’s going to map the terrain in desert regions and figure out the best places to dig wells.”

  “That’s good karma.”

  “He keeps saying he has a lot to make up for.”

  I hesitated. “Are the two of you still…?”

  “You can say it: in therapy. Yeah. Once a week. It’s helping.” She’d finally persuaded Darrell to go a few months ago. Just another way in which she was changing. I was happy for her—I sure as hell didn’t want her to return to the dark days of self-harming. But between Karen changing and Nat changing and Clarissa heading off into the sunset with Neil—maybe literally, if she persuaded him to take her with him on his next trip—it was starting to feel as if I was losing all of them. Like they were moving on and I was standing still.

  Maybe that’s what I’d doomed myself to, by inventing Jasmine. When I’d been a terrified eighteen year old, she’d been reassuringly simple and stable. Now, I was starting to realize that stable was a lot like static. I’d put on a mask, three years ago, and the problem with masks is that they can’t change.

  But what choice did I have? Move somewhere else and reinvent myself again? I couldn’t handle more lies. And I couldn’t just stop being Jasmine because there was nothing left underneath. I didn’t know how to be Emma anymore.

  “You okay?” asked Nat. “You look worried.”

  “I’m fine. I—”

  And at that moment, my phone rang, and I felt guiltily relieved at the interruption. The number wasn’t one I recognized. “Hi,” I said, doing my best Jasmine bouncy voice.

  “Hi sis,” said Nick.

  ***

  Seconds later, after waving to Nat that I need to take this and that she should go, I was standing outside Harper’s wishing I’d brought a jacket. After being gloriously sunny all day, it had suddenly turned cold.

  I think I said something really inane, like “Well, it’s been a long time.” But honestly, I don’t know. Maybe I just stood there with my mouth open. It wasn’t that I was surprised to hear from him—I’d left my damn number at the bar in the hope he’d call. But hearing his voice slammed me straight back to Chicago. Suddenly, I couldn’t see yellow cabs and tourists and the pizza place across the street. I could see an unlit road and scrubland and trees lit up by headlights.

  I could see his eyes, begging for mercy.

  I crushed the phone between my palms, covering the mic, and then I leaned over the handrail outside and dry-heaved. A couple of tourists who’d been about to go in saw me and suddenly decided to go elsewhere. That would have been funny, any other time.

  When I put the phone to my ear again, Nick’s voice was asking if I was okay.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’m great. Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “You sound different,” said Nick.

  Of course I sound different. You’ve never talked to Jasmine before. He was expecting Emma, and I was busy shoving Emma back down into the darkness where she belonged.

  There was an awkward silence. Given the circumstances, I was surprised there weren’t more of them. The whole call should have been one long awkward silence.

  We established that I was acting—I didn’t mention Fenbrook—and that he was working in a bar—which I decided might be just about believable, if he was clean. We both admitted that we lived in New York—neither of us said where—and we both said we’d seen the other one at the subway station, but glossed over the fact we hadn’t sought each other out sooner.

  And then we were up to date and I couldn’t put it off any longer.

  “Are you still in contact with him?” I asked.

  I heard him swallow. “Not since I left. You?”

  The question took me by surprise. I’d been so focused on whether I was inadvertently opening up a channel to my dad by talking to Nick, it hadn’t occurred to me that he’d be worried about the same thing. “No. God no. Of course not.”

  Another awkward silence. But it gave me time to think things through. He’d split from my dad, just as I had. He was like me, alone in the city. We could get together and be friends—hell, we were brother and sister—

  I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the window of Harper’s, my red hair gleaming. More or less.

  He was like me. Adrift, probably lying about his past just like I was. I should reach out to him and team up. Look after him. Except—

  Except a part of me was thinking, haven’t I already done my duty? I’d risked a lot just by leaving my number in that bar. What if he had still been in contact with my dad?

  I’d been worried that he was sleeping on the streets, and probably using, but he sounded okay. He said he had a job. Why not just keep a safe distance? He wasn’t asking for help.

  But then I thought back to the start of that year. I’d been a hairs-breadth away from becoming an escort—had become an escort, technically, I’d just walked out on my first client. And I hadn’t asked for help, not even from my closest friends. Karen had had to rescue me.

  What if he needed rescuing?

  “Let’s meet up,” I said, not quite believing what was coming out of my mouth. We agreed on a Starbucks, in a few days’ time. And then I had to tell him that I’d changed my name. I really, really, didn’t want to tell him...but it was better than him coming out with “Emma” in front of someone. He solemnly promised to only call me “Jasmine” from now on, and that was that.

  I hit the button to end the call and then stood there staring at his number. Add as a contact? the phone was asking me.

  I hesitated...and then pressed the button for yes.

  Chapter 21

  Ryan

 
A couple of days went by. I plowed through the script about five times and, on the fifth time, I finally started to get a feel for Tony, my character. Or at least, I could sort of see what Dixon was trying to do. I got the bad boy part: he was a rule-breaker, a corner-cutter, and he drank too much and he seemed to have bedded half the female cops in his precinct. But when I tried saying his lines, it still sounded stupid. I stood there in front of the mirror, praying my neighbors couldn’t hear me, and said the words over and over again, until they started to lodge in my brain, but it was still just words. It wasn’t like Jasmine would do it.

  I was almost relieved when I got called into the studio for a uniform fitting. We were all getting special ones for the show with the fictional precinct’s number on. It was weird—like being back at the academy. Once I had the fake uniform on, it felt even stranger: familiar and yet wrong. They wanted me to walk around for a while to check the fit, so I headed out into the corridor and joined all the other actors and cops, now even more difficult to tell apart because they all looked the same.

  I stopped. One of them was Jasmine.

  I mean, I’d figured that maybe she’d be there somewhere, but I hadn’t counted on seeing her. Not looking like...that.

  She was in a patrol officer’s uniform, the navy pants clinging to her wonderful, rounded ass. They’d fitted the shirt and jacket well—they were the right size, but they still couldn’t hide Jasmine’s curves. Her breasts pushed out the front in a way that made me give a mental groan of longing. Everything was buttoned up and demure, but somehow it was even sexier for it.

  And her hair. I’d always loved her long, silky tresses, and I’d never have thought it could look as sexy in a ponytail. But gathering it up had revealed areas of her I’d never seen: the long, elegant length of her throat, the creamy-white softness of the nape of her neck and the soft dusting of hair there. It made her look more commanding and yet sexier, too. She looked like some sort of Irish warrior princess.

  And then she turned around and saw me, when I was still incapable of speech.

  “What do you think?” She did a spin, which only made things worse because then I got ass and breasts and smile all at once—

  Something in my brain went fzzt and burned out.

  “Uh,” I said. Nothing more would come out, so I said it again. “Uh….”

  “Too tight?” She smoothed the jacket against her breasts.

  I swallowed and stared fixedly at the ceiling for a few seconds. “It’s perfect.”

  She turned her back to me and, when I glanced down, she was pointing her ass at me. “Seriously?” she asked, and smoothed the fabric there, too. “I think they made it too tight on the ass. I don’t want to rip something.”

  “Perfect,” I said, feeling myself flushing. She locked eyes with me for a second. Shit! Had she seen that? “How does it feel?” I asked, to cover my embarrassment.

  “Okay, I guess. Scratchy.”

  “I meant more: do you feel different?” It was out before I’d realized what I was saying and immediately I cursed myself for asking a dumbass question. I’d been thinking that I always felt something when I put the uniform on and I guess I wanted to share that with her. Idiot.

  But, weirdly, she wasn’t looking at me as if I was an idiot. She looked more confused, as if she hadn’t seen me before. Then she looked down at the uniform and back at me. “Yeah,” she said at last. “Yeah, I do.” She glanced down the corridor toward the street. “Am I allowed to walk around like this outside? Get the feel for it? I mean, would I get arrested for impersonating a police officer or something?”

  “Not as long as I’m with you.” I led her down the corridor. I can’t explain it and I know it sounds goofy, but I was excited at the idea of being cops together, even if she was just pretending. She was just an actress in a uniform but, somehow, walking through the doors into the sunlight with her, I felt more at home, more like a cop again, than I had with Hollister—or with anyone since Hux died.

  Hey! Said Hux. But he didn’t sound mad.

  They’d given Jasmine a full equipment belt, minus the gun. She slid out the nightstick and swung it around in a lazy arc. I subtly backed off a few inches.

  “So. Where should we go?” she asked, beaming.

  I pointed toward a nearby shopping street and we moved off in companionable silence, the late fall sun warming our faces. I kept casting sidelong glances at her, drinking in the way the sunlight turned her auburn hair into gleaming copper. After nearly taking my head off a few times, she holstered the nightstick and started examining the faces of passers-by. After a few minutes, she said, “No one looks at us. I mean, everyone glances at us, but they won’t make eye contact.”

  She was right. I’d just gotten used to it, over the years. I nodded.

  “I feel like no one trusts me,” she said. “It’s like being on the other side.”

  “Not the other side.” I said. “The other side would be criminals. Most people are just wary.”

  She glanced at me and then looked away. “Yeah. That’s what I meant,” she said unconvincingly. “Wary.”

  I didn’t call her on it, just walked along beside her and watched. She kept glancing down at the uniform and then at the people around her. Something was definitely up. “What?” I asked at last.

  She wriggled her shoulders as if uncomfortable. “They’re not seeing me. They’re seeing a cop.”

  I frowned. She said that as if it was a bad thing. An idea started to scratch, deep in my brain. Had she had a bad experience with a cop, once? “Yep. They don’t care who you are. You’re a cop, first. You become kind of...faceless.”

  She looked sharply at me and then away. “That’s horrible.”

  I frowned. “Really?”

  “Faceless?! That isn’t horrible, to you?”

  “It’s not a bad thing. I mean, yeah, I guess it is in a way. People maybe don’t see you as a person. But you’re part of something bigger.”

  Her lips pressed together tightly. God, even when she was annoyed she was beautiful. “You never wanted to be a part of something?”

  Just for a second, she looked a lot less sure of herself. She shook her head. Then nodded. Then shrugged. “You did?” she asked.

  I looked around the street. Even though it wasn’t for real, it felt good—stupidly good—to be out on patrol again. “Yeah,” I told her. “Always.”

  “Officer!” A woman in her sixties had bustled up to us. “Can you tell me how to get to Grand Central Station from here?”

  She was talking to Jasmine, who looked utterly bewildered for just a second. And then she straightened up, growing an inch taller in the process, and pointed the woman in the right direction.

  “Thank you, officer!” said the woman, and bustled away. Jasmine stared at her retreating back for a long time.

  “Do they always call us that?” she asked.

  I smirked, which felt weird for some reason. “Officer is a way down the list. There are a lot of other things we get called.”

  She looked at me and again I caught a glimpse of something else underneath. I don’t think anyone else would have spotted it, but I was so smitten with this woman, so hanging on her every word and gesture, that I was catching things that maybe even her friends would have missed. There was a battle going on inside her, I swore it. I could see the emotions playing across her face. And then it was gone, and she was back to being flirty, confident Jasmine. She pulled out the nightstick and started playing with it again. “Are there any other upsides? Do you get women coming onto you, because you’re a cop? The uniform and all that?” She smiled. “The handcuffs?”

  The flirting was back. It felt different, now that I knew she wasn’t interested in me. Friendly. I smiled again and this time I realized why it felt so weird. It had been a long time since I’d done it.

  You morose SOB, said Hux.

  “The firefighters get it more,” I said, setting off walking again. “But...I’ve had a few.”

  She tapp
ed me playfully on the butt with the nightstick. “Ah, now we get to it. Ryan the studmuffin. No woman is safe. C’mon, spill. Did she make you wear the CSI latex gloves while you—”

  I let out a snort of laughter, looking at her in amazement. The sun was out. I was out on patrol with a beautiful woman. Life was good.

  And then I saw the sign for Brybecker and stopped dead.

  “What?” asked Jasmine.

  Brybecker’s a long street. We were nowhere near where Hux was shot. But that didn’t matter. I turned and I could almost see our patrol car screaming through the intersection, my speed sealing our fate. Rushing toward the moment when Hux would get shot for no good reason at all.

  I felt my chest tighten up. I could feel the rage building and building, taking control of me part by part. My breathing. My muscles. My thoughts. Until I’d have no choice but to scream and smash and—

  Something touched me on the back of my neck, just below my hairline. Given what was happening in my head, I should have whirled around in anger but, for some reason, I didn’t. It was cool and soft and comforting.

  Her hand. Jasmine had her hand on my neck. And it was like a release valve for me, all the anger boiling away to safety. I couldn’t hear what she was saying, but I could hear her tone, and it was like a soothing, mellow balm. It’s okay. It’s going to be okay. I have no idea what actual words she was using, but that’s what it made me feel.

  I turned around very slowly, afraid that if I moved fast I might break the spell. She was staring at me, her eyes wide, but she didn’t look frightened as much as concerned. As if she knew what I was going through.

  I drew in a long, shuddering breath. “Sorry,” I said at last.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” she asked.

  Jesus, I couldn’t do that. Jasmine was the one pure, unpolluted thing in my life. Maybe she already thought I was fucked up, but at least I could kid myself that maybe she sort of liked me. I couldn’t let her know what was going on inside my head.

  “I’m fine,” I said.