Acting Brave (Fenbrook Academy #3 - New Adult Romance)

by Helena Newbury

  I shook my head. “No. Last night was...something else. Something special.” I leaned forward and kissed him. “Tonight, you’ll get the full Jas—the full experience.” Just because I was Emma now, there was no reason I couldn’t bring out Jasmine’s whole bag of tricks. Maybe me on top, this time. Maybe on the couch.

  Ryan went to take a shower. I stood in the bedroom staring at myself in the mirror. Was this really happening? Had I really managed to strip away my disguise and show myself as I really was...and survived? I felt as if I’d accidentally opened my mouth while diving and discovered I could breathe water.

  What was I going to do? What was I even going to call myself? Emma?

  Then I came to my senses and shook myself. I still had to hide from my Dad. That hadn’t changed. And I was still going to have to be super-careful when Ryan started asking about my parents and my past. I’d have to start making up a convincing background, building on what I’d already told him. Both parents dead. No reason to ever visit Chicago. I’d have to lie, rather than just avoiding the subject altogether by never letting anyone get close enough to ask.

  My stomach tightened at the thought of lying to Ryan again, after being so open with him the night before. But this was the only way I could have the fairy tale. I could stop pretending with him. I could be Emma, even if I still had to call myself Jasmine. I’d be the real me, with just a few lies to protect us both.

  I took a deep breath. This is going to work. I’d finally done it. I’d sloughed off the false me and gone back to the real me, after three long years, and all it had taken was meeting him.

  Ryan returned from the shower, a towel around his waist and rivulets of water still trickling down his chest. Without even letting him speak, I kissed him hard and then harder.

  I’d won. Sure, there were still hurdles to be overcome, but breaking my rules and letting Emma out had worked. Look what I’d gained!

  It never occurred to me to question what I’d lost.

  Chapter 57

  Emma

  After we’d shared an enormous breakfast, Ryan went home to change, but we made plans to meet that night.

  I still hadn’t heard from Nick. I’d tried calling and texting again with apologies and pleas to get in touch, but nothing. That was two nights he’d been away, now, and I was worried. Was he staying with a friend? Sleeping rough? My instinct was to search for him, but where would I even start? Until he chose to get back in touch, there was nothing I could do.

  I took a long hot, shower and that helped to calm me a little. I opened my closet. What would Jasmine wear, today?

  And then I froze. The thought had been instinctive. But I wasn’t Jasmine anymore. I didn’t have to pretend. I could dress for me.

  I wasn’t sure what that meant. I’d spent three years trying to match everything—clothes, hair, make-up—to some imaginary person’s taste. Now I just felt...lost.

  I eventually settled on jeans and sneakers, with a t-shirt and a light jacket. Not quite the same as what I’d used to wear back in Chicago—lower cut than I’d dared wear there, for a start, and the clothes were much better quality, now, even on my meager budget. But it definitely wasn’t an outfit Jasmine would have approved of.

  I wandered into the heart of the city and spent a morning doing the things Jasmine would never do. I browsed some flea markets and then hit the art gallery. I went to a coffee shop and, instead of ordering a complicated, frothy mountain of cream, I went for a simple Americano. And I found myself smiling in a way I couldn’t remember smiling before. Not since I’d been Jasmine and certainly not before that. The smile seemed to come from a deeper place.

  It was still on my face when I opened the door to my apartment. I could hear movement inside, which was a relief. Nick was back.

  I closed the door behind me. “Hi,” I called down the hallway.

  A figured stepped out of my bedroom. “Hi,” said my dad.

  Chapter 58

  Emma

  I scrambled backward toward the door. My legs felt as if they were made out of plastic. I couldn’t make my feet connect with the ground properly. My sneakers scraped and twisted and I went sprawling on my ass, but I didn’t even register the pain. My eyes were locked on him, strolling casually toward me, white tank top, and that old, green army jacket he always wore. He’d lost a little more hair, in three years, but otherwise he was just the same, my nightmares made real.

  I backed away, clawing at the carpet with my hands, kicking with my feet to move me. A whimper escaped my throat. My back hit the door. I reached up for the door handle, but I couldn’t find it. I didn’t dare take my eyes off him to look. My mind was still spinning queasily, trying to regain a foothold. He couldn’t be here. He couldn’t be back in my life. This was New York. I was at Fenbrook. I was an actress. I was Jasmine.

  Except I wasn’t, anymore. I was Emma again and, somehow, that had brought him back. I’d summoned him, like some ancient curse, by daring to show myself.

  Nick staggered out of the bathroom. One eye was swollen shut and blood was caked on his chin and shirt. ”I’m sorry,” he rasped. “He got me outside, after I left.”

  That’s what had happened to him. We’d argued, he’d stormed out and he’d walked right into my dad, standing outside the building. And my dad had held him somewhere for two nights, probably a motel. Beating him for entertainment. He’d probably been ready to come and get me the night before, but had backed off when he saw me get out of the cab with Ryan. Now he’d got me on my own.

  On my own. My mind shredded. I’m on my own. Ryan’s not here. I’m on my own with him.

  My dad was coming closer. I had to move, but that lazy, vicious gaze was like an iron bar that had been rammed right through me, pinning me to the door.

  “I always said, there’s no place you can run where I won’t find you,” said my dad. He said it as if I was a child who’d done something stupid.

  I shook my head in despair. I’d been so careful! My name change was sealed. How had he found me?!

  I glanced at Nick. He was trying to stagger toward me, but whatever my dad had done to him was making him reel as if he was on the deck of a boat. Then, as he got closer, I saw the fresh track marks on his arm, the red line where the rubber tubing had been tied.

  My dad hadn’t just beaten him. He’d shot him up with God knows how much heroin. I imagined him alternating violence and bliss, until he got all the information he needed.

  “You were pretty smart,” said my dad. “Stealing from me. Disappearing. I didn’t think you had it in you. Thought you were only good for whoring.” He leaned suddenly over me and jabbed my scalp hard with his tobacco-stained fingertip. “But you’ve got a brain in there! Don’t you, Emma? Kept you nice and hidden for three whole years.” He turned to grin at Nick. “But this sack o’ shit? He ain’t even got the brain he was born with. The needle ate all that away. So, just as I need to find you, he puts a call in to home.”

  Despite my fear, I twisted to look at Nick. His eyes were wet with tears. He knew what he’d done. “Why?!” I whispered.

  “Aw, he was only trying to help,” said my dad. “He saw the same news story I did. The old industrial land’s being dug up. Redevelopment.”

  The old industrial land. Where my dad had—

  “I only wanted to know where they were digging,” said Nick, sinking to his knees. “If it was where we….”

  “So you called up Cal, at the newspaper. Good old Cal. Cal knows everything that goes on.” He grinned. “‘Course, he’s up to his ears in poker debt, so when your brother calls him, he gets straight on the phone to me and I have a buddy on the force trace the number.” He leaned closer. “And finally, I can come visit.”

  Tears were forming in my eyes, the image of Nick blurring and changing. I hadn’t summoned my dad at all. I’d given him a path right back to me, the day I went searching for Nick. I’d done the right thing, and now it was going to kill me. Why did you have to make that phone call?! I wanted to yell
at him. Why? Why? I had a life! I had friends and a career and the most amazing man in the world and now it’s all gone!

  But it wasn’t my brother’s fault. God, I think he’d even tried to tell me what he was planning, when he came out of the shower and I saw the track marks, but I’d been too angry to listen.

  “I never went to the cops,” I said. My voice was a tight little groan, my throat constricted with fear. Where was my confidence? Where were the layers of defense that I’d spent so long building up?

  They were gone. I’d ripped Jasmine away, thinking I didn’t need her anymore. I’d put myself right back to square one, completely vulnerable and exposed, just as I needed protection the most. He’d think that I hadn’t changed at all, since he last saw me, that I’d never managed to be anything else. And that scared me more, in a way, than what he might do to me. It was as if everything I’d done in the meantime hadn’t mattered at all. Fenbrook. The girls.

  Ryan.

  “I know that” said my dad amiably. “But you stole from me.”

  He put his booted foot on my ankle and started to crush downward. I felt cloth and skin and flesh all mash against the bone. I stifled a scream, because screaming would only make it worse.

  “You stole from me and you ran out on our family. You inspired your brother to do the same, and left me in Chicago with no one to help me out. You betrayed me and then you left me. Now, what should I do to someone who did that?”

  He leaned over his foot, putting more and more weight on it. I heard and felt a grinding noise. My teeth were clamped so hard together from the pain that my jaw went numb.

  Next, I knew, the bone would snap.

  “But you got a chance to make it right,” said my dad, and took his weight off my ankle. “See, I need you to lie for me. They found the body.”

  The memories overtook me and I knew I was going to be sick. He could see it too, and he stepped out of the way. I heard him laughing as I ran to the bathroom and threw up into the toilet.

  Chapter 59

  Emma

  Three and a half years ago

  By the time my dad’s friends had finished with me and I lay naked and bloody on the pool table, the bar was empty. I crawled—I couldn’t stand—up the stairs to the apartment, locked myself in my room, and didn’t come out for three days except to throw up.

  I’d survived. But what no one tells you is that the aftermath—the surviving—is the hard part.

  I’d been expecting...I don’t know what. Something. Some other shoe to drop. I’d thought that they’d kill me, afterwards, or that it would go the other way and they’d regret it and there’d be some sort of justice. But there was nothing. Nothing changed. The men still saw me, still leered at me. That was the worst outcome of all, because it showed that what they’d done simply didn’t matter to them. They thought it was no big deal, which made me feel even more worthless. And I knew it meant it could happen again at any time.

  Going to the police didn’t occur to me. I didn’t know which ones were on my dad’s payroll and I knew he’d kill me before I got anywhere near a courtroom. I knew he’d find me if I ran. Chicago was his and I had no money to go farther. I barely had any money at all.

  The next two weeks were the most terrifying of my life. I knew that all it would take would be for the men—or ones like them—to get drunk enough, and I’d be pulled back into that back room. The apartment wasn’t safe. My bedroom wasn’t safe. They could easily kick down the door.

  I slept with my gun under my pillow, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to pull the trigger, if it came to it. The gun had been useful for scaring strangers but these guys knew me. They knew I wasn’t a killer.

  I dreamed about a better life, somewhere far away, and a glamorous career as an actress. I knew it was impossible, but dreaming gave me strength. I spent hours staring at the Fenbrook Academy website, always well out of sight of my dad. Meanwhile, I started to withdraw from my life in Chicago. If it was the only life I could have, I didn’t want to live it at all. I wanted to just stop existing.

  I started to think about killing myself.

  My dad noticed my withdrawal and wasn’t happy. He already had my brother doing little jobs for him. Sometimes, a dealer would give my dad a package of coke or heroin as a little bonus and my brother would be sent to deal it. That was when he started using. My dad wanted me out there as well. I overheard him joking about me working for the family business. I didn’t get it, at first. I couldn’t deal on a street corner or intimidate someone into handing over their money. I was a woman, for God’s sake. What work could I do?

  I’d underestimated him. My mind, even jaded as it was, simply hadn’t gone there.

  But before he put me to work, he needed to make sure I’d be loyal. I think he’d seen how close to cracking I was and he was worried I might suddenly blurt it all out to someone—maybe even someone who’d listen. So, when another problem came up, I guess he decided to solve both at once.

  I was watching a movie, when it happened. I was halfway through some silly but funny romantic comedy that actually had me smiling, for once. When my dad came in, I paused it.

  I never watched the end of that movie. Sometimes, even today, I see it come up on Netflix and I have to skip past it.

  “Get downstairs,” he said, staring at me. “We’re going out.”

  I knew better than to argue.

  Downstairs, the bar was deserted. But the light was on in the back room. Someone had dragged a kitchen chair in there and there was a man in it, facing away from me. His head was hanging back limply.

  My brother was there, too, putting his jacket on. He looked almost as scared as I did.

  “Go pick him up,” said my dad.

  I walked toward the chair, my steps getting smaller and smaller as I approached. I didn’t want to look because I’d seen the blood on my dad’s knuckles and I knew what the guy’s face would look like. But to pick him up, I had to get my arm under his shoulder, while Nick did the same on the other side, and I couldn’t not see his face.

  I knew him. I’d seen him in the bar, regular as clockwork every month. I knew he was a cop. From his regular payments, a crooked cop, but there were lots of those. He didn’t seem vicious or cruel and, although he’d looked at me a few times, he didn’t have the hungry look of some of the men. My dad had given him a savage beating. One eye was swollen shut and his mouth was a mess of blood and missing teeth. He seemed to be semi-conscious.

  We lifted him up out of the seat, one of us on either side of him, and walked him through to the bar. He winced and shuddered in pain as he walked. The beating clearly hadn’t been confined to his face.

  “Put him in the truck,” my dad told us.

  I hoped we were taking him home. He’d been beaten for whatever he’d done wrong, and now we’d drop him off at home and he’d recover and know better next time. That’s what I hoped.

  But when I got to my dad’s double-cab pickup, the rear seat was covered in black garbage bags, neatly scotch-taped in place. We lifted the man in and he slumped on his side.

  “Sit either side of him,” said my dad.

  We climbed in, gently hauling the man upright so that he was sitting between us on the bench seat. I exchanged a look with my brother and he looked helplessly back at me. He didn’t know what had happened to me in the back room—or, at least, if he did then he didn’t hear it from me and he never mentioned it. I was far too ashamed to tell even him. So I’m not sure if he realized just how much of a monster his dad was, until that night.

  We moved off. My dad drove silently into the night, only the ragged, wet sound of the man’s breathing breaking the silence. We headed out of the city. Out into wasteland and scrub. I started to feel sick. I wasn’t stupid. There was only one reason you took someone out to a place like that in the dead of night.

  I looked at the man. He was still only half conscious, but he seemed to be coming round.

  “He got ill,” said my dad.

  My
head snapped up. My dad was looking at me in the rear-view mirror. He’d seen me looking at the man.

  “He had an attack,” said my dad. “Of conscience.” And he laughed at his own joke. “Oaks here mistook himself for a good man. He thought that if he stopped taking my money, that’d somehow undo all the shit he’d done.” He shook his head ruefully, as if he wished that was the case. “Doesn’t work like that. But don’t worry, Oaks. We’ll cure you.”

  He drove us into a forest, a pathetic little thing that somehow still stood between vacant industrial lots. When he stopped, he jumped out and went to get something from the back. When he came back, he jerked his head at my brother and me to tell us to get out, too.

  I’d frozen, though, staring at his hands. He was holding his shotgun and a pair of shovels.

  I tried to open the door, but it took me three attempts to close my shaking fingers around the door-pull. Nick and I hauled the man out of the truck and hoisted him back onto our shoulders so that we could walk him along. When we set off, our dad leading the way, my brother and I were so sacred that our steps were as stumbling and weak as Oaks’s.

  The forest was dying. I don’t know what quirk of city planning had allowed the land to stay protected when industry had sprung up all around it, but it hadn’t worked. The soil had long since soaked up the chemicals from the surrounding factories and the trees had hungrily sucked up the tainted water. It was summer, but few of them had leaves and their trunks were a misshapen, ugly mess. In the light of my dad’s torch, they looked more like twisted metal than living things.

  My dad led us to a clearing and indicated that we should set the man down. We did, lowering him gently onto his knees.

  My dad threw my brother and me a shovel each. “Start digging,” he said. Then he crouched down to stare into the Oaks’s face. He had to grip his shoulder, or the man would have toppled over onto his face, he was so weak. He kept gazing into the Oaks’s eyes, but he spoke to me. “See, Emma,” he said, “when a man like Oaks forgets who he is...well, that just makes problems for everybody. Soon, people forget who we are. They forget this family. Can’t allow that.”