by R. K. Lilley
It was too much. It knocked the wind out of me.
I was undone with a glance. I couldn't even meet her eyes when she gazed at me like that. I looked down at my hands as an unmistakable wave of fear rocked through me.
Her expression told me everything and nothing, but one thing was for certain, she knew something she wasn't supposed to, and all of the rules had changed.
I felt unutterable guilt at the relief that washed over me. It was so powerful that for a moment it nearly drowned out the fear.
But only for a moment.
"Look at me," she coaxed softly. "Look at me and tell me what you've done."
I fled. Found my clothes, pulled them on with clumsy, jerking movements, and got the hell out of there.
She never stirred, didn't turn to watch me, didn't say another word, though it didn't escape my notice that she was shaking like a leaf.
Hugging herself and trembling like she could barely hold herself together.
It was pure hell to walk away.
And absolutely necessary.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
"Beauty, more than bitterness, makes the heart break."
~Sara Teasdale
PAST
SCARLETT
I'd heard rumors, and over the years they'd grown more persistent. Whispers about Jethro Davis. It was commonly assumed that he was my father. Even my doubtful grandma had admitted a few years prior that he was the most likely candidate.
I'd never seen the man, but I hated the very idea that I could have a dad so close, in this very town, and he'd never even bothered to meet me.
Never once bothered to see what his daughter looked like. If she was all right.
Never bothered to make sure she didn't end up in a dumpster.
I preferred instead to fantasize that he was someone glamorous, someone rich, maybe even famous, some man who didn't even know I existed, because if he did, nothing could have kept him away.
But then, one day, I ran into Jethro Davis.
The rumors I'd heard about him weren't only about him being my father. A lot of them were about the man himself. The things he did. He was a criminal. A drug dealer and some said worse, that a few people who'd crossed him hadn't lived long to regret it.
He'd served some time in prison. For what exactly, I couldn't say. Assault and battery, some said. Armed robbery, I'd also heard.
I was familiar with the story of my supposed father long before I ever set eyes on him, but when I did see him, at the grocery store, randomly, I knew who he was right away.
I was in the peanut butter aisle, grabbing a few things off Gram's grocery list. Her housekeeper usually did all of the shopping, but she'd recently come down with a bad case of the flu, so I'd taken over the duty.
I'm not sure why I was so sure right off the bat. The way he was studying me maybe or that combined with the tilt of his eyes, the stubborn line of his jaw. It wasn't his features so much as the way he moved them. There was a strong resemblance, but there also wasn't.
He was a gorgeous man. Just stunning, his face perfectly symmetrical, and it wasn't vanity, but I couldn't help seeing some of myself in him.
And all of my fantasies about some heroic father who would have wanted me had he known . . . flew right out of my head for good.
He seemed as startled to see me as I was him. "Hey, I know you," he drawled.
"No, you don't," I contradicted haughtily.
He sure as hell didn't know me. He'd never have the privilege, I swore to myself.
"I do too," he said, unfazed. "You're Scarlett Theroux. I hear all kinds of stuff about you. Quite the little charmer, I hear. Raising hell since you was li'l. Not much diff'rent than your mama."
He smiled. He was beautiful, but I hated his face on sight. "Not much diff'rent than your papa, either."
"Both of my parents are dead," I said, for lack of anything better. They were certainly dead to me.
He laughed. "Oh, you think so? I think you're full o'shit. You know damn well who I am, don't you?"
I glared at him, but I didn't answer.
"I'm your daddy. You knew that, right? You're prolly not too keen to hear that, but it's the truth. I can see the Davis blood in you, too. I hadn't heard about that. Folks only been tellin' me how you're the spittin' image of Renee. And I can see that. But I see me in you, too, no denyin' it.
"But I guess you don't care 'bout that, huh? You done all right for yourself, I hear, livin' up at old lady Durant's fancy mansion." I hated the way he spoke, slow, each word drawn out insinuatingly. Also, he sounded like a hick.
"What do you want?" I asked him. Clearly, if he'd actually wanted to be my dad, he wouldn't have waited for an accidental grocery store run-in to introduce himself.
He grinned, and I hated that it looked strangely familiar to me. "You're in high school, right? That can come in handy for me. You interested in making some money, girl?"
I started to leave without another word.
He stopped me with a grip on my elbow. "Now, now. It's good money. You wouldn't have to beg the Durants for charity no more. Don't you want a bit of cash of your own? I'd make sure it was all cake work. I'd just need some things, small packages, delivered to your classmates, yeah?"
"Get your hands off me, you piece of—" I snarled at him.
"Hey, now. It's Daddy to you."
Just when you don't think you can hate yourself any more—and then you find out you come from even worse white trash than you thought—yeah, that's where I was sitting.
His smile turned unpleasant. "Got a little attitude on you. I shouldn't be surprised. You know who else had one? Your mama. Didn't turn out too well for her, I hear."
That stopped me in my tracks. "What is that supposed to mean? Do you know where she is?"
He laughed and it was mocking. "Can't say I do, but I have heard things. Maybe if you were a little nicer to your old pa, I'd tell you some of the things I've heard about your mama."
I tugged my arm free of his hard grip. "What are you suggesting?"
"How about you come up to my house with me? I have a nice little plot of land, and seeing as you're part of the Davis clan, I think it's time you come have a look. When we're there, I'll tell you what I know about where Renee, your mama . . . ended up."
I was not nearly as dumb as he seemed to think. No way in hell was going anywhere with him. Ever.
I opened my mouth to tell him that when I was interrupted.
"Jethro Davis, how about you leave this nice young lady alone before I find something to arrest you for? I'd guess I wouldn't have to look much farther than your pockets if I wanted to get you for possession, yeah?"
I shuddered. This day was getting worse and worse.
I'd just been saved from my lowlife father by the only person I could possibly want to see even less than him.
Jethro couldn't get away from me fast enough after that.
And then I was left with Detective Harris. He gave me his deceptive smile. "What a coincidence. How'r you holding up? That had to be a shock, what your—Is he still your boyfriend?—did to that homeless guy. I hear he's managed to find a way out of it, though. Congratulations. It's amazing what money can do, especially when you're dealing with a D.A. who's hoping to have a long political career ahead of her."
"It was self-defense," I said, voice and face hard. "Everyone has a right to defend themselves." I said this the same way I'd said it a hundred times before, with stony resolve. I was used to defending what Dante had done. I'd never stop defending it, because I knew he'd done it for me.
He smiled again. "I apologize. I was out of line there. I didn't mean to upset you. I was actually just trying to help you. I saw that creep bothering you and thought I should intervene. Jethro was bothering you, wasn't he?"
I nodded, thinking it was ironic that this piece of work saw Jethro as the creep, but I begrudgingly said, "Thank you," because Jethro had been bothering me.
"Anytime, Scarlett. You know I'm always here if you ne
ed me. Always."
I didn't like the sound of that one bit. I tried to move past him, but he stepped in my way. "Listen, you may not see it now, but I thought I should warn you: Dante is dangerous. Dangerous to others, dangerous to you."
I just stared at him, wondering what his intention was. By his face and voice, he seemed genuinely worried for me, but with him, I didn't trust it.
And his intention really didn't matter. Nothing on earth could make me afraid of Dante. He would die before he'd hurt me. He would die to keep me from being hurt. By anyone. This I knew.
"You think he defended you, I get it. You think it was, what? Manslaughter? Self-defense if you're being completely naive? But it was more, I promise you. He went into the woods looking for a man, and that man ended up dead. What is that, if not intent?"
I started shaking my head. He was wrong. I knew it for a fact. I'd looked into Dante's eyes while he told me what really happened. He'd gone looking for my attacker, intending to bring him to the police, since the police were doing nothing, but when he'd found him, the man had pulled a knife and attacked. They'd fought, Dante had tried to take the knife away, but instead, much to his horror, he'd ended up stabbing the man. He'd tried his best to get help, but my attacker had bled out before he could get the proper medical attention.
Dante had told me the story in painstaking detail and with utter sincerity, and I believed him unconditionally, even if I was one of few.
"If he loses his temper again, how can you know it won't be you that ends up on the wrong end of it?"
"He's taking anger management courses," I told Harris, not because I thought Dante really needed them, but because it seemed like something Harris should hear.
"You're not listening, Scarlett, or else you're not hearing me, but I want you to know that if you ever need me, I'm just a phone call away. You can come to me for anything."
His words felt insinuating to me, they always did, but I just nodded and moved past him. At least he wouldn't be bothering me anymore, not more than the random coincidence. My case was closed, thank God.
Harris let me leave, and I went straight to checkout. There was only one lane open, and I had the terrible luck of being directly behind Jethro.
He sent me a greasy smile as he paid for his beer and cigarettes with his EBT card.
Of course this was not allowed, but when you're a small town's biggest drug dealer, things like that tend to just go your way.
I glared at his back when he left. I sincerely hoped I never had to set eyes on him again.
Meeting Jethro had bothered me. It was disheartening and disturbing to realize that even I believed he was my biological dad. Before I'd always just been able to shrug off any relation altogether the rare times that it came up, because the idea had been as abstract as it was distasteful. I didn't want this man to be my dad and so he wasn't.
But not anymore. After that, I carried the weight of belonging to even more white trash heritage than I already claimed. It was a blow to my ego that I hadn't needed, to say the least. Not a day in my life had gone by when I hadn't known and been reminded that I was trash. More proof was just picking at a wound that was already bloody.
One other thing did come out of meeting him, though. A lesson. Or at least, a reminder: I was not a Durant. Gram had accepted me into her heart, into her home. She fed me, clothed me. She provided me with everything I needed and more, from my phone to my haircuts.
She'd even tried to buy me a car, but I'd drawn the line there.
No, I'm not crazy. I just couldn't do it, couldn't defend taking such an extravagant gift, not without earning it. She had three extra cars. When I needed one, she always generously allowed me to borrow one. It was enough for me.
And as much as I wanted to tell all of the people that looked down on me to go fuck themselves, I did care how it looked, how I looked when it came to Gram and her kindness toward me.
If the world thought I was taking advantage of that, then hell, maybe I was, and so I tried my best not to.
So meeting Jethro Davis wasn't all bad. It made me realize that I needed to start earning my keep.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
"I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul."
~Pablo Neruda
PRESENT
SCARLETT
Filming was not going how I'd expected. It was a rollercoaster. All ups and downs, nothing in between.
A part of me hated it, and a part of me found it stimulating. At least I wasn't bored.
The acting was the only thing I wasn't conflicted about. I loved it, because God I was tired of being me. It felt good to slip into some other shoes.
But the rest was a jumbled mess that consisted of changed scripts, new lines, and repetitive reshoots.
Every scene felt like it had to be redone a dozen times. At least.
I thought that all of this traced back to one thing: the director. He was hard to please and harder to impress.
Stuart Whently was known for making A-list, character driven films that made the film academy swoon, and for being an eccentric, sometimes tyrannical, perfectionist.
When I thought of it that way, things weren't actually going so badly.
Still, it felt like I was somehow failing, and I had begun to miss my friends, who were gone four days or more a week, and hell, even my crappy old airline job, where at least I hadn't felt l was incompetent.
I had quit with relish over a month ago, never dreaming that I'd long to go back to it for even a second.
I'd never admit any of it aloud though, and even if I was doing a horrible job, I'd keep trying my best until I either got it right or got canned. It wasn't even a question.
"Is he always like this?" I asked one of the production assistants after Stuart had called an abrupt break and stormed off set. Again.
"Hmm?" she asked.
"What I mean is, is this how a movie production is supposed to go, or is this one just a colossal failure?" I hoped that wasn't the case, but I needed to know if it was.
I always, always preferred the truth.
That had her finally looking at me, pushing her glasses up high on her nose to study my face. "This project is as smooth as they get, to be honest. Usually filming with him is a nightmare."
I was shocked, relieved, and somehow annoyed. But at least it wasn't me.
Stuart was back within the hour, which was usually the pattern, and we set up again.
Two takes later, and good ol' Stu was back to ranting.
"It's a journey back from feeling alienated from the world," he said passionately, speaking directly to me.
Well, that I could relate to. The second part of it, at least.
"It is about personal growth, not an explosion of it, but a gradual unfolding, petal by petal, bit by bit. This scene is supposed to make you blossom. He's doing something for you that no one ever has before, showing you kindness, changing your perspective, on people, on men. You two are supposed to like each other!"
And that was the whole problem. I couldn't stand the lead actor. He was a Hollywood asshole of the first order.
I'd been excited when I heard who was chosen for the role.
David Watts had seemed the perfect pick. He was successful, a household name, great-looking, and because he was a hunk and he liked to post shirtless pictures of himself holding kittens on Instagram on a fairly regular basis, he brought his own rabid fan-base to every movie he made.
But how he sounded on paper was far from how he was to work with.
Stuart got right up in my personal space, as he was wont to do, distracting me from my train of annoyed thought, spectacled eyes studying me closely. "But you're not the problem, are you? You are her. You are this character. She is you. You are this movie. That is clear to me. So it's you we must begin to work around. What we need for this is chemistry. I'll ask you plain, can you think of any man you have chemistry with that's fit to play this role?"
> I was floored, but pretty thrilled. He'd really fire David Watts? Is that what he meant?
I opened my mouth to respond, because hell, I'd find someone, but David interrupted with a grownup hissy fit.
Apparently he wanted this job, too.
David probably wasn't a terrible person. He was just out of touch with reality. And normalcy. Something I figured a lot of famous people suffered from. I'd have bet money from what I'd seen on set that he surrounded himself with people who only told him how awesome he was, that he was the most special snowflake of all of the special snowflakes.
People that never let him know when he was acting like an entitled douchebag.
He wasn't even a bad actor. He had a limited range, as most too good-looking men do, but what he played, he played well. He'd just decided to be a dick to me since the first day we'd met, and he couldn't hide it even when the cameras were rolling.
I was still a little bummed about it. I'd been excited to meet him, more excited when he wanted me to come over to his house to rehearse together.
About two hours and a few drinks later into that first meeting he'd asked me (way too bluntly and without an ounce of charm) if I wanted to fuck, and I'd politely turned him down.
Okay, polite maybe wasn't the word. I'd tried to be polite, but I'm sure my version of a polite no had come across more than a touch sarcastic. And likely mocking.
He hadn't taken the rejection well. I honestly didn't think he knew how to deal with it. So he turned it on me. Told everyone I was difficult to work with while taking exception to every word that came out of my mouth.
I ignored it and tried my best not to let it show that I couldn't stand him when the cameras were rolling. I thought I succeeded.
David didn't even try. I don't know if he thought he could bully me into wanting to sleep with him, or if he was just that unprofessional.
One thing was for sure. Before today no one had dreamed there was a chance he could be fired.
"I don't want to fire you," Stuart told him when David had calmed enough to let someone else get a word in. "I don't want to. I just may need to. Scarlett is electric. She's magic. Incandescent. She gives me life. She's my muse, and she was made for this part, but as soon as I put you together, everything goes flat. Flat! I can't have it be flat, David. Tell me how I can keep from firing you."