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

by Helena Newbury

  Her voice went tight, just for a moment. “That’s right.”

  I just stood there processing that for a while. “So you spend hours every day being someone else,” I said slowly. “Isn’t that...weird?”

  “It’s okay,” she said. I swore her voice chilled a few degrees.

  If it was all okay, why did she suddenly sound as if she was in so much pain? I had the feeling that I was standing on the edge of a precipice, and there was something important down at the bottom that I couldn’t quite see. If I could just lean out a little further—

  Her palm landed on my shoulder, warmly cupping it, and every thought flew out of my head. “Let’s focus on you,” said Jasmine. And just like that, the happy, flirty Jasmine was back.

  For the next two hours, she made me get to know Tony. Stupid stuff like the bands we figured he liked and the beer he drank. I couldn’t see the point. I could feel the anger start to smolder, deep inside me...and yet, with Jasmine there, the rage couldn’t take hold. I’d started to notice that—how I was calmer, with her around. I still felt like the world’s biggest idiot, though. I had to keep reassuring myself that none of the guys from the station could see me. Although they’d sure as hell all see me if my performance ever made it onto TV.

  Near the end of the second hour, she told me something Tony would do—that he’d agree to swap a shift with another cop so the other guy could go watch the baseball game, and I said, “No.”

  Jasmine had me standing there with my eyes closed again but, from her voice, it sounded as if she was smiling. “No?”

  I shook my head. I couldn’t believe what I was about to say, but, “He wouldn’t do that. He’s...not evil, but he doesn’t do anything without getting something back. He’d ask for a favor.”

  She gripped both my shoulders from behind, squeezing me hard. “That’s it! You’re getting it! You’re starting to feel him...aren’t you?”

  I went to say no, but...crazy as it sounds, just on the edge of my brain...I sort of could. There was the shadow outline of an instinct there. Like when you follow your gut as a cop. I had a kind of Tony-hunch. “I...maybe,” I said at last. “Yeah.”

  Jasmine gave a kind of excited squeak and threw her arms tight around me and—Oh God, her breasts were pushing against my back, soft and weighty and warm and—

  I couldn’t help it. I spun around. Jasmine was grinning at me, our face inches apart. I lifted my hands to cup her cheeks—

  She blinked at me, still grinning. “What?”

  I caught myself just in time. My hands fell to my waist. “Nothing,” I said. “Thank you. That really...worked. I mean, I think I’m starting to get it.” Moron. What the hell were you about to do? Kiss her? Seriously? Hasn’t she made it clear enough that she’s not interested?

  She gave me a worried look for a second. Shit! Did she suspect? Did she know how close I’d come?

  Then she turned away. “You take a break,” she said. “Let me do some Isabel, and then we’ll try them both together.”

  I relaxed a little and then tried to concentrate. Tried to learn as much as I possibly could from her because maybe, just maybe, if she could teach me to act, I could keep being a cop.

  And maybe, if I focused hard enough on learning, she wouldn’t figure out I’d fallen for her.

  Chapter 27

  Jasmine

  I sat in a Starbucks with a venti hot chocolate with cream and raspberry syrup. It’s a ridiculous drink. It’s like 600 calories and I knew I wouldn’t even finish it. But it was a very Jasmine drink, with its zigzags of tangy syrup and its mountain of cream, and I needed something to remind me I was her.

  I was thinking about the nearly-kiss at Fenbrook the day before. How good Ryan had looked. How tempted I’d been to just close my eyes and part my lips, because that’s all it would have taken. It would barely have been doing anything wrong, because it was barely doing anything at all—more inaction than action.

  But I’d caught myself in time. I’d said, “What?” in that happy, singsong, Jasmine voice, as if I hadn’t any idea he was about to kiss me. And now I had to relive it, again and again, telling myself I’d done the right thing. Telling myself that I had to keep being Jasmine—today, of all days. Because today, I was meeting my brother.

  Nick was on time, which made me suspicious. He’d never been on time for anything in his life.

  Maybe he’d turned over a new leaf, since breaking ties with my dad.

  Maybe. Or maybe he was trying very hard to impress me, putting on an act.

  He looked different, too, as he stripped off his jacket and sat down. Back in Chicago, he’d always been wiry. But now he looked even leaner. He was obviously eating—he wasn’t wasting away. But his face had a sort of gaunt, hunted look. Maybe I’d been right to worry. Maybe he was living on the streets.

  Fortunately, I had the perfect way to ask him, without having to go straight to So, are you a homeless junkie these days? I’d been rehearsing it all the way to the Starbucks. I even showed him the apartment listings I was scrolling through on my phone as he walked up. “Can you believe the rent in this city?” I asked. “I’m looking for a cheaper place, but I think I’m already at the bottom of the barrel.”

  That was only half true. I wasn’t really looking, because I didn’t want to have to admit that I was going to lose my current place. I knew that I wasn’t quite at the bottom of the barrel: the bottom was the place I’d lived in when I’d first come to New York, where I’d almost wound up sleeping with the landlord in lieu of rent. No way was I going back there...but I was running out of alternatives. The bar I worked at wasn’t offering any extra shifts and, between Fenbrook and practicing with Ryan, I didn’t have time anyway. But I also didn’t have enough money to cover my rent, and it was due at the end of the week. My lie was going to become reality pretty damn fast.

  He nodded sympathetically. “I’m in an okay place,” he said. “Roach-free. Rat-free. Small, but I don’t have a lot of stuff.” And he described the location—just a few blocks from the subway station I’d seen him at. I’d probably passed right underneath his window while I was searching bars for him. It sounded believable.

  Then he said, “But the lease is up in a week, so I’m outta there.”

  Much, much too late, the obvious problem occurred to me. How could I have been so stupid?! I sat there nodding and sipping my bucket-sized mug of hot chocolate, praying his mind didn’t go where mine had just gone.

  But then he said, “You know, if you’re short of cash, I got cash. I just need a place to stay for a couple of months.”

  I opened and closed my mouth a few times. Shit! “I only have one bedroom.”

  He shrugged. “I can sleep on the couch. And I can pay. Here.” And he pulled out a roll of bills, secured by a rubber band. I remembered that sort of roll. I’d seen a lot of them, back in Chicago, tight little wads of greasy, sweat-stained dollars traded for drugs one day, sex the next, a favor the next, bouncing from person to person without ever being unrolled. As if no one wanted to be the one to open up the roll and unleash all the bad karma that must have soaked into it. I felt ill.

  But without that money, I was going to be back at the bottom of the barrel.

  He looked toward the counter and smiled. “I wasn’t gonna have coffee,” he said. “But I’m gonna get one. While you decide. And chill—it’s not a big deal. I’m just trying to help you out.”

  He sauntered off to the counter—that bouncing, rolling walk he always did, lots of attitude, his eyes everywhere. He’d learned to walk that way in Chicago, to stay out of trouble. I’d learned the female equivalent. I remembered what it was like, to have that panicky fear inside you, the whole time. But he’d been in New York at least two years. Why hadn’t he lost the street attitude, if he’d really gone straight?

  Maybe it was harder for men to let go. Maybe I’d adjusted easily...or adjusted badly, but in a different way. Maybe I was just paranoid about letting anyone from my family back in, even if it
wasn’t my dad. I sighed and drank more hot chocolate. Stop being Emma. What would Jasmine do?

  Jasmine would stop being such a suspicious bitch and show her brother some kindness.

  A finger touched my nose and I jerked in shock. I realized that Nick had hooked his arm around from behind me.

  “Sorry,” he said. “It’s just that, if you’re going to sit there all moody and serious, you can’t do it with cream on your nose.”

  I looked at the cream on his finger and then at him, and I laughed. A tired, I-can’t-believe-I’m-doing-this laugh, but still a laugh.

  “You’re sleeping on the couch,” I said. “And I want two months in advance. And no drugs.”

  He held up his hands. “I’m clean.”

  I stared at him for a moment longer...and then I nodded.

  For better or worse, my brother and I were reunited.

  ***

  I was meant to be meeting Ryan at the police station for more training. I should have canceled, because I knew as soon as I stepped out of the Starbucks that something was wrong. I could feel the difference in the people around me, in the way they were looking at me.

  It wasn’t them, of course. New York and New Yorkers hadn’t changed, since I’d been in the coffee shop. I had. Seeing Nick had reminded me of the freezing, dark waters that lay within my soul, just waiting for me to crash down into them. It had reminded me of how flimsy my Jasmine raft was, and how easily it could tip.

  Steady. Breathe.

  I put my head down and went.

  The thing about men is, they can smell fear. Or shame. Or despair. Sometimes, the harder you try not to present it, the more it comes out. Normally, I’d be projecting Jasmine—a big, shining, golden glow that said look at me! in such a way that they all looked, without really seeing. Now, I was like a swimmer with an injured leg, trying to stem the trickles of blood that spread through the water.

  I stopped at a crossing. A guy to my left, in a suit, was staring right at me. Right at me. I didn’t look back, my eyes firmly focused a half block ahead.

  We crossed. I walked just fast enough for him to drop behind me. But then three guys staggered out of a bar, drunk in the middle of the day, almost colliding with me. There was beer on their breath.

  Beer on their breath…

  I took a staggering step to the left as the guys finally saw me and leered at me. That sent me into a fat guy who put out his hands to stop me. It was an innocent touch but, as soon as his hands touched my arm, I felt—

  Them.

  I surged forward, almost running, stopping only when I reached the next intersection. The “Don’t Walk” sign was on. Come on. Don’t Walk. Come on!

  The man who’d been staring at me before caught up. I could feel him standing next to me, close enough to touch. His eyes on my breasts, so intimate that he might as well have been groping me—

  I stepped forward, away from him, and heard the blare of a horn. My brain didn’t register it, but my legs knew just enough to lock up. The truck shot past so close to my face it sucked the air out of my lungs. A dangling cargo strap actually slapped against my arm, stinging it.

  “Jesus!” said the man beside me, and I felt his fingers try to close on my shoulder, to pull me back to safety—

  I ran. I ran as if I could outrun the memories, the dark waters that were bubbling up from below.

  The bar. The back room of the bar.

  —

  I ran until I couldn’t think anymore. Until my screaming lungs and aching legs drew all my attention and I couldn’t smell stale cigarettes and spilled beer anymore. And then I stopped and turned into a side street so that no one could see me, and I pressed my back against the cool bricks and let them soak the sweat from my body.

  ***

  I stopped in a Burger King bathroom to fix my face. A half hour later, I was bouncing up the stairs of the police station as if it was my birthday.

  Ryan gave me another one of those looks. The cop look. The I know there’s something going on look. And I told myself, for the five hundredth time, that this was why I’d never gotten involved with him in the first place. Cops can’t stop digging. It’s in their nature.

  He led me downstairs, deep into the part of the police station that civilians never see. I could hear the muffled bangs long before we got to the door.

  “I want to teach you how to fire a gun,” he said. “Is that cool? I know you’re a little...nervous.”

  I went blank for a moment. Then I remembered sitting with him in the cop car, freaking out when I saw the shotgun. He’d assumed it was because I had a civilian’s fear of guns. He didn’t know I’d been remembering what a shotgun can do.

  “I’ll be okay,” I said. Then, “I mean,”—I let my eyes go big—”it won’t be too loud, will it?”

  That worked. He looked adoringly at me and patted me on the back and gave me some ear protectors and a fancy pair of yellow-tinted glasses. Despite everything, his big hand felt amazing—warm and strong as it pressed against my upper back and directed me through to the range. Solidity. That’s what it felt like. He was real in a way I wasn’t. Him touching me made my whole internal battle become just noise and, after Jasmine and acting and lying had all faded away, the only thing that was left behind...was Emma.

  And then I caught my breath and came down on myself hard, because that was a dangerous place to go to. Be Jasmine, I told myself.

  Several officers were standing in lanes, shooting at paper targets. I had to remember to jump every time one of them fired.

  “You’ll get used to it,” he told me, voice raised over the gunfire. Then he handed me the gun, unloaded, and showed me how it worked. I nodded timidly as he told me to never point a gun at something I didn’t want to kill, and to always treat a gun as if it’s loaded. I pretended to be scared. I tried to look as if I’d never held a gun before, holding it as if it was going to bite me.

  He gave me the magazine to slot in, and I managed to drop it twice. Other officers shook their heads despairingly. Perfect.

  At last, Ryan stood behind me, guiding me into a shooting stance, and helping me aim at the target down at the end of the range. A nice, safe, anonymous outline of a person.

  “Squeeze the trigger,” Ryan said in my ear. “Don’t pull it.” He was snuggled up close to me, the hardness of his pecs and the fullness of his arms making it difficult to think.

  I fired. A hole appeared in the target, dead center. Shit! I hadn’t meant to do that.

  “Beginner’s luck,” I said quickly.

  I fired again, the kick of the gun and the smell of the cordite taking me back. Shooting cans, with my brother. Shooting at the ground, to scatter a gang. Shooting above a guy’s head, so that he’d leave me alone. And those memories took me back to other times, times when I’d sat alone in my room in the middle of the night, tracing the engraved flames on the gun with my fingertips, trying to work up the courage to creep into his room.

  I felt sick. Emma was rising from the depths, heading straight for me.

  “You okay?” asked Ryan.

  Jasmine, you’re Jasmine.

  “Fine.” I brought the gun up and fired. And fired. And fired. And suddenly, the target wasn’t anonymous and innocent. Suddenly, it was my dad, all tobacco-stained fingers and pale, muscled arms traced with blue veins and—

  I shot until the magazine was empty and then stood there staring.

  “Jasmine?”

  He had to repeat it twice before I turned to him. Then I nodded and smiled like everything was okay. “I got carried away!” I said happily. “That was fun!”

  But he just stared at me and hit the button to bring the paper target down to our end of the range. The bullet holes obliterated the target’s face.

  Ryan studied me for a long time. At first, I thought I could brazen it out. “What?!” I asked, grinning, wishing I had a cold drink with a straw so I could suck on it and distract him that way.

  “Who did you see?” he asked at last.

>   I blinked. “No one! I just went for it.” Immediately I’d said it, I was kicking myself. Why hadn’t I made something up? Why hadn’t I told him a story about some creepy stranger I’d met once, someone evil enough to be a convincing explanation but distant enough for him to forget all about in a few days? I could have pinned my freak-out at the gym on the same creep. Idiot!

  He reached out to touch my arm, and then thought better of it. Probably he thought I’d go apeshit on him again. My skin tingled where he wasn’t touching it, a ghost of his hand already there...and feeling good. Instead, he reached out and took the ear protectors gently from my head. “What’s going on with you, Jasmine?” he asked. His voice made me ache inside—that combination of steel and tenderness, the tone that cut through all the bullshit, all the layers inside my head. Damn, he made a good cop. And he’d cut just as efficiently through all my lies, if I let him get a toehold.

  Lying hadn’t worked, so I tried angry. I pulled it up from inside me—there was always a healthy supply—and let it slosh out over the surface, scalding my face. How dare he? How dare he invade my privacy and demand to know what was going on deep down inside? Everyone else in the world was satisfied with Jasmine. They all just accepted her and laughed along with her and flirted with her and tried to fuck her. Why did he have to be different?

  But he was staring back at me and the coolness of his gaze just seemed to soak up all the anger. As if he didn’t care that I was mad at him, because he knew that was just a diversion. As if he didn’t care about anything except getting at the truth. His eyes were full of pain and I knew, in that moment, that he was doing this because he knew what it was like to have something eating you up inside. Hux’s death must be destroying him, and he could see that the same was happening to me.

  Except my past was something he could never know. Not if I wanted him to like me. Not if I wanted keep my career, my friends...my sanity. I understood what he wanted: he wanted to reach down inside me and pull all the bad stuff out, so that I could heal. He didn’t get that bad stuff was all there was.