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

by Helena Newbury

  “He’s a cop, too?”

  “Was a cop. Right here in Brooklyn. He even tried to get me into his old precinct, when I graduated from the academy, but I wanted to make my own way, you know?”

  I nodded, but I had to think of Karen and her famous musician dad to really understand. One thing I’d never had to worry about was living up to a parent’s expectations.

  “I live around here so I can keep an eye on him. Although it’s really him keeping an eye on everyone else. He still walks his old beat, even though he’s retired. Everyone in the neighborhood knows him.” Ryan shook his head ruefully. “Still insists on carrying a gun, too.”

  He put on some low, soft music and showed me to where he’d laid a table in the kitchen. “Is this cool?” he asked. “I have to stir a couple of things, so if you sit here, I can talk to you.”

  I nodded dumbly. Cooking. He was cooking for me, actually chopping things and peeling things and—God, that was a recipe book over there! None of the guys I’d ever dated as Jasmine had cooked...or, at least, they’d never done it for me. Maybe they’d saved it for the women they really cared about. The ones they were serious about marrying, or taking to meet their folks.

  He brought me over a glass of wine. And then he brought out a small, gift-wrapped box. “I bought you something,” he said.

  I was so surprised I actually put a hand to my mouth. I looked up at him. “I didn’t get you anything!” I squeaked. Was this a thing? Did people buy each other gifts on their second date? It had been so long since I dated like this that I had no idea.

  He shook his head to dismiss my concerns and offered the box again. I took it with shaking hands and tore off the purple gift wrap. Inside was a black, velvet jewelry box and inside that….

  It was a necklace. A simple pendant made of onyx, the candlelight reflected in its gleaming blackness. Aged, dark silver surrounded it.

  “It wasn’t expensive or anything,” Ryan said quickly. “I just…” He gave me a goofy smile. “I dunno, this’ll sound weird. But....the morning after I met you for the first time, in the alley, Hux and I got a call. Some store had been hit by a gang of shoplifters—organized, professional, the kind who’ll work through the whole street. So Hux and I were going door to door, warning people to be on the lookout, asking if they’d seen anything, that kind of thing. And there was this old place selling vintage stuff—looked on the verge of closing down, I think I was the only person who’d been in there that day. And right in the window was this necklace, and I saw it and I thought of you. But that was crazy, because I’d only just met you. And you hated me.”

  “I didn’t hate you,” I said quietly. “I just acted like I did.”

  “Anyway, time goes on, I run into Karen walking through a bad neighborhood with that damn cello of hers and Hux and I give her a ride. I get your phone number out of her, but I’m too dumb to call. But later that day, we’re cruising past that same store and I see the necklace again, winking at me from the window. And before I even know what I’m doing, I’ve gone in and bought it. I don’t even know why. I didn’t call you. I didn’t ask you out. I knew I wasn’t on your level—”

  “You were!”

  “But anyway, I shove it in my pocket with some crazy idea of giving it to you. Not long after that, we hear there’s a fight going on in Flicker, so we head over there and pull Connor off some Harvard piece of shit. And you’re there again. And I have this thing right in my pocket. And I talk to Karen and she asks why I hadn’t called you, and I tell her: cop and actress. Different circles, you know?”

  I could feel my eyes welling up, now. We’d missed each other. We’d missed each other so many times.

  “So I tell myself to forget about you, but I can’t. I wind up cruising past Fenbrook every chance I get, with Hux telling me to ask you out and this thing burning a hole in my pocket. And then Hux got shot—” His voice broke. “And then....I took it out of my pocket and I put it in a drawer at home.”

  I grabbed his hands. He pulled me up out of my chair and touched his forehead to mine.

  “I didn’t think we’d ever be together. I didn’t think you’d want someone like me anyway, and then after Hux I was too damn broken to be anything to anyone. But then I saw you again at the screen test and my whole life felt like it restarted. Turn around.”

  I turned my back to him and lifted my hair out of the way. I wasn’t quite crying, but the tears were heavy in my eyes, threatening to spill. I felt his huge hands on my shoulders, then on the soft skin of my neck. The pendant settled onto my chest, heavy and somehow very solid, as if it possessed a weight beyond its size. I felt him do up the clasp, but his hands didn’t move away. They stayed resting on my shoulders, his thumbs on the back of my neck.

  “I’m in love with you,” he said. “I have been since I bought you this.”

  He gently turned me around. My eyes were brimming pools, now. “I’m in love with you, too,” I managed, and then hurled myself into his arms. He crushed me against his chest, wrapping himself around me, and I laughed and cried and left dark smears of mascara on his shirt.

  ***

  In his bathroom, I repaired the damage to my make-up and then took a look at myself wearing the pendant.

  I loved it. It was beautiful. It was perfect.

  And wrong.

  Utterly wrong.

  It wasn’t retro in the fun, light, kitschy way that Jasmine favored. It was dark and heavy and sort of brooding, almost gothy. It wasn’t Jasmine at all.

  It was Emma.

  He’d bought the perfect gift for Emma, back when he met me as Jasmine. What the hell did that mean?

  ***

  We talked as he cooked. Occasionally, he’d let me stir something but, most of the time, he was adamant that I stay in my seat and let him do all the work.

  We talked about Fenbrook (harder work than it looked) police academy (not like the movies) and donuts (Dunkin’ preferred, Krispy Kreme allowable). He told me about growing up in Brooklyn which was great, but that led onto me and my life in Chicago and I needed to quickly swerve us onto safer ground.

  I thought desperately as he served the first course: French onion soup, deep brown and fragrant, with a crunchy hunk of toasted baguette dripping cheese into it.

  Ghosts. That was light enough and stupid enough.

  “Karen thinks Fenbrook might be haunted,” I lied as he sat down.

  He blinked. “Really?”

  “Yeah.” My brain was working overtime. “By a dead ballerina. She was secretly having sex with her teacher—”

  “Karen was secretly having sex with—”

  “No! The dead ballerina. I mean, when she was alive, she was secretly having sex with her teacher. But they got caught, and so they couldn’t see each other anymore, and so, um, she killed herself.”

  “Really?”

  “Yep.” I tried to think of a convincing way a ballerina could kill herself. “Threw herself right off the staircase on the top floor and went all the way to the bottom. Broke her neck.” I leaned forward, getting into it, now. “They say that you can still hear her crying, if you’re practicing alone at Fenbrook, late at night. And that’s what Karen does all the time.” I’d let my eyes go wide and frightened, but inside I was feeling very pleased with myself.

  “Wow. You believe that?”

  No. I made it up. “I don’t know. Do you? Have you ever seen anything like that? A ghost?” I guess I should have felt bad about lying, but it came so easily to me that I didn’t even think about it. If you lie often enough and hard enough then, eventually, it becomes as easy as telling the truth, as easy as breathing. That’s the secret to making it convincing: you have to not even realize you’re lying.

  And anyway, it was just a stupid ghost story to get him off the subject of Chicago. What harm could it do?

  “No,” he said slowly. “I’ve never seen anything. But—”

  I smiled encouragingly. “What? You’ve heard something? Go on.”

  He l
ooked at me very seriously. Why was he suddenly so serious?

  “Hux,” he said.

  I could feel my face going pale. Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit oh shit oh shit. What had I done?!

  “Okay,” I said slowly.

  He shook his head. “You’re going to think I’m crazy.”

  I put my hand on his. “No! No, not at all. Go on.”

  He watched me carefully, looking for any sign that I was laughing at him. I wasn’t. I couldn’t have been further from that. Inside, I was screaming at myself in fury. Why had I had to lie to him? Why had I had to pick ghosts?! God, I was an idiot!

  “I hear him. Sometimes. It’s like he’s there.”

  I nodded slowly.

  There was something deeply unsettling about the way he said it. He was embarrassed—clearly, he thought he was cracking up. But he was so serious, so sure about what he was saying….

  The table we were at sat four. Ryan and I were facing each other across it, leaving two empty sides of the square. I could feel my exposed skin growing cold and, suddenly, I didn’t want to glance across at either of the empty spaces. “Is he...here now?”

  Ryan shook his head. “It’s mostly in the car. When I’m doing cop stuff. When he’d normally be there, if he hadn’t—Anyway, he’s with me. Watching. Commenting. Drives me nuts.” He sighed. “Or maybe I’m already nuts. I can’t believe I’m telling you this. You’re the first person I’ve told.”

  I sat there in silence for a moment, not sure what to say. Was he really hearing his dead buddy? Or was it the emotional trauma of losing him? They’d been best friends; either would make sense. I wasn’t sure which was worse: the fear that came with the idea that there were actually ghosts in the world or the pain of thinking about Ryan suffering like that with...what? Post-traumatic stress disorder?

  “Did they offer you counseling?” I asked gently. “After it happened?”

  Ryan stared at me. “You think that’s what it is? It’s all in my head?”

  “No. I mean, I don’t know. I’ve got no idea.”

  He took a deep breath. “I went to see some psychotherapist. She was okay. She meant well. But I told her everything was fine—” He cut off abruptly.

  “But everything isn’t fine,” I said. “Is it?”

  He stared at the table for a long time. Took a drink of wine.

  “I get angry,” he said at last. “I mean, I guess I always did. But it’s different, since Hux. I can’t control it.”

  I nodded, but it didn’t make sense to me. Back at the screen test, he’d seemed different. But since we’d been around each other, he hadn’t lost his temper.

  Something must have showed in my expression because he shook his head. “It doesn’t happen when I’m with you,” he said. “You’re like...a safety valve, I guess. Being around you makes everything better.”

  A little explosion went off in my chest, a silent burst of heat and light. I’d known the way he made me feel: the warmth and the security that went along with that deep, animal lust I had for him. But it hadn’t occurred to me that it worked both ways. He was the normal one, the solid one, and I was a mess. How could I be calming to anyone? And yet that’s what he was telling me. That he needed me.

  I’d never been needed before. Not like that. I met his eyes and we just stared at one another across the table.

  “Anyway,” he said slowly. “That’s where I’m at. You want to run away?”

  I shook my head. He’d opened up completely to me and all it had made me do was love him more.

  “What about you?” he asked gently.

  And there it was. The invitation to open myself, to tell him about Emma and my dad and the two worst nights of my life.

  I couldn’t. I wanted to, but I couldn’t. Being honest with him would mean losing him because, once he knew the truth, he’d hate me. I’d told him that I’d stop acting and I had...mostly. But telling him about my past….

  I chose my words very carefully. “You’ve already figured out that someone hurt me,” I said. “It’s in the past. I think it should stay there.”

  He stared at me. “That woman I talked to—the therapist—she said that bottling things up, carrying them around with you, will eventually eat you up. You have to let them out.”

  “You didn’t,” I said.

  “And look what happened to me. I got kicked off the force, pretty much. I hear a dead guy’s voice.” He shook his head. “I don’t want you to wind up like me, Jasmine.”

  Emma. My name is Emma.

  Just for a second, that’s what I thought. It took me totally by surprise, as if someone sitting next to me had said it. For the first time, I’d slipped into being Emma without conscious effort and that scared the hell out of me. My defenses slammed back up. I gathered Jasmine around me and pulled her back into place, like wrapping myself up in a blanket.

  He didn’t realize that I already was living with someone in my head- that I was far, far more messed up than he could ever dream of. Everything he knew about me, everything he liked about me, was a lie.

  “I know,” I said, just as the comforting shell closed around me, pushing everything back to a safe distance, numbing me. “Give me time.”

  He nodded and stood to clear the bowls away. And then he turned to me and put his hand on my shoulder, so big and solid that I felt better just from it being there. “Take time,” he said softly, his tone sounding all the more gentle because it came from someone so big. “You take as much time as you need. I’ll be here waiting for you.”

  I couldn’t respond. My throat was closing up and I felt such a deep swell of emotion that I knew I’d just descend into sobs if I tried to speak. Even nodding was almost too much.

  This guy was perfect.

  He carried the bowls away, which was a good thing because it gave me a chance to stare very fixedly at a candle and will myself not to cry. I felt like my heart was going to burst with how kind he was being to me and I wasn’t sure I deserved any of it.

  For the first time, I really let myself believe that maybe, maybe this could work. If I could keep him away from my past, if I could just let Emma out a stage at a time, maintaining control….

  He brought over the main course. Coq au vin with creamy mashed potato. “Where did you learn to cook French stuff?” I asked.

  “My dad. And he got it from my mom.” He sat down. “Her family’s from France.”

  “You ever see her?” I dug in. “God, this is amazing!”

  He shook his head. “She remarried. I guess I could look her up, but...I’ve always been closer to my dad. It broke his heart, when she left, and I kind of sided with him.”

  I nodded and tried to imagine what it would be like to have a dad like that. A dad you weren’t terrified of.

  “You think they’ll pick it up?” he asked.

  “What?”

  He smirked. “The series.”

  I realized I’d stopped thinking about it. The most important thing to happen in my career, and it had gone right out of my head. I’d been entirely focused on Ryan and me...and on the other Fenbrook girls. “I don’t know,” I said truthfully. “But, I mean....it’s going well for you, right? I mean, you’re playing nice with everybody. You’re not getting these anger outbursts—”

  “Around you.”

  “OK, you’re not getting them around me, but that’s got to be a start. You think your captain will let you back onto the force?”

  He nodded thoughtfully. “He might. I’d probably have to drive a desk for a while.”

  I smiled a tiny, nervous smile. “I like that idea. I wouldn’t be so worried about you.”

  He leaned across the table. “You worry about me?”

  My heart gave a heavy, loud thump in my chest. “I’ve always worried about you. Even before...you know. Hux. I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

  We just sat there for a moment. The tension built and built, crackling in the air between us. I had to say something else, or I was going to grab hi
m and kiss him and then we’d wind up in bed and I didn’t want that. Not yet.

  “What if we do get picked up for a series?” I asked. “Would you stick with it? Play Tony every week?”

  “You think it’d mean more bedroom scenes? With you?”

  I swallowed. “Probably.”

  He smiled at me and I swore I could feel myself getting wet, just from the way he was looking at me. Then he shook his head and laughed. “I don’t know. I mean, I’m managing, with your help...I think.”

  “You are! You’re doing great!”

  He looked grateful for that. “But I dunno. Being a cop... I get that. It makes me happy.”

  I picked up my wine glass. “To being happy,” I said. We clinked.

  The coq au vin was as good as the soup had been, the chicken falling off the bone and the sauce rich and thick. I could get used to this, I thought as we finished. Very easily.

  I could feel it beckoning to me, an idyllic life with Ryan. Him out on patrol during the day, me shooting some TV series or movie. Then a meal together and endless, sheet-clutchingly good sex. If it was anything like as good as our love scene had hinted at, it would be mind blowing.

  And all I had to do was let him in. Because I knew I couldn’t have that relationship as Jasmine. I had to let him know more of the real me, the Emma I’d always hidden behind jokes and flirtation, but somehow do it without all of my past coming out. It was a balancing act that terrified me.

  I wanted it to work. I needed it to work because I’d never met anyone like him before and I knew I never would again. If I missed this chance, that was it, for life. I couldn’t show him any more of Emma, not tonight, or I’d break down and then he’d find out too much. And yet I didn’t feel ready to move to sex. So what the hell were we going to do now that dinner was over?

  I stared across the table at him, worried. My eyes flicked in the direction of the bedroom and then back to him. “Um….”

  He leaned forward and rested his hands very gently on my cheeks, his fingertips brushing through my hair. “Jasmine,” he said. He spoke as if he was picking his way very carefully across boulder-strewn ground. “I know that you’re not ready to talk about some things. And I know that…” He hesitated and looked at me and I could see the pain in his eyes. The anger. “I know that you were—”