Acting Brave (Fenbrook Academy #3) (20 page)

My feet felt like they were encased in ice, but I made them shuffle forward.

Ryan put his hand on my wrist. Warm and gentle, but in my mind—

Hurts it hurts he’s wearing rings and they’re digging in—

“Okay, now bring your arm up like
this,”
—Ryan lifted my arm. It was loose and floppy, no strength in the muscles—”and grab my wrist here and twist outward.”

He waited, but my hand made no move to grab him. Fear was surging up inside me like freezing white water, as unstoppable as being sick.

“Jas—” he started to say, and touched my face.

I screamed.

It erupted from the dark, from the swirling waters that were Emma. It punched up through
Jasmine,
tearing a hole clean through her, and blasted out around the gym, all the pain, and fear given voice. If screams can have a color, this one was black.

I was Emma again.

Chapter 23

Jasmine

I lurched sideways, away from Ryan. I had no idea where I was going. I didn’t know where I was. I was aware of lots of people around me, staring at me, and I could feel the fear freezing me from the inside out, blossoming like a cold explosion and spreading to every inch of me. I pulled away, but Ryan still had hold of my tank top with one hand, the fabric stretching but not giving way, and he was far too shocked to release his grip. I heaved once. Twice.

Connor slammed into Ryan and bore him to the ground, an expression of homicidal rage on his face. His Belfast-accented roar drew almost as much attention as my scream.
“GET YOUR FUCKIN’ HANDS OFF HER, YOU FUCKIN’ FUCK!”

Ryan’s hand had finally been torn free of my tank top. I staggered away. The room was whirling and there didn’t seem to be any doors. My legs wouldn’t hold me and I fell to my knees before I’d gone three steps.

Jasmine Jasmine Jasmine Jasmine I’m Jasmine, I’m Jasmine.
But it wasn’t working. Jasmine was broken and ruined and I was falling down into the dark waters of Emma.

The hard crack of flesh and bone, over and over. I looked over my shoulder and saw Connor and Ryan wrestling on the floor. Ryan was the bigger of the two, but Connor had the advantage of surprise and burning, all-consuming rage at what he thought he’d seen. Ryan, meanwhile, kept trying to snatch glances at me, to see if I was alright.

Out of all the gyms in the area...why did he have to go to the same one as Connor?

Connor’s fist caught Ryan across the face. Again. Again.

I felt myself reaching up from the darkness. Not Ryan. I couldn’t let that happen to Ryan. “Stop,” I said, but it was just a wet croak. “Stop,” I said again, and crawled toward them. But Connor didn’t stop until I reached out and put a hand on his arm.

Ryan’s face was already swelling and he was bleeding from his lip. But all he did was look at me and say, “Are you okay?”

“Sorry,” I said, my voice hitching as the tears started. “I’m sorry.”

***

It got steadily worse.

First, the guy who owned the gym and two of his buddies who acted as security grabbed Ryan and wanted to throw him out. I had to talk them out of it, telling them that I’d had a “panic attack.” They looked at me doubtfully.

Then Connor walked me across the gym, past what felt like a million men all staring at me, and found a quiet little space next to a drinks machine. He wanted to get me away from Ryan, I guess, to make sure he wasn’t intimidating me into silence. But Ryan wasn’t the problem.

“I’m fine,” I lied. “Really. It was just a stupid thing. Nothing to do with him.”

Connor just stared at me, six-foot something of blue-eyed Irish stubbornness.

“
Really,”
I said. “And look...I need you to do something for me.”

He realized what it was even before I said it, and held his hands up in defense. “No—”

“Don’t tell Karen about this.”

“Jasmine,
no.
I can’t lie to Karen.”

“Don’t lie to her, just...don’t mention it.” I gathered the tattered shreds of Jasmine and did my most imploring eyes. I felt like the very lowest of the low for using wiles on him, but I had to contain this thing. “It’s very personal.
Please,
Connor.”

He sighed and shook his head. And then nodded. My insides knotted up at the thought of coming between him and Karen.

Ryan was walking toward us very slowly, as if testing the floor with each step. I held up a hand to stop him. “I’m okay,” I said. “Really. And I’ll tell you about it, but not right now. I have to go. I’m fine, but I have to go. Okay?”

And I turned and left, trying to forget the look on his face. All the damage Connor had caused was nothing compared to the pain in Ryan’s eyes.

***

In my apartment the neighbor had her TV turned up too loud. I didn’t mind. The noise was sort of comforting, by now.

I needed to recover and rebuild, but I had no idea how. I hadn’t had a...I didn’t even know what to call it. A slip? I hadn’t had a slip like that in three years. And it made no sense. Guys had grabbed me in bars and I hadn’t reacted like that. Was it because it was him—because I’d let my defenses down? Or was it because
Jasmine
had an expiry date? Had I just held it together for as long as I could, and now the cracks had started to appear?

My only thought was to get back to normal and undo the damage. I had to stop Karen finding out, above all else, or she’d start digging. And with her new-found confidence, she’d be impossible to stop.

I never, for a moment, thought that maybe this was a sign. That maybe I should go the other way and open up and tell Ryan everything. That was unthinkable, literally—it didn’t enter my head.

What I had to do was repair Jasmine.

I went to my bedroom and closed the door. And then, even though there was no one else in the apartment, I wedged a chair against it.

Easy,
I thought.
You’re losing it.
But I left the chair there anyway.

I undressed and stood naked in front of the mirror. During the first summer after I’d left Chicago, I’d changed the way I felt about myself, not abruptly but day by agonizing day. It had been like building up a coral reef, layering on the positivity micron by torturous micron, the progress so slow as to be undetectable. But, eventually, I’d been able to accept my curves—love them, even.

Now, I saw my body with Emma’s eyes for the first time in years. I was everything they’d called me in that room.
Cow. Big-titted bitch.
Good for just one thing.

I drew in a shuddering breath and stared at the places where the bruises used to be. By focusing on the places that were now healed, I could remind myself that I’d left those men behind. I’d left
him
behind. Years ago and miles away.

I moved the chair, walked through to the bathroom and turned on the taps. A bath. I’d run a steaming hot bath and soak until the heat calmed my mind. But even as the water thundered in, I knew that wouldn’t cut it. Everything was shattered and broken and I had no idea how to put the pieces back together.

I stumbled back to my bedroom and rooted around for my emergency fix. In Case of Breakdown, Unscrew Cap and Consume. There was dust on the bottle of Jack Daniels and I was proud of that. I drank—and got drunk—with the girls, of course, but that was different. That was positive drinking, to have a good time. Drinking on my own, to shut things out...I hadn’t done that since Chicago.

I padded back to the bathroom, naked and dangling the bottle from one hand. The tub was half full. I’d get in and drink and drink and maybe it’d be okay.

But I had this awful, sick sense of dread that it wouldn’t be. I wasn’t just broken inside. The pieces were too sharp to touch. I couldn’t put myself back together, not yet. I had to let some of it out, first. And that meant—

No. Not that. God, not that, not after all these years. I nearly had, just once, that night Karen had saved me from becoming an escort, but I’d managed to just about contain it.

I hadn’t cried since that day I arrived in New York. Emma cried; Jasmine didn’t.

And now I was back to being Emma.

The heat built and built behind my eyes until it burst free in burning, wracking sobs. I drew in a long, groaning breath as I fought for control and somehow the bottle slipped out of my hand and exploded on the tiles, slivers of it stabbing into my naked leg. I fell to one knee and then slumped onto my back and howled, the tiles cold against my ass and shoulders. I put my hands over my eyes to shut out the light and cried long and hard, the pain rising up from deep within, so deep and well-buried that it tore me apart as it came out. This is why I’d stopped crying. Crying meant letting Emma out of her box and I’d always known she’d smash Jasmine apart in the process.

Some women can cry romantically. Glistening eyes, a tear trickling down one cheek, a sniff and then they’re dragged into their boyfriend’s arms again because he loves them so damn much. This wasn’t like that. I was a howling, blubbering mess, slamming my fists down on the tiles in frustration. I’d had it. For a little while, there, I’d had my perfect life and I’d blown it. Or maybe it had just been an illusion, dreamt up by some scared girl from Chicago, and it was never really there at all.

I wailed, the tears wet on my cheeks, as the water crested the top of the tub and started to spill over onto me and the floor. I could feel jagged shards of glass bob and rise on the water and bump against my leg, but I didn’t care. I lay there as the water surrounded me, soaking my hair.

I was back in Chicago.

Chapter 24

Emma

Three and a half years earlier

To understand what my dad did, you have to understand the underworld. There’s an invisible economy you might not even be aware of, based on handshakes and loyalty, intimidation and fear. The goods are guns, drugs, and sometimes women. The payment is always cash.

And cash is what my dad controlled.

People read stories about millionaire drug lords, but the truth is that crime is a pyramid with a very, very wide base. Most people involved in it have next to no money—a million tiny businesses, all just barely surviving. And just like any small business, they always want to grow, to expand. And to do that, they need more product—more coke to sell, more guns to protect their turf, more women for their clubs. They need a loan. And that’s where my dad comes in.

My dad acts as the bank—and the debt collector—for one of the worst neighborhoods in Chicago. His dark, grimy bar is his front business. It’s neutral ground, a good place to meet to broker a deal or pass on information and, while you’re there, you can nod and smile to my dad. Everyone knows the benefits of staying on the right side of my dad—even some of the cops. If you don’t owe him money right now, you might someday.

The bar has a big main room where, at any one point, at least half the drinkers will be out on parole and the other half will have outstanding warrants. There’s a smaller back room with a pool table where groups can go for a little extra privacy. It has its own sound system and a thick door.

I didn’t realize the significance of that, at first.

The bar and the small apartment above it were the only places I could remember living. Downstairs was noisy and shouty and sometimes, as a kid, I’d get yelled at for being down there. Upstairs was a safe haven, a quiet place where it was mainly my mom, my brother and me. I didn’t like it when my mom worked behind the bar. I thought it was a nasty, stinky place where she might get hurt.

I knew my dad loved her. But his attitude toward my brother and me was completely different. My brother, he merely hated. Me, he despised. There was always something in the way he looked at me, ever since I could remember. I was a reminder of something.

I wasn’t dumb. No one else in our family had red hair. My mother was always tight-lipped about it, insisting that my dad was really my dad. She seemed to have a calming effect on him and he never beat her. He didn’t start beating us until after she died, when I was eleven. It was as if her death stripped away the last bits of good in him and left only the cruel, vicious streak.

The beatings were frequent and yet always unpredictable enough that they came as a shock. He’d hit us because he was drunk or because he couldn’t get drunk fast enough. He’d have a bad day and take it out on us, or have a good day and demand we
drink a drink
with him, then beat us for drinking.

He never touched me, though. Not, you know,
that
way. I could sometimes see in his eyes that he wanted to, but he never did it. Guilt, maybe, my mother’s memory holding him back. I was thankful for that.

Everyone at school knew who I was, so I didn’t get bullied...but no one would play with me, either. When I got older, and I began to understand what my dad did and who his friends were, I began to realize I was caught up in something I could never escape from. Even if I tried to keep my hands clean, I was at risk myself, just because of my family. Some people were scared of me, because of my dad. But equally, some people wanted to hurt me, to get at him.