Acting Brave (Fenbrook Academy #3) (49 page)

I blinked and stared back. It made no sense. We both had the same face and the same body. I couldn’t look any different and yet...I did. Smaller. More vulnerable, somehow. And yet it also felt better. It was the difference between hearing a song recorded and seeing the band live. Everything suddenly felt...real.

I felt for Jasmine and tried to close her around me, but she was gone. The fragments of her slipped through my fingers and wouldn’t come together into a whole—if she’d ever been a whole. I was just...me, now.

My legs buckled and I slumped to my knees on the carpet. What did this mean? Was Jasmine gone forever? What was going to happen when Ryan woke up and expected her bounciness? Sure, he liked Emma, but he still thought it was all the same person, that I’d just opened up some new part of myself. He didn’t know that he’d destroyed my whole identity. What about Nat and Clarissa and Karen? What would happen when they expected Jasmine...and got Emma?

I started to go into full-on panic. Maybe it was my panting that woke Ryan. He sat sleepily up and rubbed his face. “Morning,” he said.

“What happened?” I jumped to my feet. My voice was strained. “What happened last night? After we—”

He rubbed his eyes and yawned again. “Very little,” he said. Then he laughed—a good, big, honest laugh. “You had a...what do they call it? The French thing. A petite death.”

“A
petite mort?”

“Yeah. You came, and fainted. It was quite dramatic.” He laughed again. “I carried you in here.”

I blinked. It hit me that I’d been Emma now for fully ten seconds in his presence. “Do I seem different?” I asked.

He swung his legs out of the bed and sat on the edge. “Different?”

“Like a different person?”

He stood up. “Is this that woman thing,” he said. “Where you think it’ll all be different because we’ve had sex?”

“No!”

He came over to me and put his hand on my cheek. “No,” he said, grinning. “No, you seem just the same as always. Beautiful and sexy and great.” And he kissed me.

And suddenly the panic started to ease. For years, I’ve lived in fear of the dark waters that lay underneath Jasmine. I’d thought that that’s all Emma was—bad memories, waiting to rise up and consume me. But now I’d finally let Emma out and... everything was…

...okay?

I tested it very, very carefully, like edging out over thin ice. I relaxed...and no nightmares leaped out.

“Okay,” I said quietly.

“Good,” said Ryan, and kissed me again, slow and sweet. Then he folded his arms. “Do you normally do that?” he asked. “The fainting thing? Because you should warn a guy.”

“No,” I said slowly. “No. I don’t think it’ll happen again.”

“Maybe I was just that good.”

His grin and warmth finally began to penetrate as my fear died away. “You weren’t
that
good,” I lied in a mock-gruff voice.

“
You
were. That was the Full Jasmine Experience, huh? I can see why you give lessons.”

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.”