Acting Brave (Fenbrook Academy #3) (41 page)

The song ended.

We looked at each other and, as I saw those gleaming, clear blue eyes in the darkness, the candle flames reflected in them, I felt a deep, hot tightening in my groin.
Maybe I’m holding back too much. Maybe we could just...maybe tonight
is
the right time.

“Ryan,” I said slowly.

And then the next song started and it was
that
song. I reeled as if I was drunk, ducking my head and staggering to the side.

“Jasmine?!”

I could barely hear him. In my head, the song was so loud, so
loud
, because Brady had turned the volume up so that no one could hear me screaming.

“Jasmine!” Ryan as reaching for me but I batted his hands away. My gaze was darting around the room, seeing scratched wood paneling and the thousands of tiny holes around the dartboard. I could smell the cigarette smoke, feel the squish of spilled beer on the carpet.

“Jasmine!”

I was in the back room of the bar. I was eighteen.

The music ended abruptly. I squeezed my eyes tight closed because I was scared that if I opened them, I was going to see all their faces. Brady. Earl. Thomas.

My dad.

I had my hands up in front of me protectively, palms out. I felt another set of hands brush mine, large and male. Just a tentative touch. I jerked mine away but I didn’t lash out. A few seconds later, the male hands came back. Just the fingertips, this time, touching my fingertips. Making the smallest, most delicate connection they possibly could.

I felt something throbbing through my body, pushing back the memories. Something warm and pure.

His hands slowly pressed into mine, finger joint by finger joint, rolling down until our palms were touching. When I didn’t resist, he laced his fingers into mine. “It’s okay,” he whispered. “It’s okay. It’s me. It’s Ryan.”

I drew in a shuddering breath. I still didn’t dare open my eyes.

“He can’t hurt you, now,” said Ryan.

It welled up inside me, black and filled with poison, like some living, breathing abomination that I had to exorcise or be destroyed by. I couldn’t tell him what happened but I could vent that one piece of it, to help him understand. I spat it out in a single word. “
They.”

And immediately, I felt his hands tighten on mine. I could sense his whole body tensing—he almost seemed to swell, his already huge frame expanding, muscle and bone creaking as he prepared to fight. To kill them all.

He pulled me hard to him and I nestled into his chest as the sobs overtook me. Hot, jagged pain that came from way down deep, that burned and tore as it emerged. But the feel of him against me gave me strength. I clung to him. I wanted to cling to him forever.

“I—I don’t want to g—go home,” I said between sobs. His shirt was wet with my tears.

In answer, he wrapped his hands tighter around my body. His hands stroked down the back of my head, over and over.

“But I don’t want to—I’m not—”

“
Shh,
” he whispered.

“Could you just—could you just hold me all night?”

He pulled me hard against him. “I’ll hold you forever.”

***

We spent that night in his bed, with me in one of his t-shirts and him spooning me from behind. He wrapped his arms around my waist and put his face against my neck and the solid, reassuring warmth of him eventually allowed me to sleep.

The next morning, I was worried he was going to ask about it. I could tell he wanted to. I could see the anger in his eyes, the instinctual need for revenge. But he just asked me if I wanted juice and made me toast.

I sat there stewing at the kitchen table, drinking cup after cup of coffee as he showered. I knew that his patience wouldn’t last if he found out about the rest of my past. Me being a victim—maybe he could handle that. Maybe he could live with the anger and never try to seek revenge, although I doubted it, long term. But, when he found out the sort of life I’d had, he’d start asking question after question until eventually he arrived at the truth. A truth that would destroy his vision of me. And if he dug too deep and alerted my dad, we could both wind up dead.

I’d promised I’d be straight with him—that I’d stop acting. If I wanted us to have any sort of real relationship, I had to tell him the truth. But if I wanted to keep him, I had to keep lying.

***

It was the first time we’d arrived at the studio together, so we had to have the whole
should we go in together or separately
conversation. Eventually, we decided that we’d better be discreet and not let on that we were seeing each other. Filming was nearly over and it was probably safer not to complicate things. At least now, there would be no more problems between us when it came to shooting Tony and Isabel scenes. We were in love, and so were our characters. What could be better?

When we got to the set, though, the script manager had fresh pages for us. Salmon pink ones that replaced the taupe ones we’d been given just a few days before. I’d known from the start that Dixon and his writers tended to fiddle with the script during shooting, so it wasn’t unexpected. It just meant Ryan and I would have to learn a few new lines. I wondered why Dixon was changing things, though, so close to the end of filming. If we stayed on schedule, the shoot should wrap the next day. I paged through the new material.

Isabel is pushed back in her seat. They kiss passionately.

I smirked. This was going to be fun.

Greg: I’ve wanted to do that since the first day at the academy.

Wait, what? Who’s
Greg?!

I looked up at Ryan, who was also scanning the pages. He met my eyes, aghast.

***

“It’s to give us options,” said Dixon.

“Options?” I echoed.

“It’s a pilot. We don’t know how test audiences will react.” He grinned, warming to his subject. “You see, Tony is the bad boy. The anti-hero. Now we
think
women will lap him up, but we want to make sure we have some flexibility. So Isabel’s unrequited love from police academy also shows up, toward the end of the episode. Greg. He’s the good guy. And Isabel, she’s conflicted. Caught between two men she loves!” He looked at me. “Can you do
conflicted?”

“I’ve had some practice,” I managed.

Ryan and I stumbled away from Dixon. I could see the expression on Ryan’s face, so I quickly pulled him into the nearest room so he wouldn’t be heard. The nearest room happened to be the police station’s old, disused guy’s bathroom.
Eww.

“You have to kiss him?!” Ryan asked.

I raised my hands in defense. “Not
really
kiss him.”

“What, you won’t actually touch?”

“Well...yes, we’ll have to kiss. But not
really
kiss.”

“How is it not really kissing if you kiss?!”

“It won’t mean anything! It’s just acting!”

His blue eyes were burning. “You kissed
me
as
acting
and that felt pretty real.”

“But that
was
real. This will just be a screen kiss.”

“That’s what you said to me. And look what happened to us.”

I flushed. All my old lies were coming back to haunt me. “I’m not going to run off with some guy just because I screen kiss him. I was in love with you. I don’t even know this guy.”

“But you’re going to let him stick his tongue in your mouth.”

I stood there, stunned. Screen kisses were just one of those things you did, in acting. I hadn’t been ready for the outpouring of jealousy. From his point of view, it must seem really weird.

Actually, when you stopped to think about it, it
was
kind of weird, doing that intimate act with someone you barely knew.

I put my palms on Ryan’s chest and looked up into his eyes. “Look,” I said slowly, “it means
nothing.
I won’t even be thinking about it. I’ll be thinking about my expression and if the angle to camera is okay and what line I have to say next. I won’t be
kissing.”

Except...I kind of would be. Shit. Doing a kissing scene had never bothered me before, not even when it was up on stage at Fenbrook with some guy I didn’t really like, in front of all my friends. But back then, I hadn’t had Ryan in my life. I suddenly started to understand how he felt. How would I like it if
he
had to kiss some woman?

“And what about him?” asked Ryan. “What’s
he
going to be thinking about? Just because you’re professional, doesn’t mean he will be. What if he….”

We both stared at each other.

“
...enjoys
it,” Ryan finished at last.

There was silence. Neither of us knew what to say.

“It’ll be fine,” I said weakly. “He won’t...
enjoy
it. And I won’t enjoy it. He’ll probably be some troll with...with slobbery lips.”

***

He was gorgeous. With lips like a Roman emperor’s, all full lower lip and hard power. He had cheekbones to die for and curling, pale blond hair that probably looked angelic when he was a baby. Now that he’d hit his mid-twenties—just a few years older than me—it managed to look angelic
and
broodingly evil at the same time. He looked like a choirboy who’d joined a rock band.

Goddamnit,
I thought.
Why couldn’t he have been ugly?

Tyler, the actor who’d be playing Greg, was nothing like Ryan. He was the opposite of Ryan, in a way. And of course I wasn’t interested—I knew very well who I wanted. But I could still feel myself flushing as I looked at him.

“Troll, huh?” whispered Ryan beside me.

We were in the briefing room. The scene had all the cops—including Tony, the cop played by Ryan—receiving their daily briefing. Then, after Tony and all the others had left, Greg would grab Isabel’s arm and hold her back until they were the only ones in the room. And then he’d Reveal His True Feelings. And then, in the next scene, he’d kiss her.

Kiss
me.

I gave my best disinterested sniff. “He’s not my type.”

Ryan just looked at me.

“Too....pretty,” I whispered.

“Yeah. I hear that’s a common complaint.”

I squirmed a little. “He’s...
pretty boy.
All cheekbones and long eyelashes.”

“I don’t have cheekbones?”

I looked across at him. He had
awesome
cheekbones. “They look better on you,” I said weakly.

“Okay,” said Dixon. “Everyone form up.”

All of us playing cops went to sit at our assigned desks and faced the guy at the front who was going to give the briefing.

“Now, Ryan?” asked Dixon. “I want you to look across at Tyler here, who’ll be playing Greg. You’re suspicious. He’s new and he’s good looking and he’s sitting next to your girl. Tyler? You see the look and you’re not fazed at all. You’ll sit where the hell you like.”

Ryan and Tyler nodded.

“Action!” called Dixon.

The cop at the front of the room finished up the briefing, some authentic-sounding stuff about gangs and drugs. It didn’t really matter: the audience’s attention would be on the foreground, where Ryan was looking across at Tyler. It looked as if he wanted to pick up his desk and hurl it at him. Tyler, meanwhile, looked back impassively. Imperiously, even—he had that whole Roman emperor thing going on. He’d have made a great prince. Or some young king, demanding that the servant girl be sent to his quarters. Ripping her blouse from her body before he—

Ahem.
I felt myself flush again. I wasn’t interested in him...but that didn’t stop him being hot.

“Aaand
cut!”
said Dixon. “Good, Ryan. Excellent. You two really spark. I’d totally believe you hate each other. Okay, everyone got ready to file out and we’ll go tight on Jasmine and Tyler.”

The cameras moved in close to us. I swallowed.

“Action!”

“Okay,” said the cop at the front of the room, and shuffled his papers. “Let’s be careful out there.”

I started to walk toward the door, trying to forget that I was about to be grabbed. It’s hard to act surprised when you know something’s coming.
Think of something else. Think of Ryan and the meal and dancing and—

A hard hand grabbed my arm just above the elbow. I actually yelped. I span around.

Tyler was there with those cold, determined eyes. Something melted inside me. I mean, I knew it was just acting. But it really did feel like the kind of look a guy would give you when he’s crazy about you. When he’s been crazy about you for years but hasn’t said anything.

“We need to talk,” said Tyler.