Breaking Her (Love is War #2) (22 page)

"Get your hands off me, you piece of—" I snarled at him.
 

"Hey, now.
 
It's Daddy to you."
   

Just when you don't think you can hate yourself any more—and then you find out you come from even worse white trash than you thought—yeah, that's where I was sitting.

His smile turned unpleasant.
 
"Got a little attitude on you.
 
I shouldn't be surprised.
 
You know who else had one?
 
Your mama.
 
Didn't turn out too well for her, I hear."
 

That stopped me in my tracks.
 
"What is that supposed to mean?
 
Do you know where she is?"
 

He laughed and it was mocking.
 
"Can't say I do, but I have heard things.
 
Maybe if you were a little nicer to your old pa, I'd tell you some of the things I've heard about your mama."
 

I tugged my arm free of his hard grip.
 
"What are you suggesting?"
 

"How about you come up to my house with me?
 
I have a nice little plot of land, and seeing as you're part of the Davis clan, I think it's time you come have a look.
 
When we're there, I'll tell you what I know about where Renee, your mama . . . ended up."
   

I was not nearly as dumb as he seemed to think.
 
No way in hell was going anywhere with him.
 
Ever.
 

I opened my mouth to tell him that when I was interrupted.
 

"Jethro Davis, how about you leave this nice young lady alone before I find something to arrest you for?
 
I'd guess I wouldn't have to look much farther than your pockets if I wanted to get you for possession, yeah?"
 

I shuddered.
 
This day was getting worse and worse.

I'd just been saved from my lowlife father by the only person I could possibly want to see even less than him.
 

Jethro couldn't get away from me fast enough after that.
 

And then I was left with Detective Harris.
 
He gave me his deceptive smile.
 
"What a coincidence.
 
How'r you holding up?
 
That had to be a shock, what your—Is he still your boyfriend?—did to that homeless guy.
 
I hear he's managed to find a way out of it, though.
 
Congratulations.
 
It's amazing what money can do, especially when you're dealing with a D.A. who's hoping to have a long political career ahead of her."

"It was self-defense," I said, voice and face hard.
 
"Everyone has a right to defend themselves."
 
I said this the same way I'd said it a hundred times before, with stony resolve.
 
I was used to defending what Dante had done.
 
I'd never stop defending it, because I knew he'd done it for me.
 

He smiled again.
 
"I apologize.
 
I was out of line there.
 
I didn't mean to upset you.
 
I was actually just trying to help you.
 
I saw that creep bothering you and thought I should intervene.
 
Jethro
was
bothering you, wasn't he?"

I nodded, thinking it was ironic that this piece of work saw Jethro as the creep, but I begrudgingly said, "Thank you," because Jethro
had
been bothering me.
   

"Anytime, Scarlett.
 
You know I'm always here if you need me.
 
Always
."
   

I didn't like the sound of that one bit.
 
I tried to move past him, but he stepped in my way.
 
"Listen, you may not see it now, but I thought I should warn you: Dante
is
dangerous.
 
Dangerous to others, dangerous to you."

I just stared at him, wondering what his intention was.
 
By his face and voice, he seemed genuinely worried for me, but with him, I didn't trust it.
 

And his intention really didn't matter.
 
Nothing on earth could make me afraid of Dante.
 
He would die before he'd hurt me.
 
He would die to keep me from being hurt.
 
By anyone.
 
This I knew.

"You think he defended you, I get it.
 
You think it was, what?
 
Manslaughter?
 
Self-defense if you're being completely naive?
 
But it was more, I promise you.
 
He went into the woods looking for a man, and that man ended up dead.
 
What is that, if not intent?"
 

I started shaking my head.
 
He was wrong.
 
I knew it for a fact.
 
I'd looked into Dante's eyes while he told me what really happened.
 
He'd gone looking for my attacker, intending to bring him to the police, since the police were doing
nothing
, but when he'd found him, the man had pulled a knife and attacked.
 
They'd fought, Dante had tried to take the knife away, but instead, much to his horror, he'd ended up stabbing the man.
 
He'd tried his best to get help, but my attacker had bled out before he could get the proper medical attention.
 

Dante had told me the story in painstaking detail and with utter sincerity, and I believed him unconditionally, even if I was one of few.
 

"If he loses his temper again, how can you know it won't be you that ends up on the wrong end of it?"
 

"He's taking anger management courses," I told Harris, not because I thought Dante really needed them, but because it seemed like something Harris should hear.
 

"You're not listening, Scarlett, or else you're not hearing me, but I want you to know that if you ever need me, I'm just a phone call away.
 
You can come to me for anything."
 

His words felt insinuating to me, they always did, but I just nodded and moved past him.
 
At least he wouldn't be bothering me anymore, not more than the random coincidence.
 
My case was closed, thank God.
 

Harris let me leave, and I went straight to checkout.
 
There was only one lane open, and I had the terrible luck of being directly behind Jethro.
 

He sent me a greasy smile as he paid for his beer and cigarettes with his EBT card.

Of course this was not allowed, but when you're a small town's biggest drug dealer, things like that tend to just go your way.
 

I glared at his back when he left.
 
I sincerely hoped I never had to set eyes on him again.
     

Meeting Jethro had bothered me.
 
It was disheartening and disturbing to realize that even I believed he was my biological dad.
 
Before I'd always just been able to shrug off any relation altogether the rare times that it came up, because the idea had been as abstract as it was distasteful.
 
I didn't want this man to be my dad and so he wasn't.
 

But not anymore.
 
After that, I carried the weight of belonging to even more white trash heritage than I already claimed.
 
It was a blow to my ego that I hadn't needed, to say the least.
 
Not a day in my life had gone by when I hadn't known and been reminded that I was trash.
 
More proof was just picking at a wound that was already bloody.
 

One other thing did come out of meeting him, though.
 
A lesson.
 
Or at least, a reminder:
 
I was not a Durant.
 
Gram had accepted me into her heart, into her home.
 
She fed me, clothed me.
 
She provided me with everything I needed and more, from my phone to my haircuts.
 

She'd even tried to buy me a car, but I'd drawn the line there.

No, I'm not crazy.
 
I just couldn't do it, couldn't defend taking such an extravagant gift, not without earning it.
 
She had three extra cars.
 
When I needed one, she always generously allowed me to borrow one.
 
It was enough for me.
 

And as much as I wanted to tell all of the people that looked down on me to go fuck themselves, I did care how it looked, how
I
looked when it came to Gram and her kindness toward me.
 

If the world thought I was taking advantage of that, then hell, maybe I was, and so I tried my best not to.

So meeting Jethro Davis wasn't all bad.
 
It made me realize that I needed to start earning my keep.
 

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

"I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
 

in secret, between the shadow and the soul."
 

~Pablo Neruda

PRESENT

SCARLETT

Filming was not going how I'd expected.
 
It was a rollercoaster.
 
All ups and downs, nothing in between.
 

A part of me hated it, and a part of me found it stimulating.
 
At least I wasn't bored.

The acting was the only thing I wasn't conflicted about.
 
I loved it, because
God
I was tired of being me.
 
It felt good to slip into some other shoes.

But the rest was a jumbled mess that consisted of changed scripts, new lines, and repetitive reshoots.
   

Every scene felt like it had to be redone a dozen times.
 
At least.
   

I thought that all of this traced back to one thing:
 
the director.
 
He was hard to please and harder to impress.
 

Stuart Whently was known for making A-list, character driven films that made the film academy swoon, and for being an eccentric, sometimes tyrannical, perfectionist.

When I thought of it that way, things weren't actually going so badly.
 

Still, it felt like I was somehow failing, and I had begun to miss my friends, who were gone four days or more a week, and hell, even my crappy old airline job, where at least I hadn't felt l was incompetent.

I had quit with relish over a month ago, never dreaming that I'd long to go back to it for even a
second
.
 

I'd never admit any of it aloud though, and even if I was doing a horrible job, I'd keep trying my best until I either got it right or got canned.
 
It wasn't even a question.
 

"Is he always like this?" I asked one of the production assistants after Stuart had called an abrupt break and stormed off set.
 
Again.
 

"Hmm?" she asked.
 

"What I mean is, is this how a movie production is supposed to go, or is this one just a colossal failure?"
 
I hoped that wasn't the case, but I needed to know if it was.
 

I always, always preferred the truth.

That had her finally looking at me, pushing her glasses up high on her nose to study my face.
 
"This project is as smooth as they get, to be honest.
 
Usually filming with him is a
nightmare
."
 

I was shocked, relieved, and somehow annoyed.
 
But at least it wasn't me.
             

Stuart was back within the hour, which was usually the pattern, and we set up again.
 

Two takes later, and good ol' Stu was back to ranting.
   

"It's a journey back from feeling alienated from the world," he said passionately, speaking directly to me.
   

Well, that I could relate to.
 
The second part of it, at least.
   

"It is about personal growth, not an explosion of it, but a gradual unfolding, petal by petal, bit by bit.
 
This scene is supposed to make you blossom.
 
He's doing something for you that no one ever has before, showing you kindness, changing your perspective, on people, on men.
 
You two are supposed to like each other!"

And that was the whole problem.
 
I couldn't stand the lead actor.
 
He was a Hollywood asshole of the first order.
   

I'd been excited when I heard who was chosen for the role.

David Watts had seemed the perfect pick.
 
He was successful, a household name, great-looking, and because he was a hunk and he liked to post shirtless pictures of himself holding kittens on Instagram on a fairly regular basis, he brought his own rabid fan-base to every movie he made.
 

But how he sounded on paper was far from how he was to work with.

Stuart got right up in my personal space, as he was wont to do, distracting me from my train of annoyed thought, spectacled eyes studying me closely.
 
"But you're not the problem, are you?
 
You are her.
 
You are this character.
 
She is you.
 
You
are this movie.
 
That is clear to me.
 
So it's you we must begin to work around.
 
What we need for this is chemistry.
 
I'll ask you plain, can you think of any man you have chemistry with that's fit to play this role?"