HDU #2: Dirt (34 page)

Amanda
swallowed.
 
Shit
.
 
He had her alright.
 
Why
did I think I could do this?
She wasn’t sure how she had ever had that
confidence in herself — to tell Liam that they were over, that she was
sure of it and that her heart could handle the idea of being truly apart.
 
“Okay,” she managed, relief closing her
eyes and resting her face in his palm when he cupped her cheek in his
hand.
 
But the peaceful moment
didn’t quite last long.

“Oh, fuck this.”

Amanda and Liam
pulled apart to look at Connor, who loosened his tie until he could tug it off
of his neck.

“If you want to
ruin your life and stick with her then I’m out, brother.
 
I’m not going to hang around to watch
her screw with your head again and bring your entire career down with her
shitty one.
 
She’s a famewhore,
Liam.
 
Fucking trust me when I say
that she wants celebrity more than she wants you.”

“Watch it.”
 
Liam was in front of Connor in no time,
his flared shoulder blades stretching the back of his white button up.
 
“If you want to go then go.
 
Just keep your goddamned mouth shut on
your way out.”

Connor’s neck
widened in the confines of his tuxedo shirt as his angry muscles pulled
taut.
 
“Jesus Christ, Liam.
 
Look at what you’re throwing away for
someone who means
nothing
.
 
You and I and Logan — we all
worked our asses off to get you to this point.
 
This is it, Liam.
 
A Soldier
.
 
This is the movie that just put you on
the map and after this,
The Legends
is going to be the one that sets you and Logan for life.
 
And you’re going to risk all this good
shit because you think
that’s
worth
it?” Connor practically spat in disgust.

Don’t react.
 
Eyeing the sudden flames in Liam’s eyes, Amanda hugged his
arm with both of hers, pulling his tense body back to safety near hers.
 
“Just leave us alone, Connor,” she said
through gritted teeth, praying to God that he would simply listen.
 
Instead, he sneered.

“Go fuck yourself,
Amanda.”

As if reacting,
the fluorescent hallway light flickered.
 
Her locked arms flying apart, Amanda’s body registered the feeling of
Liam breaking free from her grip just a second before her eyes registered his
fists slamming Connor against the wall by handfuls of his white shirt.

“
Liam
!” The voice she heard was somehow
her own though it sounded too hoarse for her to recognize.
 
Her feet carried her clumsily forward
as Liam held Connor against the wall, muttering something low to him that she couldn’t
distinguish nor care to.
 
She had
her focus set on separating him from Connor, whose smaller frame meant nothing
when his eyes blazed with such white hot rage that Amanda could actually feel
it from where she stood.

Suddenly, with a
growl and a hard push, Liam was the one with his back slammed against the
wall.
 
No sound escaping her
throat, Amanda could only watch as Connor sunk a hard fist into Liam’s left
jaw.

“
Stop it
!” Flying forward, Amanda hung on
Connor’s arm, her abs burning as she exhausted all her might to pull him off of
Liam.
 
She succeeded only to feel
him jerk away from her, the force of her pull sending her flying backward and
into the wall.
 
Feeling the back of
her head bounce against the wall, Amanda squeezed her eyes shut, her vision
full of small, colorful dots as she heard an unintelligible roar from Liam.

Sitting in a
slump against the wall, Amanda opened her eyes to see the blurry floor,
blinking until they focused on the shiny black shoes standing next to her
against the same wall — or rather, on their toes.
 
And just barely.

Scrambling
backward, Amanda looked up to see Liam’s teeth gnashed as he pinned Connor
against the wall by a forearm under the jaw.

“Liam!” she
gasped, her eyes wide as she gaped at the way he rendered Connor’s six-foot-one
frame completely still and useless.
 
Staring at Connor’s wide eyes and reddening face, Amanda scrambled to
her feet, pushing Liam as hard as she could until he let go, leaving Connor a
brief heap on the floor.
 
Stunned,
Amanda stood frozen as she watched him cough before gasping for breath and
bringing himself to something of a sitting position despite his clear
exhaustion.

“Are you
fucking
kidding me?” he rasped.
 
Amanda wasn’t sure if the water in his
eyes was a result of the brief chokehold or something else.
 
“Twelve years we’ve been trying to make
it together and
this
is what you’re
going to let get in the way of fucking brotherhood, Liam?” Connor shook his
head, letting it fall back against the wall as his chest heaved.
 
He lips twisted to spit something else
but with a tired groan, Connor gave up, opting instead to keep catching his
breath.
 
“Go to the premiere,
Liam,” he finally mumbled, staring at his feet.
 
“You’ll only be fifteen minutes late if you leave now.”

Cursing
silently, Amanda did her best to remind herself of the horrible things that
Connor had said to her as she followed Liam down the stairs, prepared to leave
through the front door while he’d go through the back exit.
 
But suddenly, the memories of the
insults and name-calling didn’t help her guilt over what she had just done to
the boys’ twelve-year friendship.

“I change my
mind, Liam.”

When they
reached the bottom step of the first floor, Amanda stood still on it, letting
Liam continue forward.
 
But he spun
around at her words, his head already shaking at her.

“Amanda —
”

“I’m the one who
can’t do this anymore.”
 
Numb, she
held her hand up when he tried to approach.
 
“Look at me, Liam.
 
I do tear apart the things you’ve spent half your life building.
 
You can’t even try to deny that after
what just happened.
 
Any time you
do something out of love for me, it completely screws you.”
 
Suddenly, the confidence she’d been
building to for two weeks returned with a force.
 
“This can’t go on,” she said, her jaw tight and her voice
firm.
 
“I’m not going to try to
convince myself anymore that it can or should so neither should you.”
 
She swallowed, reaching into her bag to
find her wallet.
 
“I love you,
Liam.
 
And I know you love me, too
but this isn’t right.”

Unzipping her
wallet, she pulled out the key to their house in North Carolina.
 
She held it out to Liam.

“We had that one
weekend at the house but something tells me there won’t be anything like that
again.”
 
She laughed bitterly.
 
“We have all this love and not an ounce
of peace and I can’t live like that anymore, so
you
just tell
me
now that
you’ll go and we can stop draining the life out of each other because we both
deserve to live like normal people again.”
 
Her outward calm surprised her considering the war in her
body as she spoke the hard words, watching Liam stand before her, so handsome
in his tux, tall and strong but for once, completely helpless.

Finally, he took
the key.

“Okay,” he said,
staring down at it in his palm.
 
Amanda swallowed as she watched him start his walk away.

“I do love you,”
she couldn’t help but blurt.
 
It
was as if her mind had thought it a good idea, a way to leave things off on a
somewhat positive note.
 
But
somehow, saying the three words made Amanda feel only worse.

But not as bad
as it would feel to hear them back.

Nodding, Liam
wrapped his fingers around the key.
 
“I love you, too,” he said before turning and going.

Chapter 22

Hunched over the
counter on the torn leather barstool, Amanda finally sent Ian the text that
she’d composed and then stared at for a good five minutes.

I broke up with Liam.

Rereading the
words made her heart twist with a pain that would have warranted a doctor’s
visit were she not aware of the heartbreak she’d just caused herself.
 
She and Liam had broken up once before
and even then, when it hadn’t technically been real, it had felt worse than
anything Amanda had ever experienced before.

Now that it was
real, Amanda was fairly certain she could never do this again.
 
How
the hell do people have the capacity to do this more than once?
Since
hopping a cab from Chinatown, Amanda had felt her entire body cramp with the
pain of being apart from Liam and knowing that this time, it was for good.
 
She had truly never felt worse in her
life.

 
Which was why she’d decided to finally
accept Bird’s invitation and join the Joes of
Leadoff
in one of their happy hours at their usual bar in Midtown
West.
 
It was better than crying on
the last step of Connor’s paint-chipped apartment building, knowing well that
he was probably still slumped against a wall a couple floors up, listening to
at least the faint sounds of her pathetic sobbing.

“Stop texting,
Nathan, or you automatically lose the bet.”
 
Balling up a cocktail napkin, Fish threw it so that it hit
Amanda on the side of the head.
 
She heard him heave a sigh and make some comment about the Yankees game
to Skip when she didn’t respond.
 
She was too busy staring at the little ellipses on her iPhone screen
that indicated Ian’s typing of a response.

Shit. Goddamn I’m so sorry.
 
Where are you? I’m coming.
 
Or if you need a girl Harper is
here.
 
She’s good to talk to.

Amanda managed a
weak smile, relieved to know that Ian and Harper were at least doing fine.

No, stay where you are with harper.
 
I just needed to tell you. I have
company, don’t worry.
 
Go back to
what you were doing.

The last place
Ian needed to be was at a bar with her and it wasn’t as if she wouldn’t soon
have company.
 
Holding up a finger
and indicating that she’d only be another minute, Amanda took a long drink of
her Jameson and Ginger, reading Ian’s next text with a curious frown.

Under normal circumstances I’d ignore you
and hunt your ass down even if you were at a bar because I know you’re a mess
right now. But I’m actually going to listen to you and go back to what I’m
doing because what I’m doing right now will make your day once it’s done.
 
Your week, even.
 
Maybe your year.

“Get the next round
of shots and I’ll stop texting,” Amanda mumbled when through the corner of her
eye, she saw Fish impatiently balling up another napkin.
 
Since she had planned on drinking
anyway, Amanda had agreed to a game of drinking with Fish for the chance to
write the season finale of
Leadoff
.
 
Thanks to Casey, she had already broken
up with Liam.
 
Now, she was more
compelled than ever to go all out against her, to embrace whatever horrible
person she had become.
 
She had
nothing left to lose.
 
Now,
pitching Casey’s twisted childhood wasn’t enough.
 
She wanted to be the one to write the episode, to make sure
Casey knew it was no mistake at all.
 
And she was fairly certain that she’d want all that even if she weren’t
drunk.

Ian what are you talking about?

Despite her
mood, Ian’s text still managed to pique her curiosity.
 
Thankfully, his response was immediate.

I’ve been talking to Quinn Colwell.

Her fingers
typed like lightning.

What??? How?

In awe, she read
Ian’s response, grabbing the shot of vodka from Fish and knocking it back with
her eyes still glued to the screen of her phone, hungry as they read Ian’s
explanation.

I Facebook messaged about eight different Quinn
Colwells under a fake profile.
 
Asked ‘did Casey steal something from you’ — figured the wrong
Quinns would ignore it.
 
Anddd they
sure did ignore it.
 
Even the right
one.
 
At first.
 
Sent another round of emails saying,
‘She got me too.’
 
Got a response
from Quinn Colwell of Virginia asking who I was.
 
Told him I was Ian Marsh with my email address.
 
He emailed me back right away and said
something interesting about the movie I made of Casey and… something even more
interesting about Legacy.
 
I’ll
copy and paste it to you.
 
Kind of
a bombshell.

“Holy shit,”
Amanda murmured, gripping her phone hard as she waited for Ian’s
follow-up.
 
She could actually feel
the ball of stress in her chest thinning at the mere thought of having some
sort of dirt on Casey.
 
Accepting another
shot from Fish, Amanda knocked it back, but only to spit it into her glass of
Jameson and Ginger.
 
It was
disgusting but she was suddenly no longer in need of a drink — in fact,
she needed to sober up fast in order to comprehend whatever Ian was about to
send.

Finally, the
message came through.

From Quinn:

‘i knew she staged that video when i saw
it.
 
she just wanted to make
herself look more convincing.
 
casey didn’t write a word of legacy.
 
it’s not even based on real life, i just wrote it for my
college application.’

Eyes wide,
Amanda felt her heart stop.
 
Holy.
 
Shit.

Tell me there’s more.

Ian’s reply came
quickly.

‘I tried to sue but I was too much of a
nobody and Casey’s lawyers killed my case before it rose to any court.
 
My script was a short film.
 
She turned it into the pilot of Legacy
and changed maybe three lines.
 
The
rest of the episodes aren’t mine but every word of the first episode is.
 
I kept my mouth shut for the past three
years because she threatened to get me kicked out of college and make sure that
I never work in the film industry in the future.
 
And because no one would believe me anyway.’

Holy shit.
 
Amanda felt her jaw drop.
 
That would certainly explain
Legacy’s
mysterious dip in quality or any sort of a clue as to how
to continue the episodes.

Ian.
 
This is important: Tell Quinn that I will attach my name to the case to
get it more attention as long as he can find some good solid proof that this is
what happened.
 
Tell him now!!

Amanda waited
the most desperately on this particular text of Ian’s, which took an odd amount
of time.

“She looks ready
to accept defeat,” she heard Skip observe.
 
“I think you got this, Fish.
 
That episode’s yours to write, kid.”

Amanda shot a
glare that made all three Joes “ooh” with delight.
 
“Give me another shot,” she demanded, staring Fish down as
she knocked it back, once again spitting the vodka into her other glass once no
one was looking.

“I’ll give it to
her.
 
She can drink,” Skip said,
his eyes going from a very drunk Fish to the row of empty shot glasses lining
the counter.

“Which means she
can write,” Bird said dryly, poking a low-groaning Fish, who appeared to be
reaching the limit of his tolerance.

Finally, Ian’s
response to her last text message arrived.

Holy shit.
 
Just made a phone call to relay your message.
 
I think I should have Quinn call YOU
really quick.
 
Ask about meeting
Casey — how/when it happened.

Amanda had
hardly finished reading over the text message before her phone rang.
 
Shushing the Joes who protested against
her picking up the phone, Amanda composed herself, making sure she was fully
comprehendible before answering the call.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Amanda
Nathan?”

Whoa
.
 
Amanda blinked, immediately thrown off.

For starters,
Quinn Colwell was a girl.

“Hi.
 
This is Amanda.
 
I’m so glad you’re calling, Quinn,”
Amanda managed to say steadily while holding up a shot of vodka and bringing it
to clink against Fish’s glass.
 
He
and Skip were both entirely too drunk at this point to notice the various
things Amanda was doing with her alcohol — like this time, throwing it
over her shoulder.
 
Bird kept his
mouth shut, laughing quietly to himself as he watched the scene.
 
“Quinn, I was told to ask where you
first met Casey in the first place,” Amanda said, feeing the hairs on her arms
standing straight as she anticipated something good.

“I met her
through my high school boyfriend, Jake.”

Just as she
threw another vodka shot over her shoulder, Amanda felt Quinn’s answer send an
appropriate shiver down her spine — one that matched Fish’s as he downed
another shot.

Quinn Colwell
was a girl.
 
Jake’s
girl, more specifically — his high school sweetheart,
his “angel” had actually been the one who had written
Legacy
.
 
The wannabe
actress who had contacted Casey for help with starting her career in the acting
and film business.
 
Holy shit.

“Quinn… tell me
about
Legacy
—
your
Legacy
.”

The voice on the
other end sounded the same as the one in the few seconds of Jake’s video, just
slightly lower and older now.
 
“I
wrote it for myself when I was seventeen.
 
I wanted to play the lead role and I wanted to film it and use the film
to apply to school.
 
I was actually
kind of embarrassed of it though — it was just about the kind of life I
fantasized about as a teenager.
 
Total fiction.
 
And Casey
hardly changed a word of it for her series premiere.”

Amanda felt her
stomach flip with excitement, wishing more than anything that she were with
Ian.
 
“Don’t you have original
scripts? How did Casey obtain all your materials?” she asked curiously,
grateful as Fish called for a moment of break from their drinking.

“Jake gave me
her video chat name and I basically auditioned for her over the computer and
performed a few monologues.
 
She
asked what movie the monologues were from, I told her they were from the script
of a short film I wrote and she said it sounded great and asked for me to send
the script.
 
So I got really
excited and I emailed it to her.
 
And then I didn’t hear from her for weeks and weeks and then one day
when I went to my email to send her a follow-up message about what she thought
of the script, I saw that all our messages were gone.
 
All the previous emails — they were all deleted and
cleared from my trash folder.
 
Everything else in my inbox was still there but the whole thread of
emails I had with Casey was just gone.”

Shocker
.
 
“She hacked into your inbox.”

“I figured that
out eventually.”

“So there’s no
proof anywhere?” Amanda asked, feeling her shoulders slump in total
disappointment, her rush of adrenaline hitting such a wall that she felt as if
she could feel the pressure of the impact in her stomach.

“I don’t have
anything but the script I wrote.
 
When she threatened me, she called, so I don’t have proof of that
either.”

Damn it
.
 
“And I’m guessing she told you not to say a word to Jake?”

“She said that
if I ever told him or anyone about the script, she’d get me kicked out of
college and kill whatever chances I had at acting in the future.”
 
Quinn’s voice trailed off after it
cracked.
 
Amanda could practically
hear her trying to find her voice on the other end of the phone.
 
“And I loved Jake.
 
I didn’t want be the one to tell him
what his sister was actually like.
 
He spent his life keeping track of her every move and looking up to her
like she was some goddess.
 
I
thought it was better to leave his fantasy of her intact since I was going away
to college anyway.
 
He needed
some
thing in his life.”

Amanda swallowed
guiltily, reminded that she had taken away Jake’s last bit of hope over
anything.
 
And now, he was back in
Missouri with no job, no friends, no girlfriend and nothing else to look
forward to.
 
It reminded Amanda a
lot of her old life.

“Listen, Quinn…
I told Jake about Casey.
 
About all
the things she did to me and my friend Ian.
 
So since that’s done, would you be willing to finally call
him? Or talk to him? She shouldn’t be able to keep you two apart.”