Love Me Gently (Deer Creek #1)

Six

Trina

Then

* * *

Tears speckled the letter I finished writing, folded, and tucked into an envelope.

I talked to my parents every week, and up until last week, no one had mentioned Cole. Every one of my friends hated me after we broke up. They told me I’d destroyed him, but no one knew I’d destroyed myself right along with him. At graduation, I wanted to cry and reach for him and apologize. The blank stare in his eyes when our eyes met as he passed me in the aisle of our high school gym was the only thing that stopped me. By the time I left for New York, I didn’t have anyone left in my life other than my family, and even if it was my own fault, it still hurt. I boarded my plane in July with a small amount of savings in the bank, enough for a few months of rent in a shared apartment I’d found online, and with my parents’ reluctant blessing and help. I tried not looking back, but some moments were harder than others.

When my mom accidentally mentioned Cole’s name last week, I soaked up every small bit of information I could learn from her. I missed him most of all. He’d been my best friend for so many years it hurt to not be able to pick up the phone and call him when I received my first callback on an audition, or when I’d gotten a small, teeny tiny part as a back-up dancer in a community theater play. It paid nothing, but I was waiting tables to make ends meet. The apartment I shared with Stella was barely affordable even with both of us working almost full-time at an Italian restaurant, and my room was smaller than my parents’ bedroom closet back home.

Some days I woke up with fear choking me, telling me I’d made a horrible mistake.

Other days, the pulse of the city beneath my feet filled me with immeasurable hope and anticipation. I clung to those days like a lifeline.

I had to make it. I had to achieve my dreams because I knew if I didn’t, breaking up with Cole and everything else I’d done would all be for nothing.

When would it go away? That aching, searing pain that pierced my chest when I thought of him, when I thought of what I’d done. It wasn’t only losing Cole that hurt like someone punched a hole in my chest, it was the grief from the choice I’d made. Telling myself it was for the best didn’t make things better, and I told myself that a thousand times a day.

I’d ruined something more special than Cole. I’d ruined more than one or two lives, and as the months passed, the guilt grew thicker, even though I tried to fight against it. Mostly, I stayed busy, doing everything I could to keep my mind off the past and keep pressing forward.

Except for these letters I couldn’t stop writing.

I tugged the letter back out and reread it. The uncertainty I already felt grew into a tumultuous storm in my stomach. This was stupid. Cole was the last person who would want to hear from me. Reaching out to him only hurt us both. Before I could crumple it into a ball and toss it into the garbage, I scribbled his address on the envelope and sealed it shut.

A pounding thump hit my door, and I quickly hid the envelope in my desk drawer.

“What is it?”

I shouted.

“Dinnertime, sunshine, let’s roll,”

Stella said from the other side of the door.

We always grabbed a quick meal before we went to work. Stella had helped me land the job when I showed up at our doorstep, all innocent and exhausted—both mentally and physically from the trip.

At twenty-one, she might have only been a few years older than me, but she seemed decades wiser. She worked all day and did online schooling at night, insisting she’d end up better than anyone else in her family had ever done, even though she never told me what that meant. I would have been lost without Stella. She took me under her wing, taught me how to use the subway until I was confident I could get anywhere I needed on my own. She gave me tour after tour of the city my first few weeks when I was there and had even printed off a map, highlighting areas no single young woman should walk through alone.

Our apartment, as run-down as it was with paint peeling off walls and a heater we had to bang periodically to make it kick on now that the weather was turning absolutely frigid, was on the edge of a decently nice area of New York, and a really scary area, so we rarely went out at night alone.

Safety in numbers, Stella always said.

“I’m coming. Just give me a minute.”

I pulled my hair up into a ponytail and glanced down at the letter.

Mail it. Don’t mail it. Mail it. Don’t mail it.

I grabbed it, dug through my purse and slid a stamp onto it, and shoved everything back into my purse.

“Everything okay?”

Stella asked as we walked toward a nearby diner that sold filling, but inexpensive food. I lived on their patty melt sandwiches these days. “You’ve been more mopey than usual.”

“I’m not mopey.”

I grinned and shoved my hip against hers, laughing as she stumbled over a crack in the sidewalk. “I’m missing home, I guess. It’s almost Christmas.”

“You’re not going home? I thought your parents were going to help you get a ticket.”

“They were.”

I was lying through my teeth. I had no desire to return home. Not yet, not for Christmas when everyone would be home from college. “It didn’t work out.”

“Aw, that’s too bad.”

She slung her arm over my shoulder. “I’ll make this a Christmas you’ll never forget. I promise.”

“Thanks, Stella. You’re the best.”

“Nah, I’m not the best, but I am pretty awesome, and I’ll be sure to plan all sorts of awesomeness for you.”

Her grin was enchanting. Thinner than me by at least ten pounds and about the same height, Stella had slick, inky black hair that came to sharp points right at her shoulders. Her eyes were wide and blue, and she always carried a bounce in her step like she knew every day was going to be the best day of her life.

I pushed away thoughts of Cole and home and everything I wanted to forget, and I vowed to trust Stella.

This Christmas, this New Year’s—it’d be the best of my life.

It was time to move forward, so with only minimal hesitation, I slipped Cole’s letter into a mailbox we passed on the street and pretended it would slip him into my past as well.

There was no looking back.

It was time to chase my dreams until I caught them.

“Happy New Year!”

The cacophony of shouts rang in my ears. I was surrounded by an enormous group of Stella’s friends, in an apartment in Brooklyn. A friend of hers, Zane, was hosting the New Year’s party bash for all of his NYU friends who were hanging around the area for the holidays. I was, by far, the youngest person in attendance, although if anyone noticed, no one seemed to care. At least they didn’t care enough to tell me I shouldn’t be drinking beer from the keg.

It was my first New York party and while I wanted to be enjoying every moment of it, while I’d tried to enjoy every moment of the incredible Christmas Stella had wanted to give me, my heart was only half into it.

I might have made things seem better in my letter to Cole than they truly were. How could I not? I’d left him and Deer Creek to make it big.

I wasn’t certain my last job of being a stand-in in a soap commercial that showed fifty other stand-ins in a group shot was making it big.

God, how I wanted it to happen. I wanted an agent and my name to be known in households all over the world. I wanted my face on billboards and in magazine spreads. I wanted to walk the catwalk wearing designs from Gucci and Hermès. I wanted to travel to Milan and France for their shows.

I wanted it all, and even though I could be grateful for some of the small successes I had, hell, even landing the non-paid stand-in role a couple of weeks ago, it wasn’t enough.

It made me fear I wasn’t enough.

And wouldn’t that be the worst of the worst of all things?

Falling flat on my face and having to move back to Deer Creek, my tail tucked between my legs, facing Cole again with nothing but failure stamped on my forehead.

Everything I’d done…for nothing.

Tears burned my eyes as I thought about that possibility, and I tossed back the rest of my beer. I’d been drinking for hours but only finished two cups. The warm beer tasted like spit as I forced it down and headed outside for fresh air. Perhaps a frigid blast of icy wind would adjust my attitude.

The building we were at had a small front stoop that was so common in New York walk-ups. It wasn’t smart to be outside alone, nor was it smart of me to holding a cup of beer while I was two months shy of turning nineteen, but the shouts and the cheers and celebration from inside the first floor apartment blared through the opened windows.

“Not into the holiday spirit?”

a voice asked.

I was so startled, I jumped from my spot on the cement step and turned.

I was so into my thoughts I hadn’t heard the heavy metal door open or close or hear Zane step outside.

“You scared me,”

I said. “And no, not this year, I suppose I’m not. What are you doing here?”

He held up a cigarette and flicked open his lighter. “Hate the smell of smoke inside my house.”

I hated the smell of smoke anywhere, but whatever he was lighting wasn’t a normal cigarette, the kind the guys in my high school used to steal from their parents so they could look cool around the fields and bonfires and beer kegs. It had a different smell than regular tobacco, sweeter.

“What is that?”

I asked, stepping away from the plume of smoke as he exhaled.

“Clove cigarettes.”

He held it out to me. “Want to try?”

“No thank you.”

“Right.”

He smirked and settled the cigarette back against his lips, speaking while he inhaled. “Stella told me you’re from a small town, living in the big city to make dreams come true, am I right?”

Everything he said was factual, but there was an edge to his words, to the tone in his voice that didn’t thrill me. It sounded laced with mockery, the merest hint of it though so I wasn’t certain.

“Yes.”

“And how’s it going so far?”

He exhaled again and little smoke rings puffed out of his mouth. They grew larger and larger in the air above us before drifting away into nothing.

“It’s going.”

It was. I was. I had plans and ideas and ways to move things along, I just needed an in. For someone to not only see my talent or my physical appearance but to see my drive.

“Stella wanted me to talk to you about your modeling. I can help you, if you want it.”

His lips thinned, and he dropped his cigarette to his side, flicking the ash to the cement. I took a step back, almost plastering my back along the railing. He hadn’t moved toward me in the least, and yet his dark eyes, the glint in them and the tone of his voice all set me on edge.

Perhaps I was doing what Stella had scolded me for before—judging people who were different from me because I hadn’t been around so many kinds of different people in my life.

“How?”

He shrugged and pulled out a business card from his tight jeans that were faded and old and ripped. His flannel shirt he’d been wearing earlier was now tied around his waist, and his V-neck white T-shirt showed the curves of his chest. He wasn’t built like Cole, but he wasn’t a slouch, either. “I have a friend who works with an agent. Works with new models, helps get them their portfolios started, small parts until he can get agents to notice them. He does this work on the side, without any up-front costs. He takes a percentage of the jobs you get through him.”

“Seriously?”

I snagged the card out of Zane’s hand and stared at it.

It was white card stock. Simple lettering. Something that could have been printed at any print shop and didn’t have the professional sheen I’d seen on most modeling agencies’ logos. But Zane had said this guy, Robert Madrid, was doing this work on the side.

“It sounds too good to be true.”

My thumb ran over the letters of Robert’s name again, then the phone number.

Zane shrugged, took a puff of his cigarette, and dropped it to the cement as he exhaled. “Women seem to like him, haven’t heard complaints about him getting them work. My advice, Deer Creek?”

I cringed at the way he said and knew my hometown name. “What?”

The card stock in my hand crumpled from my tight grip.

“Take any help you can get, it might not always look pretty, but no one breaks through in the business without sacrificing their morals every once in a while.”

I flinched at his advice. It sounded… questionable. I was going to ask him what he meant when he pulled open the door and before he could step inside, Stella jumped out.

“There you are!”

She rushed me and grabbed my arms. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you! Come on. We have to party! This year is going to be fantastic!”

For the first time in my life, I was beginning to hope it would be. With Robert Madrid’s card burning a hole in my hand, I tucked it into the pocket of my jeans and followed Stella back inside, Zane closing the door behind us and following.

We partied for the next two hours, where I eventually had to wrap my arms around Stella’s waist since she was too drunk to walk by herself. I hailed us a cab and took us back to our apartment where I tucked her into bed and provided a bowl in case she woke up sick during the night.

Then I curled up in my own bed, back against the wall, legs crossed, and studied the business card again.

I needed a breakthrough, something to help pay the bills more than waiting tables.

I desperately needed to prove to everyone back home that moving to New York wasn’t a mistake but my destiny.

And I really, really needed help.

Had I been older, I would have heeded the warning bells. I would have run far away from not only Zane but Robert Madrid. I would have listened to the whispering, small voice in my mind telling me not to pick up the phone and call.

But I was young. I was naive.

I was too hopeful with stars in my eyes blinding me to the truth.

Looking back, that one poor decision cemented the rest of my downfall.