• Hours of practice: not enough
• Hours worrying: too many
I avoided Erin and anyone else who dared to talk to me for the rest of the day. Tomorrow would be better. But today? Today was bad.
My breath came in shallow puffs, and my hands were slick with sweat on my bicycle handles as I pedaled to the set. Helping Beckett was the last thing I felt like doing right now. I just wanted to be alone in my room with my violin.
In a daze, I parked my bicycle. I saw some of the crew working outside the castle and walked to Beckett’s trailer. With feet made of lead, I hoisted myself over the broken step and let myself inside. My chest jerked with a new round of tears as I reached into the refrigerator and grabbed a Diet Coke. I pressed the can to my cheek and allowed the coolness to seep into my skin before opening it, letting the familiar burn trickle down my throat.
The door swung open again, and I turned in relief. “Beckett, I’ve had the worst—”
“What are you doing here?” Montgomery Rush stepped inside, the door hanging open behind him. “Where’s me son?” He took in my disheveled state but made no comment on it.
“I . . . I don’t know.” My nose dripped like a faucet. “He’s probably in the castle with everyone else.” It was then that I got a look at the tabloid in his hand. Not even two full days since St. Flanagan’s Day, and a picture of Beckett with Erin decorated the cover.
Mr. Rush caught the direction of my stare. “Having trouble seeing the headline? It says ‘Vampire Star Crashes Festival with Drunk Castmates.’”
Like I needed another reason to hurl all over the floor. “How can you do that to your son?”
“What I do saves me son. Domestic ticket sales on last month’s release will go up ten percent this week.” He tapped the paper. “All because of this.”
“But it’s so . . .”
“Sensational? Sleazy? Look, it’s exactly what you Americans want to read. You eat it up.”
“But that’s not Beckett.”
“He shouldn’t have been at that festival in the first place, and he’s lucky me assistant managed to salvage the story in the nick of time. Taylor and that cousin of hers tried to talk to me, and I wouldn’t take the time to listen. But they were right—ever since Beckett came here, ever since he started hanging out with you, he’s been unmanageable. Do you realize how important his image is? Taylor’s part of that. Not you.”
“He’s your son . . . not just another deal.”
“What he is, is a professional.”
“Really?” My temper flared, and I was so worn down, I didn’t even care. “That’s not how the world sees him. Thanks to you.”
“What do you know about this business? You’re a liability to Beckett and all we’ve worked so hard for.” He pointed a finger at me. “In fact, if you cared about him, you’d stop seeing him. It’s not good press.”
“Why? Because it paints him as a calm, normal guy?”
“You’re not Hollywood enough for him.” He took an assessing glance, and I knew I was found unworthy, too ugly, too plain.
“Do you even realize how unhappy Beckett is?” I asked.
“What is going on here?”
Heads turned as Beckett stepped into his trailer. Taylor and Beatrice followed in behind him.
“Your friend here was just telling me how unhappy you are,”
Mr. Rush said.
“He does all this to please you.”
“Finley, be quiet.” Beckett crossed the space and pulled me to his side.
“I think I know me son.”
“Really?” I felt Beckett’s fingers press into my arm, but I kept going, my tongue possessed by fury. “Did you know he takes online college classes? That he wants a normal life?”
“That is enough,” Beckett growled.
“But you do. You—”
“Do you have something to tell your da’?” Mr. Rush rolled the tabloid in his hands and slapped it against his palm.
“Now would not be the time,” Beckett ground out.
“Then when?” I asked. Didn’t they get it? “Life is too short for this. What if you don’t have tomorrow?”
“Did you learn that little platitude in the mental hospital?”
Beatrice moved from behind Mr. Rush, a brilliant smirk on her ivory face.
I just stared. And shook my head.
“SeaScape Counseling,” she said. “You were there, weren’t you?”
Beckett exhaled as if it was torturous to even look at Beatrice.
“What are you talking about, Bea?”
“Your new girlfriend,” Taylor butt in. “She took a little vacation last year at a treatment facility.” She tilted her head as if struggling to recall the facts.
I felt naked, exposed. And utterly alone. “How . . . how do you know about that?”
“I have my ways.”
My voice rose with every word. “Like Beatrice digging in the nurse’s files when she so kindly went to get a bandage for me?”
“You’re a famous name in America.” Beatrice’s eyes glimmered with victory. “It wasn’t that hard to find online.”
“Actually, it would be impossible.” I wanted the floor to swallow me alive. To pull me down, cover me up, and spit me out somewhere in Middle Earth. “The only ones who know are my parents, Nora O’Callaghan, and the school.”
“Oh.” Beatrice sent Beckett a pouty, sympathetic look. “Didn’t Beckett know?”
I turned to him, expecting him to take up for me, to put Beatrice in her place. But he stood beside me, arms crossed, his face as hard as stone. “I think everyone needs to leave. Now.”
“We’re not through with this,” Montgomery said to Beckett as he stepped outside.
“Get out,” Beckett repeated, glaring down the girls as they attempted to linger.
“We need to regroup.” Taylor looked between me and her fake boyfriend. “Soon.”
“We’ll fix this, Taylor,” I heard Mr. Rush say.
“Leave.” Beckett shut the door with a slam that had me blanching. I watched him scrub his hands over his face before slowly turning around.
“Beckett, I’m sorry, but your dad—”
“I don’t want to talk about that.” He gestured to the chairs.
“Sit down.”
His tone tilted my world, and I knew something was very wrong. Something beyond Beckett’s father, beyond Beatrice. “Are you breaking up with me?”
He sat beside me, stared at his hands. “Erin and I have been talking . . .”
“What Beatrice said, if you’d let me explain, I—”
“I don’t care what she said.” He lifted his head. “I don’t care where you’ve been, what you’ve done. All I care about is now.”
“I didn’t stay at any clinic. I saw a counselor there. Grief therapy. Anxiety.” The words bled out, and I didn’t stop until Beckett put his hand on mine.
“Finley, something’s wrong.”
I blinked back tears.
God, God, God.
Sentences failed me. All I could manage was his name.
“I should have seen it,” Beckett said.
“What?” I was afraid he wasn’t going to tell me. Even more afraid he was.
“I think . . . I think you have the beginning of a problem.”
I couldn’t help the laugh that escaped. “Is this just pick-on-Finley day? Does the whole world think I’m crazy?”
“I don’t think you’re crazy.” His thumb slid over my knuckles.
“I think you’re on the verge of . . . having an eating disorder.”
My hand turned to ice in his. “Passing out was a one-time thing.”
“I can’t pretend I don’t recognize the symptoms. I’m an actor.
You think I don’t see this all the time? I should’ve clued into it sooner.”
I jerked my hand from his and stood. “I’m not anorexic. Is that what you’re thinking? Do I look it to you?”
“It’s not about—”
“I’m a long way from eighty-five pounds.”
“Erin and I both think you’re just right there at that point of no return. And I’m worried.”
I could hear my pulse pounding an angry beat in my ears. “So you and Erin have been talking about me. Anyone else? Taylor?
Beatrice?”
“Of course not.” He rose to his feet and stood in front of me. “But I think we need to talk to Nora.”
“Too late. Already talked to her today. Know what the consensus was? I’m stressed. Because I am. In case you haven’t noticed, I have a lot on my mind. My whole future will be decided by next week.”
“And then what?” Beckett’s eyes dared me to look away. “Then what, Finley?”
“Then . . . everything will be fine.”
“Will it?” He stepped away to pace in the small confines of the trailer. “Will you be over your brother then? Will you have your peace about the music? Or will you move onto something else to obsess about?”
“Like you?” I reached for my Diet Coke for something to do with my hands. “Is that what you’re afraid of—that I’ll focus all my attention on you? That I’ll have time on my hands to think I’m your real girlfriend?”
“That’s not fair, and you know it.”
“But I’m not your real girlfriend. I’m the girl you’re seeing in secret. The one your dad wants to write out of your script. Permanently.”
“You’re more than that. You’ve become my closest friend, the person I want to spend my time with. If anyone has my heart, it’s you.”
“But that’s not good for your image, is it? So you continue to let your dad feed all these stories to the press. My face with yours wouldn’t sell tickets. But Taylor’s does.”
“We’re talking about you. And the fact that you need help.”
There was a knot in my chest where oxygen should’ve been. “I don’t need your help or anyone else’s.”
Beckett stopped in front of me, held my shoulders in his hands.
“I’ve seen this. Do you hear what I’m saying to you? I know how it starts, and I know how it ends. I’ve seen the way you run like hell itself is chasing you. The way you have to control everything you touch, be so perfect.” He swallowed and his Adam’s apple bobbed.
“I saw you slip your food into your napkin that night we were here.”
“The roast was bad.”
“No.” He shook his head, his eyes calling me a liar. “That’s not true.”
A sob worked its way up my throat and I tried to breathe it away. “I’m tired, Beckett. I just want to go home and—”
“And pretend like this is going away? Play that violin until your bow snaps in two?”
“Yes! So what if I do? And then hopefully at some point the ending will write itself. Because we didn’t find my brother’s cross, so the song is still wrong. It’s wrong!” And my audition would be wrong.
“What’s messed up right now is you. Eating disorders are—”
“Just shut up!” I wanted him to stop talking about it. Like it was a brand I had to wear. “What about you? Like you’re perfect? I’m not the only screwup here, am I? Why don’t you come clean with your dad?”
His brow slowly lifted. “I think you’ve already done that for me.”
“Tell him you hate acting. Tell him you want to go to school. Is that really so hard? Maybe it’s just easier looking at someone else’s problems.”
“This is different.”
“Is it?” I got right in his beautiful face. “Don’t stand there in judgment of me when you’re living a lie too. You think everyone’s fake, a phony. Well, you’re the king of it. You don’t even have the guts to live your own life. You’re just Montgomery Rush’s puppet.”
Beckett stared at me so hard, I took an involuntary step back.
I expected him to yell and roar, but instead, in the silence of that moment, he closed his eyes, as if he was summoning up every ounce of his strength not to toss me out of the trailer with his bare hands.
“Finley.” His voice was deadly calm when he finally spoke. “I let you in more than I’ve ever let anyone into my life. I thought we had something. No matter what it appeared, it was real to me. Every second. I’ve been honest about that.”
“It’s not enough,” I said, surprised by my own words. Because this boy had a piece of me, and he’d been my brightest spot in Abbeyglen. “I won’t date someone who lets the world think he’s somebody else.”
“And you’re not doing the exact same thing, then?”
I looked at his stubbled face, his blond hair falling over his forehead, those full lips I’d kissed. The eyes that had shown me nothing but kindness. Until today. “I can’t do this anymore.”
“Finley—”
“No, Beckett. It’s over. We’re over.”
He pointed right at me. “You want to break up with me, you do it for the right reason. Don’t walk away from me just because I’m the first one to say you could be anorexic. Have the guts to face this.”
I shook my head. “This is about you. I’ll never be Taylor. I’ll never be good enough. If I were, you’d tell your dad, you’d tell the world that she’s not your girlfriend.”
“I have people depending on these movies. Hundreds of people. We have to handle it just right.”
“You sound like your father.” My arrow hit the mark, and I grabbed my purse. I was done here.
“You need help,” he said as I put my hand on the door. “You know I have to talk to Sean and Nora.”
“You can’t fix me, Beckett. No one can. Apparently even God himself can’t. I’m asking you not to go to the O’Callaghans. For me. It’s all I want from you.”
“I can’t do that. No matter what you think, I care about you.”
“The audition. Just give me ’til then. Then it won’t matter what you say or who you tell.” Because I had absolutely nothing left.
He gave a weary sigh, then nodded once. “You have ’til then.”