The Debt 4 (10 page)

Her father beamed, shaking his hand with
enthusiasm.
 
“Jake, I love your
films.
 
I’ve watched most of them,
and I can’t tell you what an honor it is to meet you in person.”

“The honor is all mine,” Jake told him.

“Are you two hungry?
 
Do you want to go to your room and
decompress for a bit?” Raven’s mother asked.

“Our room?” Raven said.
 
“I thought we’d stay at the Ramada.”

“Don’t be silly,” her father said.
 
“You two can stay in the guest room.”

“What about my old room?”

“Your stuff went into the attic,” Danny
said.
 
“Now it’s my room.”

“You’re still living at home?”

He shook his head and snorted.
 
“You haven’t changed a bit.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means, you just got home and you’re
already making snap judgments and looking down on everybody.”

“Danny, that’s not fair.”

He waved her off.
 
“Whatever, I’ve got to get some work
done.
 
Tell me when dinner’s ready,”
he said to their mother, and then left.

An awkward silence descended on the room.

Jake smiled and looked at Raven’s mother.
 
“So where’s the guestroom?”

“I’ll show you,” Raven’s mother
said.
 
“Come you two.
 
We’ll get you settled in, plenty of time
for catching up later.”

***

 
After Raven’s mother had shown them to
the guestroom and left, Raven sat down on the bed and put her head in her
hands.

Jake was opening his bag and rummaging
around inside.
 
“Hey,” he said, stopping for a second to
look at her.
 
“Are you upset that
they put your stuff and storage and relegated us to the guest room?”

“This is just my brother’s old room, and
no, I don’t care about that,” Raven said, running her fingers through her
hair.
 
“I just hate that it’s like
this.
 
This is exactly what I was
afraid of.”

“Of course it’s going to be tense at
first,” Jake said.
 
“You haven’t
shown your face in a few years and nobody knows how to act around you.”

“There’s a reason I haven’t shown my face
in years.”

He went back to looking in his bag.
 
“Families are tough.
 
I mean, I see my family a couple times a
year and they drive me crazy too.
 
Me and my dad go at it sometimes like a couple of lions trying to kill
each other.”

“Does your brother hate you?” she asked
him, finally turning her head to look at him.

“No, my younger brothers both look up to
me,” he said.
 
“But that’s another
thing altogether.
 
Anyway, my point
is that family is always complicated, Raven.”

“Well mine is more complicated than
most.”
 
She shook her head.
 
“I still can’t believe that my dad is in
a wheelchair with oxygen.
 
He looks
so weak and tired and old.”

“He wasn’t like that before?”

She blinked, trying to keep tears at
bay.
 
“No, he wasn’t.
 
He smoked like a chimney so we always
worried, but now it seems like he got sick and nobody told me about it.”

There was a knock on the door and Jake
straightened up, rising to his feet.
 
“Who is it?” he asked.

“It’s Danny.”
 
His voice wasn’t particularly friendly.

Jake looked at Raven, silently asking
what she wanted.
 
She nodded at him
and he went and opened the door, while she continued sitting on the bed.

Danny came into the room slowly, as if he
thought he might be attacked.
 
He
seemed wary, especially of Jake.

Seeing them side-by-side, Raven was
surprised at how small her brother looked in comparison.
 
Danny had always had a big personality,
so somehow she’d always thought of him as being a big guy.
 
But in truth he was short, kind of
flabby, and he seemed intimidated by Jake’s stature.

“When Mom told me you were coming to
visit,” Danny said, “she didn’t really mention that you were going to show up
like Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.
 
I
didn’t know this was going to be some sort of royal visit.”

“Danny, please, don’t start in on me,”
Raven said.
 
“We haven’t seen each
other for years and the first thing you do is act rude and angry, like you want
me to leave already.”

“Because I do want you to leave,” Danny
told her.

“Wow, that’s really nice.”
 
She looked up at the ceiling and prayed
for strength.

“You can’t just leave for years at a time
and expect to show up out of the blue and get the red carpet rolled out,
Raven.”
 
Danny glared at her.
 
Then he looked at Jake and his
expression got even less friendly.
 
“And just because you’re seeing some big celebrity, don’t expect me to
fall on my knees and kiss your feet.
 
I couldn’t possibly care less who my sister dates.”

Jake smiled at him.
 
“I get that you and your sis have
problems, but I never did anything to you, partner.”

“You’re not my partner, dude.
 
You’re just some jackass who sings and
dances, and I really don’t appreciate you two coming here and getting Mom and
Dad all stirred up.
 
Dad’s sick, you
know, and he doesn’t need the stress.”

“Why didn’t anyone even try and tell me
he got sick?
 
And what exactly does
he have?” Raven said.

“He has COPD,” Danny told her, “caused by
smoking.”

“What does that even mean?”

Jake glanced at Raven.
 
“That means he’s got Chronic Obstructive
Pulmonary Disease.
 
It’s a
progressive disease, not curable, and the treatments are of limited
effectiveness, although lifestyle changes can help.”

“What is this dude, a walking Web MD or
something?” Danny said, gesturing to Jake with a complete lack of respect.

“No, I just have friends from the
military who have COPD, so I’ve done a bit of reading and had some discussions
with physicians about it,” Jake said, keeping his cool.

Danny wouldn’t look at Jake, instead training
his attention on Raven.
 
“You two
should just go,” he said.
 
“Why do
you want to come here and mess with everybody?
 
We were doing just fine without you.”

“If you want me to go so badly, I’ll go,”
she said, standing up and meeting his gaze.
 
“But I think you’re being a real
asshole, Danny, and that’s saying something, even for you.”

They glared at each other for a long time
and then Danny started to smile a little bit.
 
Raven was cracking a smile too, and she
wasn’t even sure why.

“This is silly,” Jake told them.
 
“You two care about one another, that
much is obvious.
 
We’re only staying
in town for a day or two at most.
 
Can’t you just get along, ignore each other if you have to, until the
visit’s over?”

Danny sighed, putting his hands on his
hips.
 
“Fine,” he said, his
shoulders slumping as if he’d given in after all.
 
“I’m sorry I was so rude to you and your
boyfriend,” Danny told her.

“Thank you,” Raven told him.
 
“And I’m sorry I didn’t call and check
on Dad.
 
That was wrong of me.”

“Whatever.
 
Let’s just try and be nice,” Danny
agreed.
 
“Mom and Dad are happy
you’re here, so I’ll be happy too.”
 
He held out his hand.
 
“Truce?”

“Truce,” she agreed, and then they shook.

Jake grinned at both of them.
 
“We should go and celebrate this little
victory with a drink.
 
Isn’t there a
bar around here we could go to?”

“What about dinner?” Raven said.

“We’ll just go out for one drink
beforehand,” Jake told her.

“Not me,” Danny said.
 
“I never go out to the local bars.
 
The people in this town suck.”

Raven kind of felt the same way, but she
also figured that at this time of day the chances of anyone she knew being out
drinking was slim to none.
 
And she
wanted to spend some time with Jake.
 
Getting a drink or two, loosening up, sounded quite right about then.

“I’ll get a drink with you,” she told
Jake.
 
“There’s a pub less than a
mile from here, we could walk there and have a drink and then come back in time
for dinner.”

“Now you’re talking,” Jake said, putting
his arm around her waist.

Her entire body felt like it had been
zapped with electricity.

Danny just shook his head.
 
“Okay, but don’t say I didn’t warn the
two of you.”

***

Someone had told at least a few members
of the paparazzi of their whereabouts, because not five minutes into their
walk, there were a couple of men following them a few yards back, with
cameras.
 
They hadn’t begun
screaming insults or questions yet—in fact, they seemed content to merely
snap photos.

Raven turned to Jake.
 
“How the heck did the paparazzi find
us?”

He shrugged.
 
“Could’ve been anybody.
 
Someone spots us and tips off a friend
of a friend, or maybe someone leaked it.
 
Hell, Kurt might’ve leaked it on purpose.”

“Why?” she said, horrified.

Jake grabbed her hand and held it tight
as he answered.
 
“Why?” he
laughed.
 
“We
want
these pictures to get out, baby.
 
We want the story out there.
 
That’s why we’re here.”

“I hate this,” she muttered.
 
The truth was, she hated it because she
also liked it way, way too much.
 
Walking with Jake in the fading sunlight of a beautiful day in her hometown,
seeing the shadows play on the sidewalk, listening to the trees as the wind
blew across the leaves.
 

Jake next to her, feeling so solid, so
real, his hand warm and strong, his body seemed made to protect her.

How could it feel so natural to walk like
this together?

Even the way he’d handled her
brother.
 
Danny could be so
difficult, so rude and condescending, and yet Jake had kept cool and never
batted an eyelash.

It was sexy.

Jake Novak was beyond sexy and that was
the problem.

“You should try and enjoy this more,”
Jake said, grinning.
 
His brown eyes
looked at her with knowing affection.

“The problem might be that I enjoy it
plenty,” she said.

He laughed.
 
“That’s not a problem unless you make it
into one.”
 
And that’s when he
stopped dead in the middle of the street and laid a beautiful, perfect,
romantic kiss on her lips.

Faintly, Raven could hear the cameras
clicking as the lucky paparazzi got some pictures that would likely sell for
quite a bit of money.

She put her hand up and felt the scruff on
Jake’s cheek, and it made her smile.
 
Her eyes had been half-closed, but now she made sure to look at him.

When they made eye contact, she felt her whole
body flush with warmth, as Jake’s liquid eyes seemed to melt her when she
looked into them for too long.
 

He
feels it too.

I
know he does.
 
There’s no way all of
this is just for show, I don’t care what he says.
 
His eyes tell a different story.

But then the kiss ended, and Jake cleared
his throat, taking her by the hand and starting to walk again.
 
“That was interesting,” he told her.

“How so?”

“Let’s just leave it at that,” he replied
mysteriously.

By that time, they’d arrived at The
Drunken
Monkey,
a neighborhood dive bar that Raven had
often seen the older crowd go to after returning home from college.