The Debt 3

The
Debt 3 (Club Alpha)

By Kelly Favor

© 2014 All Rights Reserved

Raven had just asked celebrity superstar Jake
Novak to trust her, and judging from the look on his face, Jake wasn’t going
for it.
 

Not one bit.

She couldn’t really blame him for being skeptical
of the idea that they could repair his image problem by pretending to be in a
relationship together.
 
It was a
long shot at best.

“Trust you?” he said, as if she’d just
asked him to jump on a live grenade.

For some reason, she kept
persisting.
 
“Yes, trust me.
 
Give me a chance, Jake, and if you don’t
like the way it’s going you can always end things.”

He shook his head, but she could tell he
was giving it serious thought.
 
“The
story won’t hold up,” he said, after a long pause.
 
“It’ll look like a PR stunt—which
is exactly what it would be.”

Raven smiled at him.
 
“How can you be so sure it won’t work?”

“We’ve only known each other a few days,”
he said.
 
“If this crazy idea was
going to have any chance, we’d need to have been dating a lot longer than
that.”

“How would anyone know how long you and
I’ve known each other?” she said.
 

The elevator doors had closed and now the
two of them were simply facing each other in the hotel hallway, Jake still
looking skeptically at her.
 
“You
don’t get it, Raven.
 
This isn’t
like going into school and telling your teacher that the dog ate your
homework.”

“I know that.”

His brown eyes grew darker as he
continued.
 
“These reporters are
going to look under every rock—they’re going to dig into every corner of
your life.”
 
He stepped closer to
her.
 
“Are you really ready to have
your world turned upside?”

She was taken aback by his scrutiny.
 
“I—I don’t know,” she said.

“Exactly,” he said, his expression
triumphant.
 
“You just broke down
when I applied the tiniest bit of pressure.
 
All your confidence went away and you
were left wondering if you could do it.
 
Well that’s not going to fly when Barbara fucking Walters starts
interrogating you on national television.”

“Isn’t Barbara Walters retired?”

Jake sighed impatiently.
 
“I don’t know.
 
Maybe.
 
And that’s not the point.”

“What is the point?”

“You can’t hack it,” Jake told her.
 
“And even if you could, the media will
pour through every story we tell, examine every tiny detail, and they’ll figure
out we’re lying.
 
Once they do that,
I’ll be worse off then where I am now.
 
And so will you.”

Raven shrugged.
 
“Maybe, maybe not.
 
I think we can pull it off.”

“That’s because you’re naïve,” he said.

“No, I’m really not.
 
How dare you tell me who and what I
am?
 
You don’t know anything about
what I’ve been through in my life.”
 
She had half a mind to slap him for how dismissive he was being.
 
“You know, this is exactly why you have
an image problem,” she said, pointing directly at him, finally poking him hard
in his chest.
 
It actually hurt her
finger because his muscles were like iron.

“What does that mean?”

“It means that you’re being a jerk right
now, just like you were in that stupid video.
 
Maybe the reason this is happening to
you, is because you haven’t changed since then.
 
Maybe I’m not the one who can’t hack it,
Jake.
 
Did you ever consider that?”
 
She turned on her heel and started
walking back to her room.

Jake was impossible, she decided.
 
He was so full of himself, so caught up
in his own media hype that he’d actually started to believe all of the
bullshit.
 

Good
riddance
, she thought,
fury boiling in her stomach once again.
 
The look of arrogance on his face!
 
Calling her naïve, telling her she couldn’t hack it.

“Raven,” he called from behind her.
 
“Hold on a second,” he said.

“Screw this,” she yelled, not looking
back at him.

She started to actually run, got to her
hotel room and quickly opened the door.
 
She wanted to slam it in his face, hard.
 

But then he was at the door before she
could close it.
 
He braced his arm
against the door and kept her from shutting it on him.
 
“I’m an asshole,” he said.
 
“I know that.”

“Yeah, so does the entire world,
Jake.
 
Now get away from me.”
 
She tried to shut the door but he held
it open as easily as if she’d been a two year old trying to close it on him.

“I’m trying to talk to you,” he said
calmly.
 
He was almost—almost
smiling.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she said,
breathing heavily.

“Like what?”
 
And now he was starting to actually
grin.

“This isn’t funny,” she said.
 
“What is wrong with you?
 
How can you smile and laugh at a time
like this?
 
Your whole life is
falling apart, Jake.”

“I know,” he said, still smiling
crookedly at her.
 
“But you’re
just…”

“What?”

“You’re so damn cute when you’re mad,
Raven
.”

She turned and walked away from the door,
having given up on shutting Jake out.
 
“You’re exhausting,” Raven said, wiping the strands of stray hair from
her face.
 
She stared out the
window.
 
“You’re so hot and cold.”

She heard his footsteps closing in behind
her.
 
“That’s why I told you I’m not
boyfriend material.”

Raven saw his reflection in the
glass—saw he was right behind her now.
 
It made her flash back to the previous
night when he’d come behind her, stripped off her robe and touched her so
perfectly.

She tried to wipe that memory away
because it only confused her.
 
“I
know that you’re not boyfriend material,” she said, still pretending to look
out the window when in reality she was watching Jake’s reflection in the
glass.
 
“It’s not about us being
together,” she said, knowing that was partly a lie.
 

Maybe it was even mostly a lie.

“If we were to do this,” Jake said
softly, “it would have to be perfect.
 
There’s no room for mistakes, no room for doubts.
 
Everything we do will be examined under
a microscope, combed over—people take pictures and video of every move I
make.”

Raven’s breath caught in her chest.
 
He was actually talking as if they were
going to go through with her suggestion, as if he might actually come out and
tell the entire world he was her boyfriend.
 

“I know they’d be watching us,” she said,
shivering a little at the thought of it.

Or maybe she was shivering because his
breath was hitting the skin on the back of her neck.
 
“You think you know,” he said, “but you
have no idea what bastards they can be.”

“I have an idea,” she replied,
remembering her own brush with the lies and rumors that had spread about her
when she was seventeen.
 
“Maybe I’ve
never lived it the way you have, but I can imagine.”

“No, you really can’t,” he said.
 
“Look at me, Raven.”

She turned and faced him, and his liquid
brown eyes were staring into hers.
 

“If you don’t want to do it, just say
no,” she told him.
 
“I’m not going
to beg you.”

“Are you sure?” he smiled, his lips
twisting into a slight grin.

“Jake, this is serious.
 
Stop confusing things.”

“I do want to do it,” Jake told her, “and
that’s what bothers me.”

“Why does that bother you?”

“Because it doesn’t make sense.
 
It’s too risky.
 
I don’t know you well enough to trust
you with my life, my career.
 
You
could ruin me.”
 
His eyes searched
hers, as if looking for the truth there.

She met his gaze and tried not to be
afraid.
 
“You could ruin me,
too.
 
And my life is just as
important to me as yours is to you.”

That seemed to surprise him.
 
He raised his eyebrows in response and
gave a low whistle.
 
“That was a
damn genius comment, Raven,” he said, scratching his chin.
 
He walked away from her and sat on the
edge of a couch, watching her from further away.

“So what now?” she asked him.

“I’m seriously thinking about putting you
to the test,” he said, laughing a little.
 
“It might be crazy, but then again, it might just work.
 
I’ve been travelling to Boston a lot,
spending time at the veteran’s center.
 
I could say I met you on one of my trips six or seven months ago.”

She swallowed.
 
“I keep to myself.
 
Nobody would know if I had a secret
boyfriend.
 
I mean, people wouldn’t
expect it, but I don’t think they could disprove it either.
 
How would anybody know?”
 
She thought about it some more.
 
“Of course, Max Mendez knows.”

“Don’t worry about him.
 
Max is discreet.”
 
Jake ran his thumb across his bottom
lip.
 
“And then there’s Skylar,”
Jake said.
 
“She knows we haven’t
been an item, she was with you the night of the party, right?”

“Yeah,” Raven said, suddenly feeling
guilty.
 
She hadn’t been thinking
about Skylar at all, only about Jake and the notion of being his fake
girlfriend.
 
“Sky’s fine, she won’t
say anything if I ask her not to.”

That hadn’t always been true,
Raven
thought, but now Skylar had more important things on
her mind than spreading gossip.
 
She
wasn’t going to be running around at the restaurant blabbering about Jake
Novak.
 
She was probably going to be
in the hospital and dealing with her health for the foreseeable future.

Jake took a deep breath and let it
out.
 
“We’re going to have to act
like we’re in a serious relationship,” he said, finally.
 
He looked over at her.
 
“Are you ready for that?”

She laughed.
 
“I think you need to ask yourself that
question, Jake.”

“Listen,” he said, getting up and coming
towards her again.
 
“I know what
this means.
 
I get it.
 
That’s why I’m telling you.
 
I need to know that you understand,
Raven.”

“I understand,” she said, her stomach on
fire from his challenge.
 
“I’m not
stupid.”

“I didn’t say you were stupid.”
 
He was close to her again, and she felt
the pull of him, the physical pull, and the wanting to be even closer.

Would he hold her at night when they were
pretending to be girlfriend and boyfriend?
 
Would they sometimes lay naked together, his arms encircling her,
keeping her safe and warm?

“You didn’t say it but you keep hammering
me over the head about how serious it’s all going to be,” she said, forcing
herself to stay present and not fall into fantasizing about him.
 
This whole thing couldn’t be based on
her trying to start a relationship with Jake.
 
If she tried to do that, he would break
her heart and she knew it.

“I just need to make sure that I can
trust you—“

“You’re never going to know that until we
do it,” she interrupted.

He stepped closer to her still, his jaw
working, hands clenching and unclenching.
 
“I want to do it,” he said, and the way he said it gave the statement a
hundred possible meanings.
 

All of the meanings she could think of
turned her on.
 
“If you want to do
it, then stop making excuses and just do it already.”