The Debt 4 (3 page)

Jake put his face almost against Scott’s
face, finally letting go of the man’s necktie as Scott fell back, gasping for
breath, coughing and sputtering.

“Scott, you’re a spoiled, spineless bully
who sends attack dogs to do your dirty work,” Jake said, and now he was calm
again.
 
“Without your money, you’d
be nothing and no one would listen to a word you say.
 
But I don’t give a shit about your
money, and I’m not afraid of you.”

Scott stared at Jake with frightened,
wide eyes.
 
“I know you’re not
afraid of me,” he rasped.

 
“You think because I put on fancy clothes and sing goofy songs that I
forgot how to do my old job, the one where I killed bad guys for a living?”

“No,” Scott whispered, coughing, spittle
dribbling from his mouth.
 
“No, I
don’t think that,” he said.

“Good,” Jake smiled.
 
“Because I’m only going to warn you like
this one last time, Scott.
 
Stay
away from the people I care about.”

The old woman was still yelling and
pounding on the inside of the door as Raven continued holding it shut from the
outside.

Jake stood up straight and buttoned his
suit coat, and Raven noted that he essentially was unmarked and unruffled by
the incident, not even a hair was out of place.
 
He shook out his arms and then cleared
his throat, as if putting an end to a slightly annoying situation.

 
Raven looked down at Scott, who had by
this time regained his
breath
, but looked completely
worn out, like a beaten dog.
 
The
CEO of Club Alpha didn’t meet her gaze this time.
 
Rather, he seemed to studiously avoid
making eye contact.

“Is he okay—“ Raven asked, but Jake
grabbed her free hand and dragged her away from the door.

“Come on,” he said.
 
“I’m not in the mood for sushi
anymore.”
 
Quickly he led her out of
the hallway, stopping only to drop a couple one hundred dollar bills on their
old table, before continuing on his way out of the restaurant.

Once they got outside, he started walking
down the street.
 
Four or five
blocks down, he pointed at a local pizza place.
 
“Want to grab a slice instead?” he asked
her.

Are
you serious?
She
thought.
 
You just practically killed a man and now you want pizza?
 

But then she realized that maybe this was
just the way Jake was.
 
After being
through war, what he’d done at Koan wasn’t such a big deal to him.

“Sure, I’ll get a slice,” she shrugged,
still buzzing from what she’d just witnessed him do.
 
Her thoughts were still scattered and
racing, questions bubbling and then popping, leaving her more confused than
she’d been before all of this.

Once inside the pizza shop, there was
only a few customers—a couple of old Italian men sitting in a booth and
one young guy in a track suit who couldn’t stop staring at Jake and Raven.
 
He looked like he’d just seen a ghost,
as the two of them walked up to the counter.

“Can I get a couple of slices of cheese?”
Jake asked.

If the man behind the counter knew who
Jake was, he didn’t show it.
 
Jake
paid for the pizza and a couple of sodas, dropped a few bills in the tip
jar.
 

The man behind the counter placed a
couple of gigantic pizza slices onto two large paper plates, the grease already
soaking through, and then Jake and Raven took the plates and sat down away from
the window and started to eat.

“I can’t believe you did that,” she said,
after taking a small bit of the abnormally large piece of pizza.
 
It was actually pretty good, although
too greasy for her tastes.

Jake chomped contentedly into his slice,
having folded it in half to better manage it.
 
“You need to try this technique,” he
said, showing her.
 
“Otherwise
you’ll never get through even half a slice.”

“I’m not really trying to have an eating
competition with you,” she said, but then she took his advice and folded her
pizza just the same.
 
As she took a
bite, she had to admit that it was indeed easier to eat, and tasted better
somehow.

Jake took a few napkins from the dispenser
and wiped his lips.
 
He chewed
happily, watching her.
 
“Good,
right?
 
I love this place.”

“You eat here a lot?”

He nodded, grinning.
 
“I’ve only been to that Koan place once,
a while back.
 
I just happen to know
that Scott eats there like clockwork the same day each week, at about the same
time.”

“I guess today was his lucky day then,” Raven
said.

“Yeah, I guess it was.
 
Just happened to work out that I knew
where he’d be.
 
But I would’ve
tracked him down one way or another.”
 
 

Outside, a couple of cop cars sped past
and Raven couldn’t help but wonder if they were zooming to the scene of the
assault, and whether or not Scott would be filing a report, and the old woman
from the restroom that Raven had locked inside might also be adding to the
witness pool.
 

Meanwhile, Raven and Jake were sitting
only a few blocks away, munching on greasy pizza like nothing had even
happened.

“You don’t really think that he’s going
to leave me alone now, do you?” Raven asked him.
 
“Because I don’t think he’ll stop.
 
I think he might even want to hurt me
worse after what you did to him.
 
He’ll blame me for that.”

Jake put his pizza down on the paper
plate and dusted his hands off.
 
“He’s not ever going to hurt you,” Jake told her.
 
“I meant what I said back there, I
wasn’t bluffing.”

“I know you weren’t,” Raven said
softly.
 
Butterflies were slowly
churning in her stomach.
 
Jake’s
ferocity and protectiveness were something new, and something very welcome,
even if she had a hard time trusting it was all real.

“I’ve dealt with way scarier guys than
Scott or Max or any of the fools from Club Alpha,” Jake said, shaking his head.
 
He picked up his pizza slice again,
hefting it.
 
“They don’t worry
me.
 
In fact, I’d almost enjoy
cracking some skulls just to show them they’re not as tough as they pretend to
be.”

Raven laughed, partly in disbelief.
 
“You know, there are bigger problems to
deal with than Club Alpha.
 
We still
haven’t dealt with your public relations disaster.”

“Sure we have,” he said.
 
“The media knows about you now.
 
They’ve seen us
together,
they’re starting to write stories about us being a couple.
 
Soon, they’ll want to know more about
you, your past, who you are and why we’re together.”
 
He snapped his fingers as he swallowed
another bite.
 
“And that’s when we
let the cat out of the bag about how you were bullied back in the day, yada
yada.”

Something about the way he said it all
made her uncomfortable.
 
He was back
to sounding as though it was all preplanned, totally superficial, that none of
it was even real to him.
 

Which
is it, Jake?
 
Do you care about me
or not?
 

Maybe
I’m just the property and you’re marking that territory, protecting me the way
you might take care of a shiny new car or a fancy guitar.
 

Maybe
I’m just one more thing you own.

“Sounds like you’ve got it all worked
out,” Raven said, sitting back and looking away from him.

“Hey,” he said, “what’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing,” she lied.

“Raven, your poker face is about as weak
as your appetite,” he told her.

She finally dragged her gaze to him, and
found his brown eyes focused on her, and it hurt because she wanted him so
badly, and wanted him to really care more than she had any right to.
 

“If my poker face was really that bad,
you wouldn’t need to keep pestering me about what I’m thinking,” she retorted
with an acid tone.

Jake’s eyes crinkled up as though she’d
just spit at him.
 
“I’m going to
pretend you didn’t just act like my ex,” he said bitterly.

“Your ex?”

He ripped another napkin from the
dispenser and wiped a glob of sauce from his thumb.
 
“Let’s not go there.”

“Which ex?” Raven said.
 
Something about this comment from him
both terrified her and also excited her.
 
He was comparing her to a real relationship from his past, but at the
same time, it wasn’t a very positive comparison.

“It’s nothing I want to talk about,” he
said.
 
He wiped at his hand over and
over again.
 
“We should go.
 
I think your lousy appetite is
infectious.”

“Jake,” she said, trying to halt the
meltdown that was happening between them.
 
“I didn’t mean to attack you,” she told him.

“It’s fine Raven,” he said, his face a
cold mask.
 
“You didn’t want to talk
about it, so forget I asked.”

“I do want to talk,” she said, wishing
she could take back her sudden burst of anger and frustration.
 
If only she wasn’t so sensitive, wanting
him to always prove how much he cared for her.
 
The thought that maybe this was all still
a big act was starting to eat her up inside.

Jake shook his head.
 
“Come on, we should get back to the
hotel.
 
Kurt’s probably going to
have a fit if we don’t meet with him soon and go over the schedule.”

Great, Raven thought.
 
Not only had she alienated Jake when he
was finally starting to trust her, but now she was going to have to deal with
his asshole manager again.

Jake dumped the trash and then texted his
driver.
 
Moments later, the black
sedan had pulled up in front of the pizza shop and then they were getting
inside.

Moments later, the two of them were
rushing out of the car and into the hotel
together
.

Raven realized that she was already
getting used to the bizarre alternate universe that Jake inhabited, as she
exited the car and ignored the paparazzi and their screams and camera flashes
as if they hardly even mattered.

***

Finally, Raven had some free time.
 

Jake had been decidedly cold as they’d
separated from one another after getting off the elevator.
 
He’d checked his phone and told her to
relax for an hour or two and then he’d let her know when Kurt was ready to
meet.

She’d almost tried to make an excuse not
to meet with them, but was too afraid of making an already bad situation worse.

Instead, she’d merely agreed to the plan
and then retreated to her hotel room, crawling into bed and searching the news
outlets and social media platforms for evidence about where public opinion was in
regards to Jake.

Raven’s name was starting to pop up more
and more, but right at the instant she looked, most of the public was still in
an uproar over the leaked video footage of Jake ranting about suicide being for
losers.

From what she gathered, a lot of the
press was negative, and even those defending Jake were doing so in rather
backhanded fashion.

There were a lot of calls for an apology,
an explanation, and a lot of people saying that he was just another example of
the entitled and spoiled Hollywood brats like Justin Bieber, Kanye West and Shia
Labeouf, as well as other poor role models littering the sports and
entertainment industry.

Some were saying that Jake had been young
and he was more mature now, but almost everyone agreed that a public apology,
one that was honest and heartfelt, was needed to quell the growing cries for
Jake Novak’s head.

If he didn’t get ahead of this thing, if
he didn’t do some serious damage control, it was theorized that he would lose
some of possibly all of his big endorsement deals and even his tour might end
up floundering.

Raven’s
own name came up a few times in the
news, but for the most part, she was just talked about in passing.
 
There were some photos showing them
walking through New York City together.