The Debt 5 (4 page)

“I’ll get the door,” Raven said, getting
to her feet and walking quickly to the door and opening it.

She was shocked to see Jake standing
there in the hallway.

Jake raised his eyebrow at her.
 
“Can I come in?”

“Hey Jake,” Skylar said from the couch,
giving a weak smile.

He brushed past Raven and walked into the
room, then went and sat down on one of the chairs.
 
“Tell me what’s up,” Jake said.
 
“I heard you got called in to meet with
the doctor.”

Skylar nodded, blinking.
 
“Yeah.
 
The news wasn’t good.”

Raven folded her arms, not sure what to
do.
 
She was still glad to see Jake,
to feel his presence—it was still comforting.
 
She instantly felt as though things
would be okay again, just from him being in the room.
 
But then again, she knew that everything
had changed and Jake no longer wanted to make everything okay for her.

But at least he still cared about Skylar,
Raven thought.
 
That was more
important than anything else right now.

“You’re going to be fine,” Jake told
Skylar.
 
When he said it, it seemed
like indisputable fact.
 
He leaned
forward, elbows on his knees.
 
“Do
you hear me?
 
We’re going to make
sure you get the very best treatment.”

“I don’t expect anything else from you,”
Skylar told him.

“I’m not asking your permission to help,”
Jake said, “so don’t bother trying to talk me out of this.”
 
He glanced over at Raven.
 

“He’s right,” Raven said.
 
“You’ve got to let Jake help you.”

Jake nodded, looking back at Skylar.
 
“First things first, we need to find the
very best hospital.
 
It’s probably
Sloan Kettering—“

“She wants to be home,” Raven told
him.
 

“Boston?” Jake said.

Skylar sighed.
 
“Boston has good hospitals, too, don’t
they?”

“Sure they do,” Jake said.
 
“Yeah, of course.”
 
He straightened up a little.
 
“Let me make some phone calls and figure
out what’s available.
 
Whoever we
end up choosing in Boston can coordinate with your doctor at Sloan Kettering to
formulate a treatment plan.”

Skylar hugged herself.
 
“I don’t know why you’re doing all of
this.
 
You’re busy, you hardly even
know me.”

Jake glanced at Raven again but looked
quickly back to Skylar.
 
“I’m doing
it because I want to, that’s all you need to know.
 
This is no big deal for me.
 
One of the few perks of being famous is
that it’s easy to pull strings and throw money at problems.”
 
He grinned.

Skylar smiled back at him.
 
“I don’t even know how to thank you.”

“You just did.”
 
Jake reached out and gave her arm a
gentle squeeze, and then he stood up and came towards Raven.

His brown eyes were intent and
unreadable.
 

“Thanks,” she murmured softly.

“I need to talk to you,” he said.
 
“In private.”

“Of course.”
 
Her heartbeat picked up instantly.
 
“Should we go somewhere now?”

“I’m going to go for a swim.
 
Meet me at my room in five and I’ll be
ready.”
  

Jake left and Raven talked a few more
minutes with Skylar and then went to meet Jake at his room.

She was nervous, wondering what exactly
he might want to talk to her about.
 

They’d already agreed that she would go
back to Boston. What was left to discuss?

As she knocked on his door, she flashed
on a mental image of Jake throwing open the door, grabbing her by the wrist,
and dragging her into his room.

Once inside, she fantasized about Jake
telling her his elaborate plans to punish her for defying him and keeping
secrets.
 
Each transgression would
require him to spank her repeatedly, to rip her clothes off, tie up her wrists
and ankles—

The door opened and Raven snapped out of
it.

Jake was wearing shorts, a t-shirt and
flip-flops.
 
He had a towel slung
over his shoulder.
 
“Do you swim?”
he asked.

“I don’t have a bathing suit,” she
replied.

“I can get you one.”

“No, it’s okay.”
 
She had to avert her eyes from him,
because just picturing him shirtless was making it difficult to think straight,
and she needed to stay alert for whatever he wanted to say to her.
 

“Okay, whatever,” Jake sighed, shutting
the door.
 
He started to walk down
the hallway to the elevators, hitting the button and turning to her while they
waited.
 
“Is Skylar handling the
news all right?” he asked.

Raven thought about it, shrugged.
 
“You talked to her.
 
What do you think?”

“I don’t know her like you do,” Jake
said.
 

Raven licked her lips and stared down at
the carpet.
 
“You told her not to
worry about the fact that you’re helping her so much.”

“That’s right, it doesn’t do her any good
to worry about anything outside of fighting this cancer.”

Raven looked up and met his brown-eyed
gaze.
 
“Well, now I’m asking.
 
Why are you helping her?
 
Lots of people get cancer, Jake, and
you’re not helping all of them.”

The elevator came and the doors
opened.
 
Jake’s mouth turned up at
the corner, ever so slightly.
 
“Saved by the bell,” he said, stepping inside.

Raven followed.
 
There were a few other people in the
elevator—specifically a couple and their teenage daughter.
 
She started freaking out that she was standing
so close to JAKE NOVAK, and Jake laughed and graciously took a picture with
her.

They got off and went to the pool.
 
Luckily, there was nobody else swimming
but a very old man who seemed lost in his own world and was swimming laps so
slow that Raven wondered how he even managed to stay afloat.

Jake walked to one of the lounge chairs
and dropped his towel on it, then proceeded to strip off his t-shirt.
 
He tossed that on the chair as
well.
 
His upper body looked
flawless, like a work of art, smooth and hard and perfectly proportioned.
 

Jake he kicked off his flip-flops as Raven
sat down on the edge of the chair next to his.
 
“So what did you want to talk about?”
she asked him.

Jake flexed his arms, and his biceps
expanded, and then his chest and abs tightened and she had to look away from
him again.
 
 

It was embarrassing what he did to her,
and she didn’t want him to see it so clearly.
 
She felt exposed whenever he so much as
glanced her way.

“I wanted to talk about payment,” Jake
said.
 
He ran a hand through his
hair.

“Payment?”

“Since you’re going back to Boston today,
I was thinking about the arrangement we discussed, and I decided that I’m going
to pay you fifty and call it settled.”

“Fifty…fifty dollars?” she asked, her
mouth suddenly dry.

Jake chuckled.
 
“Fifty thousand.”
 
And then he turned and did a perfect
dive into the pool.

Raven just sat there, her mouth hanging
open.

Jake swam the length of the pool without
coming up for air.
 
He surfaced down
at the far end, took a breath and then went back under.
 
When he popped up again he was right in
front of her.

He lifted the upper part of his torso
above the waterline and hung his arms on the side of the pool.
 
Water dripped down his face and he used
his hand to wipe it from his eyes.
 
“Towel?” he asked, reaching out to her.

She grabbed his towel and handed it over
to him.
 
He pressed it against his
face and then handed it back to her.

“Jake, I can’t accept that,” she told
him.

“It’s just a damp towel,” he joked.

“I’m serious.
 
I can’t take that money, it’s too much.”
 
She held onto his towel, clutching it to
her lap.

Jake stared at her, his brown eyes
somehow warm and cold all at once.
 
“Raven, it’s not up for discussion.
 
I’m telling you what’s happening so you know what to expect.”

“But why?
 
You’re angry at me, I didn’t help you, I
only made things worse—“

“Because I want to do it.
 
And anyway, the money’s already been
wired to your checking account.”

Raven once again had to resist the tears
that were welling up behind her eyes.
 
She blinked rapidly and looked away, and then Jake dipped backwards into
the water, and was swimming beneath the surface towards the other side of the
pool.

She watched as he smoothly came up once
more for air on the far end, took a breath, then dipped back under and began the
next lap.

He did lap after lap, not stopping to
rest or talk.
 
Raven started to feel
that she’d been dismissed.
 

It was over, wasn’t it?

This was the big kiss-off.
 
He was paying her to get out of his life
and not carry any hard feelings.
 
She stood, as Jake was midway through one of his laps across the
pool.
 

She watched him for a moment, his perfect
body mostly obscured under the blue water, gliding almost effortlessly,
glimmering there beneath the surface, so close yet so distant all at once.
 

It was like she’d been living in a dream
world, and now she was waking up.
 
The shimmering glow of this new world faded and everything became just
normal once again—her old world had returned with a vengeance.
 
She was just a regular girl, going back
to Boston, looking for work,
trying
to find a place to
live.

The wild, restless soul that had pulled her
out of her shell and shown her places within and without that she’d never
imagined—that restless soul was moving on.
 
He would never be tamed, never settle
for someone ordinary like Raven.

She was on her own again, and she was
going back to her old life.

Maybe that would be a relief in a way.

Raven turned and walked away from the
pool, wondering if Jake would even notice she had gone.

***

She took almost nothing with her, in the
end—just the clothes on her back, choosing to leave behind the suitcase
full of couture that Kurt had brought to her room, along with his sneer and his
manipulations.

Besides, Raven didn’t want any clothing
that would remind her of this time spent with Jake—it would be too sad.

Before leaving, she stopped by Skylar’s
room and said goodbye.
 
Skylar was
planning on returning to Boston late the next day with her parents.
 
She had another doctor’s appointment to
go to, but she seemed in great spirits.

It seemed as though Jake had continued to
be in contact with Skylar and the staff at Sloan Kettering, which made Raven
both relieved and desperately sad all at once.

Skylar seemed to sense that there was
something going on between Jake and Raven, but didn’t ask any questions.
 
That was a relief, because if Raven had
had to talk about any of it, she’d have broken down sobbing.
 
And that wouldn’t have been at all fair
to do with her friend who’d just received a cancer diagnosis.

Skylar promised she would make Raven aware
of any important updates, and then they hugged and said they’d see one another
back in Boston.

A few minutes later, Raven was walking
through the hotel lobby, about to catch a cab to take her to Port Authority, and
from there, a bus back to Boston.

She was so distracted thinking about the
way things had ended so suddenly and prematurely between her and Jake that she
didn’t even notice when a man started walking right next to her.