by Hannah Ford
He shook his head. “Nothing,” he replied. He put the phone in his pocket and looked at her. “What’s important right now is Skylar.”
“But from what I saw on TV just now—“
“I said some dumb stuff a few years back. Apparently now they’re getting around to crucifying me for it.” He smiled wryly. “That’s life.”
She wanted to really talk to him about it, because she sensed that there was a lot more to this then how he was portraying it. Jake was acting like it was no big deal, but his eyes told a different story, and when Skylar came out of the bathroom, Raven could sense that Jake was distracted.
He tried not to show it though, as he helped to console Skylar along with Raven.
“My hands are shaking,” Skylar said, holding them up as proof.
“Of course your hands are shaking,” Raven said. “You’ve been through a lot, but it’s over for now. You’ve done everything you need to do and now you can relax a little and wait to find out what’s next.”
“The waiting isn’t the fun part,” Skylar said.
“I’ve booked us three rooms in the Ritz Carlton,” Jake said, putting his hand on Skylar’s shoulder. “That way we can stay over tonight and not have to worry about traveling again, and you can get some rest.”
Skylar looked at him with gratitude, her eyes filling with tears. Then she looked at Raven. “You guys have been so amazing to me. I can’t ever thank you enough.” She started to cry and Jake enveloped her in a big hug.
For a moment, Raven was afraid of feeling jealous. But she was relieved to find that she wasn’t jealous at all of how Jake was treating Skylar. She felt like he was doing it out of the goodness of his heart and not any ulterior motive.
Skylar needed all the help she could get.
Raven’s gaze strayed back to the television and found that there was a commercial on. Whatever was going on with Jake and this scandal, she’d have to wait to find out.
* * *
She’d been restraining herself from trying to look up information about the scandal on her phone, but hadn’t wanted to risk Jake seeing her do it. He hadn’t taken any phone calls or texted anybody, seeming to prefer to focus on getting them all back to the hotel and comforting Skylar.
And Sky was doing a little better, though clearly she was exhausted.
They were all tired. It was so late at night and they’d have to be up relatively early the next day for Jake to get back for his show in Boston.
Not to mention whatever else he was going to be dealing with now that he had some sort of public relations crisis going on. Raven found it fairly odd that he simply acted like nothing out of the ordinary was going on.
She could even see it in the faces of the people in the hotel when he came inside—there wasn’t the same warmth in the way they were greeting him. Whatever Jake had done, it was changing the way he was being treated.
Jake had managed to get the three of them rooms all on the same floor. Was Raven a little disappointed that he hadn’t put her in the same room as him? She had to admit that she was. It didn’t make any sense to feel that way, but she did.
The truth was, she wanted to be close to him, to talk to him, hear his voice, thoughts and opinions.
But it was better this way, Raven told herself, as the three of them got off the elevator and made their way to separate rooms.
They went to Skylar’s room first, and Raven gave Sky a long hug. “You want me to come in with you for a minute?” Raven asked her.
Skylar shook her head no. “I’m seriously going to crash the second my head hits the pillow.”
“I love you, Sky. Sleep well and call me or text me if you need anything—anything at all, okay?” Raven said.
Skylar nodded, said goodnight to Jake, and then opened the door to her room and went inside.
Once the door was closed, Jake looked at Raven. “You look tired too,” he said.
“I am. And I would have thought you’d be the most tired. You performed a pretty intense show tonight. How can you still be standing?”
Jake laughed. “This is nothing compared to staying up two or three straight days like I did in Afghanistan.”
They walked a short way down the hall until getting to Raven’s room. She took out her room key as Jake stood beside her. It felt like the end of a long date, and she suddenly didn’t want him to leave. Raven turned and looked at him. “You know that what you did for Skylar today…I can never repay you.”
Jake rolled his eyes. “Don’t go getting all sappy on me now.”
“I’m serious, Jake. I still don’t understand why you did all of this.”
“Let’s just say that I get it,” he told her. “I get how it feels to be in your position.”
And then she remembered Jake’s fiancé. Of course, she’d passed away from cancer. How could Raven not have seen it, not connected the two things?
She felt stupid and a little embarrassed. Jake was someone who understood what it was like to be completely ambushed by a loved one getting diagnosed with cancer.
Raven had made the mistake of assuming that what Jake was doing for Skylar had something to do with herself.
Well didn’t he say that he was doing it for me? Didn’t he say as much?
He had said something like that, but as she thought about it, the whole thing made way more sense when she took his fiancé into account. That’s what this was really all about. He couldn’t save his dead fiancé, so now he was trying to save Skylar.
Raven put her hotel key up to the door and it clicked open. Jake was still standing right there, he hadn’t left to go to his own room yet. She looked at him. “Well, goodnight I guess.”
He smiled, a little sadly, she thought.
“Yeah, goodnight, Raven.” He turned and walked away.
She felt strange watching him go. Why did she feel as if he was supposed to stay, why did she have this uncomfortable sensation that he hadn’t wanted to walk away?
You’re getting too involved. You’re starting to read things into this that don’t belong, bringing your own baggage to everything. Jake Novak is a rich, powerful and handsome celebrity and you’re flattered by his attentions.
But he’s not interested in you in that way, Raven. He’s made that very clear with every single thing he’s said and done. You’re only here to service his needs.
Except, as she walked into her hotel room and closed the door behind her, she thought that none of those things were completely true anymore. Jake wasn’t just using her for his own needs.
He’d gone out of his way for her—and for her friend. He was in a hotel room in New York, probably falling-down tired, and he could’ve been snuggled up in Boston, ten minutes away from the arena. He could have woken up bright-eyed, ready to face the day having gotten plenty of sleep and not been spending his time dealing with doctors and hospitals and some stranger’s health issues.
Raven wasn’t sure what she thought anymore. She tried to shake off all the confusing thoughts, went into the bathroom and started the shower running. As she waited for it to warm up, she started googling the scandal about Jake.
Right away, she knew it was bad. In just the last few hours, there were hundreds of stories and blog posts, Twitter and Facebook comments.
This story had completely obliterated the excitement that Courtney Taylor’s little song had caused. This new story made that one look like nothing but a drop in the bucket.
In fact, this new scandal was like a super storm that was wiping out everything in its path.
Logging into Jake’s social media, she saw hundreds of new messages, and most of them were not the positive stuff she was used to seeing from his fans.
Somehow, a video had recently surfaced that had been shot years before, when Jake was still in the military. It must have been shot by one of his military friends. Jake was in full uniform, and he looked very young, arrogant and hardened.
She found one clip on YouTube that already had well over forty thousand v
iews. The title of the clip said: Jake Novak Talks Crap about Suicide Victims
When it started, Jake was already in mid-sentence. He was standing next to a large machine gun that was mounted on a crumbling wall. Jake seemed to be chewing tobacco, holding a cup below his mouth and occasionally spitting into it. There was a bulge under his lower lip. “…You got to be kidding me,” Jake said. “I’m out here risking my life for these people,” He looked directly into the camera, shaking his head. “If someone decides to kill themselves, am I supposed to feel bad for that idiot? They threw away their life because some kids at school picked on them, while I’m doing everything I can to stay the hell alive. Damn, if you want to feel picked on and bullied, try coming to a foreign country and have people suicide bombing you and shooting at you from rooftops when you walk down the street.”
She paused the video for a moment to collect her emotions.
Raven felt sick. There was a burning shame and rage inside her upon hearing his cold judgments. What did he know about having been bullied? How could he say what that could do to another person?
Maybe he would have liked to trade places with her in high school.
I’d like to see how you would have handled it, Jake. I’d like to see what you’d do without your strength and good looks, your charm and your confidence. You don’t know what it’s like to be ganged up on. But maybe you’re about to find out.
Raven took a deep breath and pressed play again on the video, even though part of her could hardly stand to watch it after hearing what he’d already said.
Now someone was laughing off camera.
“Preach it, Jake!” Another person called out.
Jake continued, seemingly emboldened by the encouragement he had received off camera. “My friends have been shot,” he said, “and one of my best buddies got killed by a damn roadside bomb.”
The guy behind the camera asked him an inaudible question.
Jake looked away for a moment, and then back into the camera, eyes blazing. “That’s exactly what I’m saying. If you commit suicide, you’re a loser. You’re a loser, okay? It’s that simple, man. I have no damn sympathy for someone that throws their life away. Come here if you want to die so bad. Come to damn Afghanistan, come to Iraq, at least do it for a purpose. We got people here who would do anything to stay alive and you end it all because…who knows why people do that crap? They’re full of excuses. Maybe you’re being bullied because you’re weak. Maybe you need to get a backbone. I don’t think those people should be mourned or missed. Screw them. Screw you, if you try to kill yourself—I’ve got no sympathy.”
And then the clip ended.
Raven groaned and thought about replaying it, but then decided not to. She didn’t want to hear him say any of that again. It turned her stomach to see him talking like that, even though she knew he was probably just young and angry and maybe sad from seeing horrible things during his battles in Afghanistan.
People who watched this video now weren’t going to cut him slack, though. They were absolutely going to rip him to shreds for those comments. Way too many people had been affected by a loved one committing suicide or battled depression themselves.
And Raven understood better than most, what his words would do to someone who’d actually lived the things he’d so casually dismissed in that video.
Scrolling through news articles, Raven saw that he was already getting blasted by the media, and there was talk of Jake losing many of his sponsorship deals. After all, his whole media presence was based upon this family-friendly, non-controversial image. Now he’d turned himself into a very unlikeable figure, a guy who despised people that had reached the lowest point in their lives and felt no other way out than to end it.
He sounded like a bully. And bullies were considered just about the lowest of the low at this time in history.
Raven got in the shower and tried to just let all the tension go away.
What was happening with Jake wasn’t her business. He could take care of himself just fine, she told herself. She, on the other hand, was still in plenty of trouble.
And then there was Skylar. What would happen to her if the biopsy of the mass on her cervix came back positive for cancer?
These were real problems. Jake Novak’s public relations debacle wasn’t a real problem. And the way he’d made fun of people who had tried to take their own life because of bullying—it made her angry the more she considered it.
She wanted to call him out on his remarks. It reminded her of all the people from her past and the way they’d once talked about her. The callous, cruel nature of people who’d never been on the receiving end, only on the giving side.
Remembering those people from her past was upsetting. She’d tried to leave it all behind when she’d left home at seventeen and now here she was, forced to relive it yet again thanks to Jake Novak’s irresponsible rant.
The longer she thought about it and replayed Jake’s comments in her mind, the angrier she became. Getting out of the shower, Raven put on one of the hotel bathrobes, since she didn’t have any new clothes to change into (yet again!).
But she didn’t really care. Leaving her hotel room, still soaking wet, she cinched her robe tight and strode down the hall until she reached his room, banging on the door loudly.
Eventually, she heard him muttering inside, and then his footsteps approaching. When he opened the door, he was wearing only his boxer shorts and nothing else.
His body was so hard, muscles etched and cut as if he was made from stone, skin tight with just the slightest glistening of sweat around his chest and abdomen.
The almost nakedness of him surprised her, but she refocused on her anger.
“What’s up?” he asked, blinking, as if he’d been sleeping already.
“I watched the video,” she told him.
“What video?”
“You know what video. The one that everyone’s freaking out about.”
Jake stood in front of the door, one arm outstretched, blocking the entrance. His eyes were bloodshot. “Raven, let’s talk about it tomorrow.”
“No,” she said, not caring that he was tired anymore, not caring that he’d helped out her friend far more than he’d needed to, not even caring that this scandal was probably playing havoc with his already overburdened mind. “I don’t want to wait until tomorrow,” she said.
His lips tightened and then he dropped his arm and stepped to the side, making way for her to enter his room. “Have it your way, then.”
“For once,” she said, walking briskly past him, trying not to feel silly in her puffy hotel bathrobe. She was angry, she liked the feeling of self-righteousness—the confidence it was giving her.
Jake folded his arms, making his biceps flex and appear even bigger, as he stood there and waited for her to speak. “Well?” he said. “Say what you have to say, already. I’m tired.”
“You’re tired?” she said, sneering. “You’re tired?”
“Yeah, I am. It’s been a damn long day.”
“Well I’m tired of your bullshit.”
Jake shook his head and turned away from her. As he walked, he chuckled a little bit. “Okay,” he laughed.
“Don’t walk away from me,” she said.
“I’m getting a drink, Raven. You want something? Water?” he asked, making his way to the fridge.
“No, I don’t,” she snapped. He was trying to lull her with his kindness, trying to take the steam out of her, but she refused. She was angry as hell and Jake wasn’t going to charm it out of her.
He grabbed a bottle of Evian from the fridge, opened it and took a few loud gulps. “I’m still waiting,” he informed her.
“That video of you is disgusting,” she said.
“Great. Anything else?”
“How dare you judge people who’ve attempted suicide, or succeeded? Who do you think you are?”
“I was a kid,” he replied. “That video was made years ago when I was in the heat of my second tour in A
fghanistan. I resented that other people my age were going to college, having fun—I even resented their depression. I was an idiot. So what?”
“So what?” she said, throwing up her arms. “So what? Is that your brilliant public relations campaign? Because if so, you need a new angle.”
Jake slammed the bottle of water down on the bar and crossed back in front of her. A vein pulsed in his forehead. “I didn’t ask for a lecture about public relations from a twenty-one year old ex-waitress.”
“Don’t forget social media coordinator,” she taunted.
“Why are you doing this?” he asked her. His eyes searched hers. “Don’t you think I realize how bad this is? I haven’t answered my phone in hours. I’ve got so many texts and voicemails that I’ve got not memory left in my cell phone to store them.”
“Oh, boo hoo,” she said. “Am I supposed to feel bad for the megastar with too many voicemails?”
“No, I didn’t say that.” He ran a hand through his hair. “It seems like you’re trying to kick me when I’m down, Raven.”
“You don’t know what it means to be down, Jake.” She glared at him.
“What did I do to you?” he asked. “Did I send that video to you? Did I ask you to watch it? I don’t get it.”
Raven felt the red-hot rage boiling over as she thought about what was really making her so angry about what she’d seen him say on that YouTube clip. She turned away from him and cinched her robe tighter. “You know, I was one of those people.”
“One of what people?”
“I was one of those people you so casually insulted. I was bullied in high school.” She turned back around and faced him. “I don’t think you could have made it through what happened to me.”
“Raven, I don’t have the first clue what happened to you,” he said, his voice weary, his eyes tired, his expression suddenly haggard.
“I know you don’t.” She pointed at him. “Look at you. You’re great looking, with a hot body—athletic, strong—not afraid to fight if you have to. You think everyone should be able to be like you, Jake. Well I’ve got a newsflash. Most people weren’t born with those kinds of gifts. And women can’t just kick someone’s ass who makes fun of them.”