by Kelly Favor
Jake was going to confront the man who’d tried to hurt her.
She stood outside the bathroom, listening, trying not to panic. More than anything, she just wanted it to be over quickly and for them to get away safely.
There was some noise in the bathroom, she could hear muffled voices and then the sounds of some kind of struggle.
What if Scott hurts Jake?
She was horrified at the prospect. The very idea of it seemed a little ridiculous. After all, Jake was ex-military, strong and powerful, whereas Scott was slender, not very athletic looking, and probably no match for Jake’s physical strength.
But Raven was nervous just the same. And she didn’t want Jake to get into trouble.
Suddenly, the door was thrown open, and Jake was standing there, holding Scott’s tie and dragging the smaller man towards the door by that long piece of cloth. Scott’s face was red, and his lip was bloody.
Jake pointed to Raven. “You remember this lady, Scott?”
Scott snarled at her. “You fucking stupid bitch—“
Jake punched him in the belly and Scott doubled over.
“That wasn’t a very nice greeting,” Jake scolded him, sounding like a disappointed father. “That was just rude, Scott. Can you speak nicely to her, buddy? Otherwise I might just break every tooth in your ignorant head.”
Scott slowly regained his breath. He looked up at Raven. “Pleasant surprise to see you here, Miss Hartley,” he gasped.
“That’s a start,” Jake said, shaking him by his tie.
Raven glanced over to the hallway, making sure nobody was coming. So far the coast was clear. She looked back at Scott. His hair was messy, his bangs drooping over his baby face that appeared somehow young and middle aged all at once.
His eyes stared at her with nothing but pure hatred, and his eyes were still threatening her silently, as if promising to pay her back for this moment of humiliation he was experiencing.
“I don’t like the way he’s looking at me, Jake,” she said, her anger getting the better of her as she remembered how Scott had frightened her half to death just hours before.
Jake turned to Scott again. “Are you giving my girl nasty looks?”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Scott muttered sarcastically.
“Fuck you,” Jake said, and this time he grabbed the CEO’s tie with both hands and pulled on it, cutting off the circulation around Scott’s neck. “I should fucking end you for what you did to her,” Jake said. “You entitled, arrogant piece of shit.” He pulled tighter still. “And maybe I will end you. I’ve been under a lot of stress lately.”
“Pl…ple…please,” Scott gasped, and then dropped to his knees, his face turning nearly scarlet. Jake watched the man coldly, his biceps bulging as he pulled tighter still.
“Don’t kill him,” Raven said, as the ladies room door opened and an older woman stood there, mouth gaping in what could have been mock horror at what she was seeing in front of her.
“I’m not going to kill him, not unless he really pisses me off,” Jake said, kneeling down next to Scott, as the CEO clutched at his neck.
“Help! Police!” The old woman shouted.
Raven gave her a stiff shove backwards and shut the restroom door, holding it tightly closed to ensure the old woman couldn’t get out again.
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 witne
ss 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.
Raven couldn’t help but study the myriad pictures of her and Jake together, marveling that she was suddenly on the other side of the equation. How many times had she casually glanced at an US Weekly cover, read an article, watched some piece on TMZ and made judgments—without ever once considering that the people being discussed and filmed and photographed were real people with real lives?
Even now, looking at pictures of them in New York from the last day or two, it almost seemed to make the whole thing—including her—feel so much less real.
It was as though she’d become an object, even to herself.
She could sit there and evaluate her own expressions, the tilt of her head, the truth of the smile on her face, the way Jake was glancing over at her as they walked together on a city street.
I look like I belong with him, she thought.
Was that just insanity?
After all, there was no way to believe that she was anywhere near his league in terms of looks and sex appeal. Clearly, Jake was slumming when it came to her.
But Raven couldn’t stop examining the pictures of them together, and the way they looked at one another, and she thought that they really did look like a real couple.
Was it all still an act for Jake?
She knew it wasn’t an act anymore for her, and maybe it had never really been an act. She was turned on by Jake Novak in so many ways, and now that he’d defended her, stood up for her—the feelings had only grown in intensity.
But Jake was a different an
imal. She couldn’t figure him out. One minute he was suggesting that what was going on was real, but the next he seemed like a cynical star plotting to keep his name on the front page in the best possible light that he could.
Isn’t that the point?
Isn’t that exactly what he’s supposed to be doing? The poor guy can’t win with you, Raven. You want him to act like your boyfriend, you want him to try and fix his PR issues, and then you hold it against him when he does it.
Raven knew it wasn’t fair of her to pretend she was okay with the business arrangement between them when in reality she wanted more from him.
Jake had been honest and up front with her from the beginning, so she had no one to blame but herself for this conflict between what she wanted and what he was willing to give her.
Of course, then she thought about the way Jake had continued to touch her, to kiss her, to do things to her that had no place in a business relationship.
And that made her mad, and then she got more confused, which caused her to only go on her phone and check the news and social media more, as if somehow the truth would be revealed to her through the outside world.
In the midst of her internet surfing frenzy, she got a text from Skylar.
Hanging with the folks. No word yet about the biopsy. How r u doing?
Raven felt suddenly awful for not even texting or calling Skylar—truthfully, not even thinking about her friend for hours and hours. Meanwhile, Skylar was probably worried and terrified, just wanting to get some good news so she could forget this whole horrible nightmare had happened.
Raven texted her back: I am ok. Should I come hang?
And then quickly came Skylar’s reply.
No its cool. U have fun with your prince charming.
Raven wiped the tears that were streaming down her cheeks now. She didn’t deserve a friend as nice and kind and thoughtful as Skylar. Raven promised herself to be a better friend, to care more, to think less of her own problems.
Text me if you need anything, anything at all, Raven wrote back. I don’t care if its 3 am. You call me I will be there in a flash.
Awwww thanks! U are the best, Raven. I luv ya.