by Kelly Favor
“You’re seeing each other,” her mother said softly. “Well that sounds very exciting.”
“He wants to meet you and Dad,” Raven said, squinting, clutching the phone that much harder.
“Well we’d love to meet him. Any friend of yours…absolutely.”
Raven sighed. “I’ll call you tomorrow and let you know when we’re getting into town.”
Her mother was getting happier, seemingly, as she processed what was happening. “You’re really coming back home to visit? You’re sure, Raven?”
“I’m sure, Mom.”
As long as it takes to get the footage and pictures we need to make it look real.
It was sad, actually, because if this had been a genuine relationship, she truly would have been excited to introduce Jake to her mother and father.
Yeah, but what girl wouldn’t be excited to introduce Jake Novak to their friends and family? Just be glad you can even pretend you’re with him. That’s a lot better than most girls will ever get.
It was true, but it hurt nonetheless.
She’d always fantasized about going back to her hometown as someone successful, happy, showing off that she’d made it despite everyone’s attempts to bring her down and believe the worst of her.
Only now that Raven was getting the chance, all she could focus on was the fact that it was all based on a lie.
They got off the phone, Raven’s mother finally showing some excitement about reuniting, and Raven was left with at least a faint ray of hope that perhaps the whole trip might work out okay.
Then she hung up and sat there on the couch, thinking back on everything that had caused her to flee Southbridge in the first pace four years ago.
Instantly, she recalled Caleb’s face, his light curly hair and blue eyes, the way he’d looked at her and told her things she’d desperately wanted to believe at the time. She was reminded of the love she’d felt for him, and then the betrayal that had made her question whether anything he’d ever told her had been true.
Flashes of the party that had started the whole mess began to flicker across her inner vision, as if the phone call with her mother had triggered a cascade of memories—Memories that had merely been waiting all these years to be called to the surface of Raven’s mind.
She was drinking shots and laughing with friends. The room was hot and crowded and smelled of stale beer, sweat and perfume.
Caleb’s smile, his laugh as the music blared in the background.
The feeling of danger, excitement, mixed with teenage bodies and alcohol and the desire to be sexy and wanted.
Andre appeared, fittingly, standing next to Caleb. The two of them, like peanut butter and jelly, always together, always a pair.
Caleb and Andre, and the night of the party, when everything had gone so horribly, desperately wrong for Raven.
She felt sick just thinking about all of it and had to willfully pull herself out of the current of those old memories. It was like trying to climb out of quicksand, and as she found herself back in the present, Raven was terrified to realize that none of the old emotions had gone away.
I thought I was past all of that. I thought I was better, that I was an adult, and I’d created my new life. But the sad truth is, I haven’t done anything but run away, and now I’m going back there and I don’t know if I can do it.
Lying in bed, Raven tried to let go but was unable to sleep.
Raven was wearing nothing but a long t-shirt from the clothes that had been in the suitcase Kurt had brought to her room.
She was lying with no covers, feeling too hot, but also too lethargic to get up and turn the AC on any higher. Sweat was slick on her arms and legs and plastering her bangs to her forehead, and she was tossing and turning.
I can’t go back there.
Those words had been repeating over and over again in her mind, a loop that simply wouldn’t stop.
I can’t.
I can’t go back.
I can’t go back there.
She closed her eyes, tried to take a few deep breaths. She sat up, her heart racing once again, and she turned the television on, put the volume up slightly. Jimmy Fallon was doing some kind of song and dance routine, dressed in a tuxedo, hat and cane. Beneath him, the words to a song were scrolling across the bottom of the screen.
Raven was hardly paying attention, until she saw Jake’s name scrolling, as if it was actually part of the song.
And then she realized this was some kind of parody song using Jake’s rant as lyrics to accompany Somewhere Over The Rainbow. Jimmy Fallon was singing and dancing as he sang those horrible words, and the crowd was hysterically laughing.
Oh God, Raven thought, feeling slightly ill. It was getting worse and worse the longer Jake stayed silent and failed to respond to his video. He was becoming a joke, and that was worse than being hated for nasty things you’d once said.
A knock on the door to the hotel room interrupted her spiraling train of thought.
Raven was instantly unnerved and on alert, because of how late it was. She got out of bed as the knock came again. She tiptoed towards the door.
“I can hear you creeping around in there, Raven,” Jake’s voice came through the door.
“I didn’t know it was you,” she told him.
“Open up,” he said.
She wanted to see him, but she was afraid. It had been a long, hard and difficult day. Tomorrow would likely be worse, and Jake was already short of patience with her.
“Maybe we should just talk in the morning, Jake. We’re both tired—“
“Speak for yourself. I worked out and had coffee just an hour ago, feel like I could climb a damn mountain. Open up, Raven. Come on.”
She sighed. “I’m not even dressed.”
“Like that’s anything new.”
She smiled a little, despite her misgivings, and then she opened the door, feeling a little excited in truth. She wanted him to see her in nothing but this t-shirt, to look at her bare legs, maybe to wonder what was underneath it.
Nothing…That’s what was beneath her shirt.
She backed away from the door as Jake came inside and shut it behind him. He was dressed in jeans and a plain t-shirt, but as usual, looked like he’d just stepped out of a music video.
His eyes took her in greedily, and she could tell he was charged up.
“What were you doing before I knocked?” he asked, picking up the remote and turning on the TV in the living area.
“Trying to sleep,” she said. “And failing miserably.”
“Yeah, sleep is overrated.” He turned to Fallon, but the segment was finished and now Jimmy was talking to Questlove.
She glanced at Jake’s face to see if he was upset. “Did you see it?” she asked him.
He gave her a look. “Did I see what?”
“Jimmy Fallon’s sketch about you.”
“Yeah, some of it.” He didn’t say anything else. His eyes looked her up and down, not bothering to hide his intentions.
Raven sensed that Jake was boiling over with pent up aggression, and she had some idea of what he wanted from her. She was both bothered and turned on by that knowledge. She didn’t want to just be his outlet, she wanted more than that.
But she was also excited by the idea of him taking all of his frustration out on her, touching her, spanking, grabbing, and maybe…maybe…doing more than that in the end.
She became a little unnerved by his unapologetic stare and moved away from him, walking to the mini-bar and opening it. “Want anything?”
“What I want right now isn’t in that refrigerator,” he said.
She knew what he meant, and it made her nipples stiffen beneath her shirt. She ignored his comment, grabbed herself a Diet Coke and then opened it, drinking the cold, bubbling liquid.
“Listen, Jake, I wanted to apologize about my attitude earlier,” she said, wiping her lips with the back of her hand.
“I get it,” Jake said, watching her. “Under these kinds
of circumstances we’re all going to have our testy moments.”
She smiled. “Thanks for saying that. For being understanding.”
“That doesn’t mean you should just get away with it though,” he said, starting to move towards her. His eyes were dark and intense and needing of something—something that Raven knew all too well.
“Jake, you know we can’t keep doing this,” she said, putting her hand out.
“Can’t keep doing what, Raven?” he smiled, pretending not to know what she was talking about.
“You know what I mean,” she replied.
“We can do whatever we want. Nobody’s here but you and me.”
“It’s confusing things.”
“I’m not confused,” he replied, still moving forward. “And I don’t think you are either, actually.”
“I just wish I knew sometimes what was really going on between us,” Raven told him.
Jake’s expression changed to something resembling suspicion. The eyebrow with the scar arched a bit. “I was under the impression we both knew exactly what this is.”
“Are you saying it’s purely business?”
“Obviously not.”
“Then what?”
He shook his head slowly. “You know what it is.” He grit his teeth. “Don’t make me say it, Raven.”
“Say what, Jake?”
He ran a hand through his perfectly styled hair. His bicep bulged as his arm flexed. “Don’t make me define it. I told you, I can’t be your boyfriend. I can’t give you some term to put on this and make it all neat and tidy.”
Hearing him say it again hurt badly. She remembered the way he’d looked into her eyes in bed, the way he’d touched her face, her hair. The way he’d protected her from Club Alpha, even fighting the CEO to put a stop to their tactics.
And yet here he was denying everything right in front of her, like none of that meant a thing to him now.
“If all you want to do is use me to work out your anger at Jimmy Fallon, you should just leave.” She gripped the Diet Coke almost as tightly as she’d held the phone earlier while on the phone with her mother.
Jake laughed, holding his stomach. “Are you serious? You think I’m here because of Jimmy fucking Fallon?” He laughed again, his face reddening.
“It’s not funny,” she said. But even she had to admit that it sounded ridiculous when said out loud.
He kept laughing. “I hate to break it to you, Raven, but that’s not why I came here.”
“I’m glad this is entertaining for you,” she said, the humor draining from the situation as she thought about what he’d said just a moment prior. He’d told her—yet again, and in no uncertain terms—that he couldn’t give her what she needed. And here she was, like a fool, finding new ways to convince herself that he’d changed, that he was falling for her. “Why do you keep coming to my room?” she said. “Why can’t we just keep this professional, and only be romantic when we’re out in public?”
“I don’t like being interrogated,” he said. “I’m here, that’s all that matters.”
“I need to know why,” she said.
“You need me to spell everything out for you,” he said, his jaw clenching.
“Maybe I do, Jake.”
He shook his head. “You push me to the edge. You really do.” His eyes were completely fixed on her, and he seemed to be both angry and wanting her at the same time. Strangely, that was how she felt, too.
“Just say it,” she told him. “Tell me the truth and then whatever happens, happens.”
“Fine.” He took a deep breath and looked down before finally meeting her gaze again. “I’m here because I couldn’t stop thinking about you,” he said, his brown eyes as gorgeous and captivating as anything she’d ever seen in her life.
And the way he said he couldn’t stop thinking about her, the thrill that went through her body was unreal.
She looked away from him, trying not to be hypnotized by his magnetism. “This is all just really confusing for me.”
“What’s so confusing?” he said softly.
“Going home is bringing up a lot of bad memories for me. That’s why I couldn’t sleep. I’ve got a lot of baggage in my hometown. I ran away because it was so bad.”
“What was so bad?” he said, coming close enough that she could smell his manly scent, and his cologne. He was fresh and masculine and strong and sexy.
Raven wanted to spill her guts, tell him everything. She wanted to tell him about the party, about Caleb and Andre and the people who’d turned on her—her parents, her brother, her friends—people at school.
She wanted to tell him how she’d gotten so lost in the end—so lost that one dark, horrible night she’d practically swallowed a pharmacy along with half a bottle of vodka before her mother had found her and called 911.
But looking into his brown eyes, knowing that he still didn’t really want to be with her, didn’t want to be committed to her, that he was just using her for the things that he wanted and needed from her—she couldn’t trust him enough to tell him everything.
“Sometime maybe I’ll tell you,” she said, finally. “But not tonight.”
“Okay,” he said, and he didn’t seem angry about it.
“It’s just been hard.”
“You called home,” he said, as if he already knew.
He knew from just looking at her face, probably. Jake Novak could read her like a book with magnified print.
She nodded. And then there was a lump in her throat, and she was crying, bawling actually.
“Hey,” he said, and then his strong arms were wrapping around her, enfolding her in his embrace, rocking her gently as he kissed her forehead. “Hey, it’s going to be okay,” he said. “You know that, right?”
She couldn’t reply. She was crying for everything—for Jake’s pain about his dead fiancé, for the horror of what he’d been through in the war, for Skylar being scared and maybe sick, and then finally she was crying for her own pain. All of the things she’d been through when she was seventeen and none of it had turned out okay back then.
But now Jake Novak was holding her and even though he kept telling her he couldn’t give her what she needed, the strange truth was that he continued to give her exactly what she needed.
They slept together that night in her hotel room.
It was all very dreamlike, the way Jake had comforted her, then led her slowly into the bedroom and laid her down on the mattress before taking off his shirt and jeans and climbing in beside her.
His arms wrapped around her once more, he hadn’t needed to say much of anything.
In seconds, she’d fallen asleep—something that had seemed an impossibility just minutes before that.
When she awoke again, it was late at night, more like early morning, although the sun hadn’t yet begun to rise.
Jake was still holding her, his skin hot against her skin, his muscular frame so smooth and exciting that she turned over onto her back and ran her fingers along his forearm, trailing up to his bicep and shoulder.
He stirred a little, but his eyes never opened, and he instinctively grabbed her and pulled her body in that much closer.
Raven listened to him breathe in the quiet peaceful darkness, and felt his body against hers, and she looked at his face and his beautiful features, trying to make sense of who he was and what part he was playing in her life.
She allowed herself to feel the absolute wonder of being so close to a man that millions of women wanted and fantasized about. Jake Novak was the biggest thing going (or had been until his recent video leak), and somehow, against all odds, he’d landed smack dab in the middle of her little life and exploded the whole thing like a megaton bomb.
Raven studied his face and tried to understand why he was even with her. What had made him choose her that night at the party? What had made him so attracted to her?
She didn’t understand it at all. There were so many women that would have dropped to their knees in a
heartbeat to let Jake Novak spank them, touch them, kiss them, do all that and more.
Yet he’d chosen Raven.
Watching him sleep, she thought he looked so peaceful, so beautiful, almost an angel. And the truth was, even though his presence in her life had pretty much exploded her normal reality, the tradeoff so far had been well worth it.
Being with Jake was frightening, challenging, frustrating, intense and exciting like nothing else she’d ever experienced. And yet, despite all of his mixed signals, Raven realized that she was beginning to trust him more and more and more.
When she actually thought about what he’d done for her—helping Skylar when she was scared and in need, facing down Club Alpha, bringing Raven in front of the media and treating her as his girlfriend, holding her close when she was sad and crying…
Looking at it objectively, Jake had actually risked a lot and done a lot for her in a very short time. They were spending nearly every waking moment together, and now he had even taken to spending the night with her.
Maybe, she thought, as she once again ran her palm across Jake’s arm and shoulder and then down his beautifully smooth, rock hard chest…Maybe he really is falling in love with me.
All signs point to the fact that he is, whether he wants to admit it or not.
Raven got chills thinking about it.
Perhaps Jake doesn’t want to admit what’s going on, but all you have to do is look at the facts and it’s clear that he cares.
Remember what he said when you pushed him to say why he kept coming to your room?
I couldn’t stop thinking about you, that’s what he said.
Raven smiled to herself, and then snuggled up even closer to him, drifting off into another peaceful sleep.
When she woke up again, it was much later and she felt strangely cold and empty. Turning back to see Jake, she realized the emptiness was literal—he wasn’t in bed with her anymore.
The bathroom door was open and there was nobody inside. She listened and heard nobody moving around outside the bedroom.
Jake had left, exactly when, she couldn’t be sure.
Raven realized that she wanted to wake up with Jake beside her, that she was already becoming addicted to the feel of him holding her, of him being next to her, his body was like a drug.