The Debt 6 (8 page)

“And I spent the better part of my time there wiping the other guys off the face of the planet, the one’s we said were the bad guys.”

“Weren’t they bad guys?”

“Sure, some of them.
 
It wasn’t my job to decide who lived and died.
 
I followed orders like everyone else.”

Raven turned and looked at him.
 
His eyes were dark and pained.
 
“Nobody could ever be the same after something like that,” she said, stroking his chest.

“The only thing that kept me somewhat tied to the rest of the world was Peyton,” he said.
 
“I thought of her like a candle in the darkness, and in the worst times, I thought of her smile, her eyes.
 
I thought she would be there to love me when I came back, and it kept me going through all those black nights.”

Raven’s stomach twisted like he’d just buried a knife between her ribs, but she hid her feelings.
 
Thinking about Jake’s strong emotions towards another woman, even a dead woman, was very painful.
 
But Raven had been wanting Jake to tell her about himself for so long that she kept her own pain well disguised.

This is what you wanted
,
Raven
.
 
Don’t complain that it hurts now that he’s finally doing what you’ve been asking for.

“What was it like between you and Peyton when you came home?” Raven asked, picking up his hand and kissing his knuckles.

“It was different than I expected,” Jake said softly.

Raven hated that she felt a thrill of victory in his statement.
 
This was a dead woman, and Raven still was competitive with her.
 
It was disgusting in a way.

“Different how?” Raven asked.

“I might be remembering it this way because of what I found out about her later on.”
 
Jake took a deep breath and released it slowly.
 
“I was so fucked up from the war that she was probably spooked.
 
I had all the classic symptoms—insomnia, bursts of anger from out of nowhere, paranoid, reacting to loud sounds as if I was under fire from the enemy, and of course I didn’t want to tell her about any of it.”

“Did she try to talk to you about what was wrong?”

“A little, but not much.
 
Of course, I wasn’t very encouraging of her efforts, but I can’t say she tried all that hard either.”

Raven couldn’t help but once again feel glad at some level.
 
She didn’t want Peyton to have tried, and she didn’t want Jake to have really loved this other woman.
 
The truth was that Raven wanted him and his emotions all for herself.

“Were you two arguing a lot?”

“We were mostly just distant, like two people living on two different planets.
 
Especially the first few months I was back.
 
At the same time, we had a wedding to plan, and things were moving ahead on that front.
 
By the time the worst of my symptoms had subsided and I was ready to try and work things out with Peyton, ready to try and fix whatever was wrong with us, I found out that she was sick.”

Raven looked up at him again.
 
He made eye contact with her and gave her the ghost of a smile.
 

She reached out and stroked his cheek lightly.
 
“You went through a lot in a very short time.”

“I still remember the day she came back from the doctors and told me that she had cancer.
 
She’d known she was getting a biopsy result and didn’t even mention it to me.”

“That doesn’t make sense.
 
Why didn’t she tell you?”

His body tensed.
 
“I don’t know.
 
Maybe she was busy telling the guy she was fucking.”

Raven couldn’t even speak.
 
Her entire body flooded with disgust at herself for thinking so selfishly about his relationship with Peyton.
 
He’d been through horror after horror and disappointment and betrayal, and here she was only concerned with how it affected her.

“Jake, I didn’t know.
 
I’m so sorry.”

“I jumped ahead in the story,” he laughed.
 
“I didn’t find that part out until the end, when Peyton was in the very last days of her life.”

“You took care of her until she passed, didn’t you?”

He nodded.
 
“I did.
 
Even after I found out that she’d been having an affair, I took care of her.
 
By that point, I could see it was nearly over and she was very ill and fighting for every breath.
 
I didn’t have the heart or the stomach to tell her what I knew.
 
But I hated her for it, just the same.”

“How did you find out about the affair?”

Jake smiled, but once again the smile was bitter and pained.
 
“My good friend and yours, Kurt.”

“Jake, are you certain he didn’t mislead you?
 
Kurt’s a liar.”

Jake shook his head.
 
“He didn’t lie about it.
 
I checked out the story, got the phone records, read her texts and emails with the other guy.”

“How did Kurt even know about it?”

Jake sat up in bed and moved away from her.
 
“He told me he overheard her on the phone having a suspicious conversation one day when he came to visit me.
 
Who knows if that part was true?
 
Kurt was probably snooping and looking through her cell or something.”

“Probably,” Raven agreed.
 
She wanted to move closer to Jake again, but he seemed to not want to touch her anymore.

“It doesn’t matter how I found out, anyway.
 
I found out and the rest is history.
 
She’d been having a serious affair with a guy she met at the gym, a guy who taught her spin class.
 
They’d started talking more and more while I was away fighting and things just…progressed,” Jake laughed loudly.
 
“It’s pathetic, really, how completely cliché the whole thing was.”

“It’s not a cliché,” Raven said.
 
“It’s awful and painful and it was wrong of her to do that to you.”

Jake’s back was to her now, as he spoke.
 
“The rage inside of me was so intense those last couple of days before she died.
 
Watching Peyton fight for her life, knowing she couldn’t survive it, knowing that I was losing her and losing any chance I had to understand what had happened between us.
 
I wanted to scream at her, I wanted to kick her out of my home, tell her parents and friends to all go fuck themselves.”

Raven was shaking a little as she scooted up in bed and watched Jake’s back expanding and contracting as he breathed, his head bowed.
 

“You were stronger than her,” Raven said.

“In the end, it broke me completely,” he whispered.
 
“She took her last breath and said she loved me, and I just stared at her.
I just did nothing
,
let her die alone
.
 
I couldn’t say it back, and I swear—there was a look of horror in her eyes in those last moments.
 
I think she saw in my face that I knew about the affair.
 
She saw it and it made her last seconds on earth a terrible awful comprehension of the truth.
 
I robbed her of that final peace, Raven.
 
Maybe I even did it intentionally.
 
I don’t know.”

Raven moved closer and put her hands on his shoulders, but he flinched, his muscles shuddering as if she had burned him.
 
Raven pulled back, wishing she knew what to do, what he needed from her.

“You might be wrong,” Raven said.
 
“You might have imagined that look in her eyes, and it could’ve been something else.
 
She was dying, Jake.”

“I’ve seen plenty of people die up close, Raven.”
 
He turned his head and glanced at her.
 
“I know what I saw that day.”

“Okay,” she agreed.
 
“Maybe you do.
 
But you’ve carried this around with you for years, this burden.
 
You didn’t do anything wrong.
 
You tried your
best,
you took care of her after she’d hurt you so deeply.
 
That’s strength, Jake.”

“Maybe not.
 
Maybe it’s just more of the same.”
 
He stood up, still naked, turned and faced her.
 
“You need to see me for who I really am, Raven.
 
I’m not that guy everyone thinks I am.
 
I’m not some amazing superhero.
 
Inside, I’m dead.
 
There’s nothing but darkness, and hate and rage and bitterness.”

“That’s not true.”

His eyes blazed.
 
“You don’t know what’s inside me.
 
Do you?”

“I see kindness in your eyes.”

His eyes widened and he looked away.
 
“Don’t say that.”

She got out of bed and crossed to him, grabbing his hands.
 
“Why do you have to hate yourself, Jake?”

When he looked at her again, his eyes were wet.
 
“Because I’ve done so many things I wish I could take back.
 
And I can’t take back any of it.”

“You aren’t your past, Jake,” she said, meaning it, as she looked directly into his brown eyes.

“Don’t give me that pop psychology crap,” he replied, but his voice shook with emotion.

“It’s not just pop psychology,” she said, feeling calmer somehow.
 
“It’s the truth and you know it.”

“I don’t know anything.”

“You might have done some horrible things, and you might’ve experienced some horrible things, but right now you have a chance to be different.
 
Every moment is a chance to be brand new.”

The wetness in Jake’s eyes formed tear drops that suddenly spilled down his cheeks.
 
“You’re so beautiful,” he whispered, “you know that?”

“Give yourself a chance,” she said.

“I don’t know if I can do that.”

“Give me a chance, then.”

He nodded, as the tears ran faster down his cheeks.
 
“Okay,” he said.

“Give us a chance,” she continued.

“Okay,” he agreed again.
 
And then he embraced her, and his strong arms were holding her tightly and she held him too.

“I wish we could be like this forever,” she said, almost too herself.

He pulled back and looked into her eyes and now he was smiling, and some of the pain was gone from his face.
 
“I love you,” he said.
 
“I loved you from the first moment I saw you but I was too afraid to admit it.
 
But I’m not going to miss my chance,” he said.
 
“I’m not going to live in fear anymore.”

“I love you too,” she said, and her heart felt like it might explode from the happiness she felt.

***

Later that night, they ate a dinner that Jake prepared for them.
 
He made up a bowl of tuna from cans, and then he cooked them each a can of chicken noodle soup, followed by a chocolate bar that they split in half and ate, laughing and smiling like two kids around a campfire.

It was so strange,
Raven
thought, how in the worst of circumstances, they’d somehow found the very best in each other.

They were far from home, and neither of them knew what lay in store.
 
They both had dangerous enemies, and they were cut off from the world, cut off from everything.
 
Jake’s multi-million dollar tour was in peril, his business and career hung in the balance, and Raven’s family had even been attacked.

But somehow, despite all of it, she felt safe with Jake.
 

Safe and taken care of, and finally…complete.

As she finished her last piece of chocolate and they lay in front of the wood stove, Jake rubbing her shoulders gently, she smiled.
 
“This is the happiest I’ve ever been,” she told him.

He didn’t respond at first, and Raven turned and looked over her shoulder at him.

“Hey,” he smiled, but his smile was a little bit sad.

“What is it?
 
What’s wrong?”

He grinned and wiped the corner of her mouth with his thumb.
 
“You’ve got chocolate on your lips,” he said.

“You look sad,” she said.

“I need to tell you something.”

Her heart started beating faster.
 
“Please just say it.
 
You’re scaring me.”