The Debt 8 (Club Alpha) (6 page)

Jake grabbed Kurt by his shoulders and
literally dragged him into the driveway and set him to the side.
 
Then he walked past Raven and got back
in his jeep, driving it quickly through the gate and parking it.

Raven slowly walked inside the gate,
afraid as she got within a few feet of Kurt’s prone body.
 
He looked terrible—unshaven,
bloodshot eyes, stained clothing, rips on the knees of his pants.

Jake closed the gate and locked it
again.
 
“Help me get him in the
house,” he told her.

“This really seems like a horrible idea,
you know.”

“Yeah, you’re on the record,
counselor.
 
I get it.”
 
He gave her an impatient look and she
finally started walking.

Together, they lifted Kurt up and slowly
hauled him into the house.
 
He was
walking, but just barely.
 
Whether
it was the booze or Jake throwing him hard into the sidewalk, Kurt seemed to have
had all the starch and fight taken out of him.

His head lolled back and forth as he muttered.

“I told you…told you not to…” Kurt
mumbled.

“Sure you did,” Jake said.
 
“Sure you did.”

Once they got him inside, Jake took him
into the first floor bathroom and started the shower running.
 
He emerged and told Raven to bring some
of Jake’s clothes down and then to put on a fresh pot of coffee.

She did what Jake requested, gathering a
t-shirt, boxers, a pair of shorts and socks and handing them off.
 
She watched as Jake pushed Kurt into the
shower, and the water must’ve been cold, because the man howled like a banshee.

Jake shut the door and Raven shook her
head, walking into the kitchen to make the coffee up.

***

When the two men emerged again some ten
or fifteen minutes later, Kurt looked like a schoolboy who’d gotten reamed out
by the headmaster and his parents all at once.
 
He was dressed in Jake’s outfit, and his
short hair was still damp, but his eyes looked clearer.
 

“How do you take your coffee?” Raven
asked him.

“Black,” Kurt said, not meeting her gaze.

He sat down at the kitchen table and
Raven handed him the mug.
 
He didn’t
look at her but said thank you in a voice so low she could hardly make it out.

Jake sat and watched Kurt sip his coffee
for a while without speaking.

“Should I go?” Raven asked.

“Absolutely not,” Jake said.
 
“You’re staying here with me.”

“I thought maybe you’d like some privacy
is all.”

“There’s nothing he can say to me that
can’t be said in front of you,” Jake announced with authority.

Kurt had finished most of his
coffee.
 
“Can I get a refill?”

“Of course,” she said, taking his mug and
going back to the counter to pour him another.

 
You’re
lucky I don’t throw the entire pot of coffee on your face, asshole.

Raven still hated him, even as pathetic
of a figure as he seemed to have become since Jake fired him.

 
“What are you doing at my house, Kurt?”
Jake asked.

“I came to try and deck you,” he
answered.

“That didn’t work out too well for you.”

“Yeah, I never could take you.
 
Not even when I was at my best,” Kurt
said, his head hanging.

Raven brought him his coffee and placed
it in front of him.
 
Kurt finally
looked up at her.
 
“I’m sorry if I
scared you,” he told her.

She crossed her arms.
 
“I don’t believe you,” she said.
 
“You’re a liar.”

He nodded.
 
“Yeah, she’s right.
 
I’m a piece of shit.”

“I never said that,” Raven corrected
him.
 
“Stop being so dramatic,
playing the victim.
 
You’ve been a
jerk to me since the second I met you.”

“I had my reasons, hon.”

“Oh, I bet you think you did.
 
People like you always have
reasons.”
 
She crossed behind Jake
and stood there, not wanting to even sit near Kurt.

Kurt smirked, his hand wrapping around
the coffee handle and then bringing the mug to his chapped lips.
 
He drank from it, seeming to relish the
taste, closing his eyes.
 
“You know,
there’s story I read once about a man falling off a cliff.
 
Actually, he’s hanging on and about to
fall.
 
And just as he’s going, he’s
biting into a strawberry.
 
Then he
slips and falls and he’s on the way down to certain death.
 
But his last thought is that it’s the
most amazing strawberry he ever tasted.”
 
Kurt sipped his coffee again and smiled.
 
“That’s how I feel right now.”

“I don’t get it,” Jake said.

Kurt sighed.
 
“You wouldn’t.”

“Please elaborate.
 
What don’t I get?
 
What’s the axe you have to grind,
buddy?
 
Was stealing money from my
wallet, mismanaging hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars not enough? “

Kurt put the cup down and chuckled.
 
“Is your memory really that short?
 
Or are you truly so fucking dense that
you could actually forget what happened?”

Jake’s shoulders tightened and his biceps
bulged.
 
“Watch your step,
brother.
 
You’re like a hair away
from getting the ass kicking you seem to be begging for.”

“Go right ahead,” Kurt said, swatting the
air with his hand.
 
“I couldn’t
possibly give a shit at this point.”

Somehow, this admission seemed to take
the steam out of Jake’s anger, and he sat back in his chair.
 
“You’re upset about Afghanistan,” Jake
said.
 
“You still hanging onto that
crap?
 
Is that it?”

Kurt slid back suddenly, his eyes wide,
his gaze wild.
 
“I told you to let
me go!” he shouted.

Raven backed away, frightened at the
abrupt change in demeanor.
 
But Jake
was unafraid.
 
He sat there, unmoved
by his friend’s theatrics.
 
“I
wasn’t going to let you go AWOL, asshole.
 
You would’ve ended up in military prison.”

Kurt let out a cackling laugh and looked
up at the ceiling.
 
“Good old Jake
Novak strikes again.
 
You always did
think you knew what was best for everyone else.
 
Meanwhile, you couldn’t find your own
way out of a shoe box.”

“Is that so?”

“Yeah,” Kurt said, his gaze meeting
Jake’s, challenging him.
 
Suddenly
Kurt looked all too sober.
 
Sober and angry.
 
But then Raven saw that his jaw was trembling and his eyes were
wet.
 
“I looked after you when you
came back,” Kurt said, his voice breaking.
 
“I was the one who told you about Peyton, showed you that she was no
good for you.
 
And I was the one who
encouraged the music, said you should go for it, that your songs were good
enough to make a career out of it.”

Jake threw up his hands.
 
“Yeah, so I made you my manager.
 
I paid you back tenfold.
 
I don’t owe you a thing.”

Kurt looked down, his tongue probing the
inside of his mouth like it was trying to find a way out.
 
“You should’ve let me leave when I tried
to escape.
 
I knew what the price
was for getting caught.
 
But I
needed out.
 
I needed out because I
couldn’t hack the shit.”

Jake shook his head.
 
“That wasn’t going to happen and I won’t
apologize for trying to protect you from yourself.”

“Protect me?” Kurt laughed.
 
He stood up, waving his arms like a
crazy conductor.
 
“Protect me, he
says.”
 
Kurt looked at Raven.
 
“I bet he never told you what we did out
there.
 
I bet he didn’t tell you how
we killed those people—“

Now Jake stood up, his chair falling to
its side.
 
“Shut up, Kurt.”

“I thought you said she could hear
anything I had to say to you,” his friend laughed.
 
“More bullshit from the master of
manure.”

Jake darted forward and grabbed Kurt by the
front of his shirt and cocked his arm back.

“Don’t hit him!” Raven screamed, running
forward and trying to pull Jake off.
 
She instantly saw how impossible it was.
 
Jake was
like
iron, immovable, and far stronger than her.
 
She couldn’t have held him back if
there’d been fifty of her.

But he did listen to her.
 
At the last moment, Jake lowered his
fist.
 
Kurt seemed almost
disappointed.
 

And then, surprisingly, Jake’s
ex-military friend who’d been so cold and cruel to
Raven,
began balling like a child.
 
Tears
poured down his face and his entire body started to shake.
 
“Why couldn’t you let me leave?” he
sobbed.
 

“Because,” Jake said.
 
“I just couldn’t.”

“I’ll never be the same,” Kurt roared,
but there was no anger left in him.
 
He was broken.
 
“I can’t ever
forget the things I did, the things I saw.”

“We all have to live with what we did,”
Jake said softly.

Kurt broke down, literally falling to the
floor, and wept into his hands.
 

“What happened to you out there?” Raven
asked, unable to keep her thoughts to herself.

Jake turned and looked at her with eyes
that were haunted.
 
“You don’t want
to know.
 
You truly don’t want to
know.”
 
Then he knelt down next to
his friend and began consoling him quietly, whispering, talking to him.

Raven knew that she was witnessing
something very few people would see in their lives.
 
They were two combat veterans who’d seen
too much, and normally they wouldn’t allow a civilian to intrude on their
private territory.
 
What had gone on
was for their eyes and their ears and nobody else.

After some time, Kurt calmed down.
 
He seemed to be all cried out.
 
He took some deep breaths.
 
“I didn’t intentionally steal from you,”
he said, finally, “but I did whatever I wanted with your money because I hated
you.”

Jake helped Kurt back to his seat and
then Jake sat down again also.
 
“I
wish you’d told me how you felt.”

“How could I?” Kurt asked.
 
“You were Jake fucking Novak, on top of
the world.
 
Military hero,
superstar, celebrity, everyone loved you and you were happy as could be.
 
I was no one, I could’ve dropped dead at
any second and nobody would’ve cared.”

Jake just shook his head.
 
“It was never like that.”

“Are you sure?”

“It wasn’t like that to me.
 
That’s all I can say.”

Kurt sighed.
 
“I hated you for so long that I forgot
why I was so mad.
 
And when
she
came along,” he said, gesturing to
Raven, “I hated her because I could see she was going to take you away from
me.
 
And even though I despised you,
I also loved you like a brother.
 
I
know that doesn’t make an ounce of sense.”

“It makes sense to me,” Raven offered.

Kurt looked at her and smiled, a real
smile.
 
“I’m sorry about what I did
to you.
 
You never deserved any of
it.”

“And me?” Jake asked.
 
“Did I deserve it?”

“No,” Kurt whispered.
 
“You were a good friend to me.
 
Better than I was to myself, or to you.”

Jake stood up and put a hand on Kurt’s
shoulder.
 
“You should get some
sleep, brother.
 
It’s been a long
few days.”

Kurt nodded, suddenly looking exhausted,
but also lighter, as if a dark spirit had fled his body.
 
He looked up at Jake and smiled
again.
 
“You really can’t be a
bastard, even if I antagonize you and push you to the end of your rope.
 
You just can’t do it, can you?”