The Debt 4 (14 page)

She was safe.

The next morning, she opened her eyes and
found Jake staring at her.

“Hey,” she said, smiling, a little
self-conscious.

“Hey,” he said.
 
“I was watching you sleep.
 
You’re beautiful, you know.
 
Like, exquisitely beautiful.”

“Thanks,” she said, unable to believe
he’d said it.
 
Especially
in the morning, when she so clearly did not look all that great.

“I used to wake up sometimes and look at Peyton,
my fiancé,” he said thoughtfully.
 
“And I never felt the way about her that I feel when I look at you.”

Raven was shocked to hear him say that,
on so many levels.
 
“You loved her,
though.”

He was quiet for a long time.
 
He rolled onto his back and stared at
the ceiling.
 
“I thought I did at
the time.
 
But we were young, and
things weren’t as great as they paint it in the media.
 
Nothing’s the way the media tries to
make it out to be, but then, I guess I don’t have to explain that to you
anymore.”

Raven couldn’t comprehend what she was hearing
right then.
 
Jake had suddenly, out
of the blue, just opened up to her about his life.
 
And she didn’t know quite what to say.

“What happened?” she said.
 
“I mean, what went wrong between you two?
 
Did you argue?”

“Yeah, sometimes.
 
But it went a lot deeper than
that.”
 
He didn’t say anything for
so long that Raven thought he was done talking about it.
 
But then, finally, he said, “Trust was
broken.”

“Oh.”
 
She wanted to ask who broke the trust,
and how, but she sensed it was very delicate.
 
He was staring at the ceiling and his
body was rigid, like he’d been carved out of stone.

She reached out to touch his shoulder and
he flinched as if she’d burned him, and then he was sitting up in bed.
 
“I should get up,” he said,
suddenly.
 
And then, just like that,
he was putting on his jeans and a shirt.
 
“I’m going to go have some coffee.
 
Sounds like your folks are already awake down there.”

“Are you all right?” she asked him, feeling
unsure now about how he was acting.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” he said, but didn’t look
at her.
 
And then he was leaving the
room, closing the door as he went out.

Raven just sat there, not knowing what
had happened.
 
He’d never really
mentioned his fiancé before.
 
Why
did he bring her up at this time?

Maybe
because he’s falling in love with you and now he
knows
it.

Wishful
thinking, as usual, Raven.
 

But nothing else could quite make sense
of how emotional he’d become just then.

Raven got out of bed and put on her
clothes too.
 
She figured
she might as well join him downstairs
,
she
certainly wasn’t tired anymore
.
 
Not after that bombshell.

Trust
was broken.

What did that even mean?

Just as she was about to leave the room,
Raven had a thought and stopped before opening the door.
 
Although Raven had heard about Peyton
and how she’d passed away, Raven had never actually seen what Jake’s deceased
fiancé looked like.

Now, after hearing him talk about her,
Raven was suddenly curious.

She took her cell phone and went online
and searched for images.

You’re
seriously looking at images of his dead fiancé now?
 
You’ve really lost the plot, Raven.
 
Get a hold of yourself, girl.

But she couldn’t help it.
 
She wanted to see what Peyton looked
like,
she wanted to get a sense of who this woman had been.

Does
it matter?
 
She’s gone and Jake says
that he feels more for you than he did for her.

And then the images came up.
 
At first, Raven thought she must have
made a mistake, it couldn’t be.
 
But
then she found articles that talked about Jake and Peyton’s doomed
relationship, and her picture was there in unmistakable color, and in some
pictures Jake and Peyton were even together.
 

There could be no mistake, but there had
to be a mistake.
 
She refused to believe
what she was seeing—it was just too disturbing to be true.

Raven stared at the dead woman’s pictures
in total shock and mounting confusion and fear.

Peyton could have passed for Raven’s twin
sister, that’s how much alike they were.
 
Everything, from the hair color, to the shape of her
body, even her smile.
 

Oh
my God
, Raven thought,
as the pieces started to fall into place.
 

All the reasons why Jake had acted the
way he’d acted, all the confusing things about his behavior were starting to
make sense—and not in a good way, either.

Raven felt her legs almost buckle as she
stared at the dead woman in the pictures on her phone.

Oh
my God, I know why he chose me.

 
THE
END OF THE DEBT 4 (Club Alpha)

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