What He Bargains (What He Wants, Book Nineteen) (41 page)

“I called the ambulance, they’re on their way!” Raven’s mother said, running back into the room, her eyes wide with terror. “Is he going to be all right?”

“His oxygen saturation just dropped again,” Danny said. Raven had never seen her brother look so afraid.

She saw that her father’s skin was turning almost blue. She touched his hand and it was cold.

He’s going to die.

Dad’s dying, right here in front of me.

She looked up and met Danny’s eyes and saw that he knew it too. He looked like a little kid again.

“Got it,” Jake said, and then there was a new sound, a hissing noise. That sound had been missing, Raven realized, because the tank was malfunctioning.

She stood up and pushed the hose closer into her father’s nostrils, hoping it wasn’t too late. “Come on, Dad. Breathe. Please, breathe,” she said.

There was a long moment when it seemed that nothing had changed, but then suddenly her father’s chest rose and his nostrils flared. And then his mouth opened, he exhaled and took another large gulp of air.

And then another and another. The color began returning to his face.

“Oxygen’s at eighty percent and rising,” Danny said, smiling, with tears in his eyes.

Her father was breathing again. He looked up at Raven and nodded his head weakly. “I’m all right,” he said. Then he looked at her mother. “I love you,” he told her.

Raven’s mother began to sob, and then she ran over and began hugging and kissing him, telling him how worried he’d made her.

Danny extended his hand to Jake. “You just saved my dad’s life,” he said.

Jake shook. “Just returning your favor from last night,” he said, cracking a smile.

Raven looked at him with tears in her eyes. “How did you fix it?”

“The regulator,” Jake said. “It wasn’t seated properly and so a lot of the oxygen wasn’t reaching him the way it should have. Not sure how it happened, but I suppose it might even have been this way for a while, only your father had a flare-up and needed every bit of oxygen he could get.”

“It’s okay now, though?” Raven asked Jake. “He won’t have this problem again?”

“The tank’s fixed now, so he should be okay.” Jake’s brown eyes met hers and then he looked away. She couldn’t tell if he was angry, sad, relieved.

In that moment, she was just thankful Jake had been present to save her father from what quite likely had been a life-threatening situation.

Raven’s mother was done kissing and hugging Raven’s dad. But she wasn’t altogether finished, as she then threw her arms around Jake and squeezed him tightly. “Thank you so much for being here, Jake.”

“It’s okay, Mrs. Hartley. Really, it’s okay.”

Not long after, the ambulance showed up. The EMTs came inside and checked Raven’s father’s vitals and declared him sufficiently okay to remain in the house. They also checked over his oxygen tank setup to make sure it wasn’t going to malfunction again.

When one of the EMTs asked how Jake had known what to do to fix the tank, he’d gotten a strange look on his face.

“My fiancé needed oxygen her last month or two before she passed,” he said. “I got used to handling the tank and just happened to know a few tricks.”

“You probably saved his life,” the EMT said. “He was lucky you were visiting.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” Jake muttered, his gaze flickering over to Raven and then away again.

Nobody had spoken about the news story. It was as if it had never even happened.

But once her father was better and the EMTs had gone, Jake announced that it was time to leave.

“You’re going so soon?” Raven’s father said in a weak and tired voice.

Jake was finishing another cup of coffee. “Afraid so, sir. Besides, haven’t you had enough excitement around here since I showed up?”

Nobody quite knew what to say to that.

Raven wasn’t sure what Jake meant, either. As he left the kitchen to go upstairs, she followed him. “What about me?” she said.

He turned on the stairwell. “What about you?”

“Do you want me to come back with you?”

“It’s your call, Raven.” He could hardly look at her.

“You didn’t tell me you planned to leave so soon. I’m trying to figure out how mad you are right now.”

“I’m not mad,” he said. “Come if you want. Or don’t. Suit yourself.” And then he walked the rest of the way upstairs and she heard the door opening and closing as he went into the bedroom.

A moment later, Raven’s phone buzzed with a text.

She took out her cell and checked it. The text was from an unknown number, and it was just one short sentence.

Payback’s a bitch.

T
he limousine was waiting
for them, parked alongside the curb. Jake carried the luggage over to where the driver was standing.

Meanwhile, Raven gave her mother a long hug. “Sorry we had to leave so soon,” she said.

“Maybe you’ll come back again?” her mother asked.

Raven looked at her. “I hate that you have to even ask.”

“But I do. I do have to ask.” Her mother’s hands were clasped together, her fingers seeming to grasp onto each other as if for support, as she spoke. “I don’t want it to be another four years before I see you or hear your voice again.”

“It won’t be, I promise,” Raven said.

“We don’t care about what happened in the past, or what they say about you,” her mother continued. “We love you.”

“Thanks, Mom. I love you too.” And she meant it. Maybe her mother had changed, after all. Perhaps people didn’t just let you down over and over again forever.

Raven remembered what she’d discovered about Jake’s fiancé and her stomach tightened.

Then again
,
maybe some people do just keep letting you down
.

Raven’s father had already said his goodbyes. He was exhausted after the medical crisis, and now he was sleeping.

Danny came outside last. “Come here,” he said, moving away from the house and the limo, taking her over by the chain link fence that separated their yard from the neighbor’s yard.

“What’s up?” Raven asked. She glanced at Jake, who was getting into the limo now, not even waiting for her.

She shook her head slightly.

“You need to stop seeing him,” Danny said.

“Who? Jake?”

“Yeah,” Danny said, laughing as if he couldn’t believe her stupidity.

“Danny, he just saved Dad’s life and you still hate him.”

“No, I think he’s a really cool guy. I’m grateful that he saved Dad’s life, but that doesn’t mean he’s good for you.” Danny stuffed his hands in his pockets and looked at her.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen. There’s a lot going on right now.”

“I see that,” Danny said. “And I also saw the way they dragged your skeletons out of the closet on national TV. That’s just the beginning,” he told her. “They won’t stop until they’ve torn your whole life apart.”

“They’re going to do it either way, I can’t stop them.”

“That’s not true,” he said. “They’ll stop the minute you two break up. They’re only after you because of Jake.”

“I’m sorry I embarrassed you, Danny—“

“Stop saying that,” Danny said, his voice raising. “You said that last time when all of this happened and we were all dying inside, trying to figure out how to help. You kept apologizing for everything, but then you started to resent us. You kept saying we weren’t willing to fight to protect you. But all the lawsuits in the world won’t change public opinion, Raven. People believe what they want to believe. You need to be strong enough not to care.”

“Well maybe I’ll be strong enough this time.”

Danny shook his head. “I think we both know that’s not going to happen. Just stop this, already. You’ve finally come back home and maybe now there’s a chance to make things better, heal our family. Get away from Jake Novak before everything goes to shit again. Please, Raven.”

“I need to go,” she said, turning away.

“I’ll be here if you decide to come back, Raven. I’m not going anywhere, but then again, you already knew that.”

Raven started to run, to the limousine. She needed to get away from the memories, get away from her family and the secrets and recriminations. She needed to distance herself from her sad mother, resentful brother, and dying father.

She got to the limousine and the driver let her in.

She thanked him and then slid into the cool darkness of the big car as he shut the door.

The driver got in front and started to pull away from the house. Raven forced herself not to look back, not to watch and see her mother or brother watching her leave.

She held back tears as if her very life depended on it.

Jake was sitting across from her, legs outstretched, drinking from a tumbler. It looked like he was drinking scotch or whiskey. She could faintly smell it.

“That was informative,” he said, swallowing and grimacing a little.

Raven stared out the window as they left her street. “Was it?”

“Yeah, it was.”

She looked at him, knowing he was angry, even though he was hiding it fairly well. “I can’t thank you enough for helping my father, Jake. I can’t ever repay you for saving his life.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Jake said, waving her off. “The way you left me in the dark about your little video is payment enough.”

She’d known this was coming, but she was hurt just the same. “I didn’t purposely keep you in the dark. I had no idea that the video was going to come out. We got that stuff scrubbed from the internet four years ago and had a court injunction against anybody putting it up anywhere.”

Jake looked at her like she was crazy. “Didn’t it occur to you that this could happen, and the affect it would have on me if it ever did?”

The effect on him. That was what mattered.

Raven licked her lips. “I’m not ashamed of dancing a little at a party when I was seventeen. It was stupid, but I did nothing wrong, Jake.”

“It doesn’t matter what you think,” Jake said, his eyes widening with anger. “It matters what everyone else thinks and says. Already their spinning their stories about you, Raven.”

She threw up her hands. “Isn’t that the point? I was bullied because of my perceived slutty behavior. Those people made up lies about me.
That’s
the point. I was bullied and I became one of those losers you made fun of with your comments. This could be your chance to show you’ve really changed, to come out and stand up for me.”

“No,” Jake said, shaking his head. “The point is that you left me spinning in the wind. I asked you to tell me about what happened in your past. We could’ve planned for this, gotten out in front of the story and spun it to our advantage. But you lied to me—“

“I never lied to you, Jake.” Her voice was shaking.

“You might as well have. You lied by omission. You lied by keeping important details to yourself, details that would’ve changed how I handled everything.”

Raven stared at him with uncomprehending frustration. “You’re a hypocrite,” she said.

“Careful.” Jake took a long sip from his tumbler. “Don’t say anything you’ll regret later,” he murmured.

“It’s true. You’re a hypocrite.”

His gaze moved from the glass he was holding, to her face. He studied her. “That’s a bold statement from someone in your position, Raven.”

“I don’t give a fuck about my position,” she told him.

He laughed. “That much is obvious.”

His laughter enraged her. “What’s obvious to me is that you needed a body double to satisfy your little sexual kink. So you found me.”

Jake had been about to take another sip from his glass, but his hand stopped in mid-motion. He looked at her again. “What did you just say?”

“You heard me,” she continued. “I went online this morning and found pictures of Peyton. I’d never seen her before.”

Jake’s expression darkened, his eyebrows lowered. “Don’t talk about her. Not now. Not ever.”

“I’ll talk about whoever I want.”

Jake set his glass down behind him and folded his arms. “Fine, Raven. Let’s put everything on the table. Let’s lay it all out there.”

For some strange reason, Raven found that he was still turning her on—the way he looked sitting there, the expression on his face, the very challenge of him. She hated that Jake Novak could make her feel so angry and so completely in need of him all at the same time.

“Admit that you used me,” Raven said.

“In what particular way?” he asked.

“You used me because I look almost exactly like Peyton looked.”

Jake’s jaw set and his eyes hardened. “There’s a resemblance.”

“That’s why you chose me that night at the party. Tell me now, admit the truth Jake.”

He nodded once. “Everyone has a type,” he said. “That’s not exactly breaking news.”

“Except that you pick a certain type of girl so you can punish her, control her, and make her pay for the sins of your dead fiancé.” After she’d said it, Raven was struck by just how harsh it sounded.

A muscle in Jake’s jaw flinched, but other than that he was completely still, his eyes locked on hers. “That’s a theory.”

“It’s true. We both know it’s true.”

His lips tightened. “And you liked every minute of it,” he finally uttered.

“That’s beside the point—“

“No,” he said, his lips curling into a strange grin. “That’s the entire point.”

“You didn’t care if I enjoyed it or not. The fact that I liked you was basically irrelevant.”

“That’s interesting phrasing,” Jake said, shifting in his seat. He looked up for a moment. “That’s very interesting phrasing.”

“What did I say?”

“You said you ‘liked’ me, as in past tense.”

Raven sighed. “Don’t twist my words.”

“I’m not twisting anything,” Jake said. “I’m just pointing out what you’re actually saying.”

“You never felt anything real for me,” Raven said, “so how can you have the nerve to point out that I said ‘liked’ instead of ‘like?’ At least I actually felt something for you.”

Jake just stared at her. His expression was unreadable. “You have no idea what I feel,” he said softly.