by Kelly Favor
It was like a movie playing in her mind—the movie of her childhood, and although the last bit had been quite awful—there were lots of good memories mixed in too.
She stared out the window, in awe of the power of this place, these streets, this town. The hold it had over her was almost like black magic.
“Are you okay?” Jake said, sounding genuinely concerned.
She was surprised, turning a little to look at him. “I didn’t think you cared.”
“Of course I care. I’m not a monster.”
She raised her eyebrows. “The jury’s out on that one.”
“Very nice, Raven. Very nice.”
“I know I’m being difficult, Jake, but you really don’t understand how hard it is for me being back here.”
Jake laughed. “You think I don’t understand the kind of demons the past can throw back in your face? Baby, you really don’t know me at all.”
“Don’t call me baby,” she said, noticing that they’d just passed the public golf course, and that meant they were about to go by the second house she’d lived in before her parents had moved to their most recent home.
“You seem determined to piss me off,” Jake told her. “But I’m not going to give you the satisfaction. If you’re freaking out, you’re not going to have me to blame for it.”
“I’m not blaming you, but you’re not helping, that’s for sure.”
“You won’t let me.”
Raven sighed, but didn’t say anything back. Maybe Jake was right, she didn’t know anymore who was right and wrong between them. All she knew was one moment he was like prince charming, come to rescue her, and next he was acting just like every other man who’d hurt her.
As the limousine progressed, Raven’s hands started to tingle and she started feeling short of breath. Now she could recognize certain houses, and remembered the people who’d lived in them.
She recalled riding her bike down one hill and practically going over the handlebars when she’d hit the brakes too quickly at the bottom.
And then they were on her old street, and she was counting down the houses, knowing that in ten, nine, eight…soon they would arrive.
Finally, they turned a bend in the road and her old house came in sight, looking smaller than she’d remembered it, somehow. It was a little two-story white house with red shutters and a red door.
There were a couple of cars parked in the small driveway.
Some children in a neighbor’s lawn stared with their mouths open as the limousine pulled up in front of the house and came to a stop.
Raven tried to take a deep breath.
I can’t do this. I left for a reason. And seeing everyone again, knowing what they think of me…I can’t stand it. Not for one minute.
But just when she thought she wouldn’t be able to step out of the car, a warm, strong hand had taken her hand and was gripping it tightly.
“We can do this,” Jake said softly.
She turned and looked at him with wet eyes. “Why do you always end up proving me wrong when I start to doubt you?”
He smiled a little, his brown eyes sparkling with mischief. “I guess I’ve always liked a challenge,” he said, and in that brief moment, she swore that she loved him totally and completely.
And the way he was looking at her, she thought that he must be thinking the same thing.
“Okay, let’s just get it over with,” she told him.
Jake signaled to the driver, who got out and went around to open the door for them. They got out and Raven saw that the front door of her house was opening, and her heart was beating so fast and hard that she was going to break a rib.
“Oh my God,” Raven muttered, as she stood frozen, rooted to the ground, watching the door swing wide.
“You’re going to be fine,” Jake said, squeezing her hand. “I promise.”
“Thanks for being here,” she whispered, grateful for his presence.
Raven’s mother was coming outside, and she looked just the same as she’d always looked. She was short, with a wide smile and silvery hair that fell about shoulder length. Raven had always been told that she resembled her father, whereas her brother Danny had always looked more like Mom.
And as her mother came down the steps, Danny followed her out, and she saw that this was even more true now. He was only a few inches taller than their mother, with her same crooked smile, although his hair was still dark.
Danny’s smile died on his lips the moment he saw the limousine, and his eyes seemed to harden.
But then her mother and Danny were approaching, and she went to meet them, hugging her mother first and then Danny.
Her mother smelled like cinnamon, and she was crying a little. “Oh, I can’t believe you’re really here,” she told Raven as they embraced.
“Mom, this is Jake Novak,” Raven said, and they hugged too.
Jake shook Danny’s hand, and Danny looked him over with skepticism. “You always travel by stretch limo, Jake?”
“Sometimes,” Jake laughed. “I thought it was appropriate for Raven’s homecoming. Like, I don’t know, prom or something.”
“Yeah,” Jake said, “I don’t think prom or anything to do with high school is a very welcome memory for my sister. I guess you don’t know her that well.”
Jake didn’t react to Danny’s barb. “Beautiful home,” he said, admiring their house.
“Oh, thank you, Jake,” her mother smiled.
“Where’s Dad?” Raven asked.
“Oh, he’s inside,” her mother replied.
Raven glanced at Jake and he looked away. She got a strange feeling in her stomach and then the four of them started walking towards the house together, and soon they were going inside.
It smelled familiar, as if the very same foods and clothes and plants and furniture had been here since she’d left. Nothing much had changed, except for one major difference.
Her father.
He was in a wheelchair with a tube going to his nose. Raven stopped, totally shocked by how frail and gaunt her dad looked. The hose was connected to a large oxygen tank that was attached to the back of his chair.
“Oh, Dad!” she cried. “What happened?”
Her father smiled. He looked at least fifty pounds lighter than when she’d last seen him, and his hair was grayer, and he looked sickly, his skin almost jaundiced.
“I’ve had a few health things pop up,” he said, shrugging, as if he was talking about getting a splinter and a broken two. “But I’m okay, don’t look so frightened. Come hug me.”
Raven couldn’t believe what she was seeing, and her heart was breaking as she went and hugged him. As he embraced her, she sensed his weakness, much different than the strong man that had still been exercising and lifting weights four years ago.
But he’d also been smoking back then—chain smoking, actually.
“What’s wrong?” she asked him. “You can’t walk?”
He chuckled, but there was a wheezing sound in his chest as he laughed. “I can walk just fine. All of my extremities are intact and in fine working order. It’s my lungs that seem to have gone on strike.”
She turned to her mother and Danny. “I wish someone had told me what was going on with Dad.”
Danny made a face. “I think you made it pretty damn clear you didn’t want to hear from us.”
“But if something was wrong—“
“You didn’t care what was right or wrong with anyone but yourself,” he interrupted.
“This visit is going well so far,” Jake mumbled, only loud enough for Raven to hear it. He extended his hand to her father. “Jake Novak, pleased to meet your sir.”
Her father beamed, shaking his hand with enthusiasm. “Jake, I love your films. I’ve watched most of them, and I can’t tell you what an honor it is to meet you in person.”
“The honor is all mine,” Jake told him.
“Are you two hungry? Do you want to go to your room and decompress for a bit?” Raven’s mother as
ked.
“Our room?” Raven said. “I thought we’d stay at the Ramada.”
“Don’t be silly,” her father said. “You two can stay in the guest room.”
“What about my old room?”
“Your stuff went into the attic,” Danny said. “Now it’s my room.”
“You’re still living at home?”
He shook his head and snorted. “You haven’t changed a bit.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means, you just got home and you’re already making snap judgments and looking down on everybody.”
“Danny, that’s not fair.”
He waved her off. “Whatever, I’ve got to get some work done. Tell me when dinner’s ready,” he said to their mother, and then left.
An awkward silence descended on the room.
Jake smiled and looked at Raven’s mother. “So where’s the guestroom?”
“I’ll show you,” Raven’s mother said. “Come you two. We’ll get you settled in, plenty of time for catching up later.”
After Raven’s mother had shown them to the guestroom and left, Raven sat down on the bed and put her head in her hands.
Jake was opening his bag and rummaging around inside. “Hey,” he said, stopping for a second to look at her. “Are you upset that they put your stuff and storage and relegated us to the guest room?”
“This is just my brother’s old room, and no, I don’t care about that,” Raven said, running her fingers through her hair. “I just hate that it’s like this. This is exactly what I was afraid of.”
“Of course it’s going to be tense at first,” Jake said. “You haven’t shown your face in a few years and nobody knows how to act around you.”
“There’s a reason I haven’t shown my face in years.”
He went back to looking in his bag. “Families are tough. I mean, I see my family a couple times a year and they drive me crazy too. Me and my dad go at it sometimes like a couple of lions trying to kill each other.”
“Does your brother hate you?” she asked him, finally turning her head to look at him.
“No, my younger brothers both look up to me,” he said. “But that’s another thing altogether. Anyway, my point is that family is always complicated, Raven.”
“Well mine is more complicated than most.” She shook her head. “I still can’t believe that my dad is in a wheelchair with oxygen. He looks so weak and tired and old.”
“He wasn’t like that before?”
She blinked, trying to keep tears at bay. “No, he wasn’t. He smoked like a chimney so we always worried, but now it seems like he got sick and nobody told me about it.”
There was a knock on the door and Jake straightened up, rising to his feet. “Who is it?” he asked.
“It’s Danny.” His voice wasn’t particularly friendly.
Jake looked at Raven, silently asking what she wanted. She nodded at him and he went and opened the door, while she continued sitting on the bed.
Danny came into the room slowly, as if he thought he might be attacked. He seemed wary, especially of Jake.
Seeing them side-by-side, Raven was surprised at how small her brother looked in comparison. Danny had always had a big personality, so somehow she’d always thought of him as being a big guy. But in truth he was short, kind of flabby, and he seemed intimidated by Jake’s stature.
“When Mom told me you were coming to visit,” Danny said, “she didn’t really mention that you were going to show up like Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. I didn’t know this was going to be some sort of royal visit.”
“Danny, please, don’t start in on me,” Raven said. “We haven’t seen each other for years and the first thing you do is act rude and angry, like you want me to leave already.”
“Because I do want you to leave,” Danny told her.
“Wow, that’s really nice.” She looked up at the ceiling and prayed for strength.
“You can’t just leave for years at a time and expect to show up out of the blue and get the red carpet rolled out, Raven.” Danny glared at her. Then he looked at Jake and his expression got even less friendly. “And just because you’re seeing some big celebrity, don’t expect me to fall on my knees and kiss your feet. I couldn’t possibly care less who my sister dates.”
Jake smiled at him. “I get that you and your sis have problems, but I never did anything to you, partner.”
“You’re not my partner, dude. You’re just some jackass who sings and dances, and I really don’t appreciate you two coming here and getting Mom and Dad all stirred up. Dad’s sick, you know, and he doesn’t need the stress.”
“Why didn’t anyone even try and tell me he got sick? And what exactly does he have?” Raven said.
“He has COPD,” Danny told her, “caused by smoking.”
“What does that even mean?”
Jake glanced at Raven. “That means he’s got Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease. It’s a progressive disease, not curable, and the treatments are of limited effectiveness, although lifestyle changes can help.”
“What is this dude, a walking Web MD or something?” Danny said, gesturing to Jake with a complete lack of respect.
“No, I just have friends from the military who have COPD, so I’ve done a bit of reading and had some discussions with physicians about it,” Jake said, keeping his cool.
Danny wouldn’t look at Jake, instead training his attention on Raven. “You two should just go,” he said. “Why do you want to come here and mess with everybody? We were doing just fine without you.”
“If you want me to go so badly, I’ll go,” she said, standing up and meeting his gaze. “But I think you’re being a real asshole, Danny, and that’s saying something, even for you.”
They glared at each other for a long time and then Danny started to smile a little bit. Raven was cracking a smile too, and she wasn’t even sure why.
“This is silly,” Jake told them. “You two care about one another, that much is obvious. We’re only staying in town for a day or two at most. Can’t you just get along, ignore each other if you have to, until the visit’s over?”
Danny sighed, putting his hands on his hips. “Fine,” he said, his shoulders slumping as if he’d given in after all. “I’m sorry I was so rude to you and your boyfriend,” Danny told her.
“Thank you,” Raven told him. “And I’m sorry I didn’t call and check on Dad. That was wrong of me.”
“Whatever. Let’s just try and be nice,” Danny agreed. “Mom and Dad are happy you’re here, so I’ll be happy too.” He held out his hand. “Truce?”
“Truce,” she agreed, and then they shook.
Jake grinned at both of them. “We should go and celebrate this little victory with a drink. Isn’t there a bar around here we could go to?”
“What about dinner?” Raven said.
“We’ll just go out for one drink beforehand,” Jake told her.
“Not me,” Danny said. “I never go out to the local bars. The people in this town suck.”
Raven kind of felt the same way, but she also figured that at this time of day the chances of anyone she knew being out drinking was slim to none. And she wanted to spend some time with Jake. Getting a drink or two, loosening up, sounded quite right about then.
“I’ll get a drink with you,” she told Jake. “There’s a pub less than a mile from here, we could walk there and have a drink and then come back in time for dinner.”
“Now you’re talking,” Jake said, putting his arm around her waist.
Her entire body felt like it had been zapped with electricity.
Danny just shook his head. “Okay, but don’t say I didn’t warn the two of you.”
Someone had told at least a few members of the paparazzi of their whereabouts, because not five minutes into their walk, there were a couple of men following them a few yards back, with cameras. They hadn’t begun screaming insults or questions yet—in fact, they seemed content to merely snap photos.
<
br /> Raven turned to Jake. “How the heck did the paparazzi find us?”
He shrugged. “Could’ve been anybody. Someone spots us and tips off a friend of a friend, or maybe someone leaked it. Hell, Kurt might’ve leaked it on purpose.”
“Why?” she said, horrified.
Jake grabbed her hand and held it tight as he answered. “Why?” he laughed. “We want these pictures to get out, baby. We want the story out there. That’s why we’re here.”
“I hate this,” she muttered. The truth was, she hated it because she also liked it way, way too much. Walking with Jake in the fading sunlight of a beautiful day in her hometown, seeing the shadows play on the sidewalk, listening to the trees as the wind blew across the leaves.
Jake next to her, feeling so solid, so real, his hand warm and strong, his body seemed made to protect her.
How could it feel so natural to walk like this together?
Even the way he’d handled her brother. Danny could be so difficult, so rude and condescending, and yet Jake had kept cool and never batted an eyelash.
It was sexy.
Jake Novak was beyond sexy and that was the problem.
“You should try and enjoy this more,” Jake said, grinning. His brown eyes looked at her with knowing affection.
“The problem might be that I enjoy it plenty,” she said.
He laughed. “That’s not a problem unless you make it into one.” And that’s when he stopped dead in the middle of the street and laid a beautiful, perfect, romantic kiss on her lips.
Faintly, Raven could hear the cameras clicking as the lucky paparazzi got some pictures that would likely sell for quite a bit of money.
She put her hand up and felt the scruff on Jake’s cheek, and it made her smile. Her eyes had been half-closed, but now she made sure to look at him.
When they made eye contact, she felt her whole body flush with warmth, as Jake’s liquid eyes seemed to melt her when she looked into them for too long.
He feels it too.
I know he does. There’s no way all of this is just for show, I don’t care what he says. His eyes tell a different story.
But then the kiss ended, and Jake cleared his throat, taking her by the hand and starting to walk again. “That was interesting,” he told her.
