Read The Debt 8 (Club Alpha) for Free Online Page A

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