Page 20 of Fight for Me
Colt’s hand snapped up and grabbed her wrist, squeezing hard enough to make her wince. He stopped the car at a red light, and his eyes were cold as he leaned toward her.
“I would wrap up this little temper tantrum, if I were you,” he said, his voice grating over her skin.
Lexie held his stare and forced herself not to shiver.
“You are mine if I say you’re mine, and I don’t share. You got that?”
Lexie simply blinked, too angry to let him win but too smart to disagree.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” he said, throwing her arm to the side as the light turned green. He settled back into his seat and continued toward her apartment. “I was thinking about Barclay’s for dinner tonight, since we skipped it last time,” he said, as if nothing were wrong. “It can be just us. No boys.”
Lexie simply rubbed her wrist and stared silently out the windshield, letting her hair whip across her face. At the next light, Colt put the top up and reached across to tuck the errant strands behind her ears.
“Baby, don’t be like that. You can hardly blame me,” he said, running his thumb along the curve of her jaw before dropping his hand to her leg.
She looked over, studying the side of his face as he drove and feeling her frustration slowly drain away. He wasn’t entirely wrong. The line between her and Jake—the boundary between friends and more-than-friends—had gotten fuzzy, and that was her fault. She’d just have to keep him at arm’s length from now on. Colt wasn’t perfect, but he deserved that much, at least.
“I love you,” Colt said, catching her watching him.
“I love you, too,” she answered automatically, remembering a time when those words had felt like a fairy tale come true.
These days, they just felt like words.
Jake kicked backin a threadbare lawn chair, his shoulders braced against the warm brick of the house and his grass-covered sneakers propped on the splintered porch railing. A few bats chased mosquitoes through the branches of a tulip poplar tree nearby, their silhouettes flashing here and there across the gaps of summer sky that had slowly faded from gold to crimson.Someone down the street was grilling, and the smell of roasting hot dogs made his stomach growl.
“The yard looks good,” Conner said, letting the cockeyed screen door snap shut behind him as he sank into a mismatched chair.
Jake gazed out over the perfectly mown grass that only hours before had been a jungle of overgrowth. It had been so long, he’d had to mow twice. Then, he’d used the Weed Eater on every stray blade he could find before dropping to his knees and attacking a long-neglected flower bed on the back side of the house. Every muscle in his body ached, but he still wasn’t satisfied. The place was still a dump; it would always be a dump. It wasn’t the kind of place a girl like Lexie would ever set foot.
Conner offered him a long-necked bottle, the Coca-Cola logo faintly visible in the fading light, and Jake twisted off the top and took a long, cold swallow.
“I thought you’d be out on the town by now,” Jake said, rolling the bottle between his hands.
“So did I, but I lost rock paper scissors, so here I am,” Conner said, taking a drink from his own bottle. “We were afraid you might get the chainsaw out next.”
“I can use a chainsaw just fine,” Jake muttered darkly, and Conner snorted.
“The last time you tried trimming that tree, you nearly put a hole in the roof.”
“That’s because neither of you idiots would come out here and help me,” Jake snapped, setting his bottle on the faded porch boards below his chair. “Besides, the place is already falling to pieces. I doubt we’d even notice a hole in the roof.”
Conner chuckled. “Well, you’re the one who lives upstairs, so if you want a skylight, then be my guest.”
Jake snorted, the sound unexpected, even to him.
“You know, the house wouldn’t look quite so bad if you and Noah would stop trying to destroy each other. Haven’t you had enough of this prank war? I mean, seriously, I found him knocking holes in his bedroom walls the other day.”
Conner snickered, his whole body shaking. “You have to admit, that was a good one.”
“It was psychotic! Who hides a speaker in the drywall and plays creepy voices at all hours of the night?” Jake said, shaking his head in disbelief. “How do you think of these things?”
Conner howled with laughter, and Jake rolled his eyes. It had been a pretty good prank. Even he’d gotten a kick out of watching Noah slowly lose his mind.
“Relax. We’re just getting a head start on the demolition,” Conner said, taking another swallow. “Although I will be sad to see this old place go. Dad is thinking about putting a duplex here instead.” He looked wistfully around the yard, as if remembering all the cookouts the boys had hosted in the past two years.
“And besides, Noah deserved it,” Conner continued, getting back on topic. “That bucket he dumped on me the first day? It was olive oil! It tookagesto get it all off. I was slippery in unspeakable places for a week!”
Jake shuddered, glad to be merely a third-party bystander to his friends’ hijinks.
