Page 36 of Fight for Me
Surely not . . .
“Jake?” she called, her voice the only one drifting through the quiet quad. She thought she heard a faraway chuckle, muffled by the building itself.
“Yes, ma’am?” he answered, and his head poked out several stories above her.
Lexie laughed in surprise.
“Hold on, I’ll come and get you,” he called, his hands cupped around his mouth. A few minutes later, a door at the base of thetower opened. Lexie had tried it a few times in the past, out of curiosity, but it had always been locked.
“How did you get in there?” she asked as Jake waved her over.
He grinned and gave a cheeky shrug.
“There are perks to being me,” he said, his eyes twinkling, and Lexie just shook her head, trying to ignore the rolling sensation in her belly when he smiled. She looked past him to a narrow metal staircase that twisted around the inside of the building.
“Actually, this is a great place to get aerial photos and video footage, so I have special access,” he explained, gesturing for her to start the climb.
Lexie gripped the slender railing tightly, feeling a rush of nerves as she tested her weight on the first step.
“It’s solid, I promise. I’ve been up and down this thing a dozen times, and you probably weigh half what I do,” he said from behind her.
The outer door clicked shut, and they were plunged into semidarkness, lit only by exposed bulbs that protruded from the brick wall every forty or fifty feet along the staircase. The spaces between were filled with shadows, and Lexie could almost imagine the stairs ascended into fathomless space.
“Trust me, Lex. The climb is worth it,” Jake said, and his voice was both too loud and too soft in the small space.
Every hair on the back of her neck stood on end, and she willed herself not to turn around. She had a feeling that if she did, he’d be standing entirely too close. So, instead, she took a deep breath and started up into the gloom.
Jake’s feet shuffled on the stairs behind her, every step making the metal staircase vibrate slightly, and while they didn’t speak, Lexie was hyper-aware of his presence. They climbed for what felt like eons, and her knees screamed in protest. Finally, she reached the top of the stairwell. The bulb here had burnedout, and she stood in the humid darkness, staring at what seemed to be a solid wall.
“The knob is down here somewhere,” Jake said, reaching around her to run his hand along the wood. His chest brushed against her back as he searched, and Lexie could feel his breath skate across her shoulder. He kept his other hand on the railing, though if he’d lifted it, she would have been standing in his arms.
She heard his breath hitch and wondered if the same thought had occurred to him as well.
“Here!” he blurted at last, finding the knob and turning it sharply. He sounded almost relieved as the cooler outside air rushed in and Lexie moved forward, putting space between them.
She stepped into a circular room with open windows that looked out over the campus in all directions. Jake’s gear—two camera bags and a tripod—was laid out on the floor.
“You carried all that up here by yourself?” she asked.
“Nah, I have a secret army of lawn gnomes that do all my heavy lifting.”
If Lexie hadn’t been trying to catch her breath, she would have laughed, but instead she leaned against the stone wall and looked out one of the large windows. The sill was at chest height, but the opening soared far above her head in a pointed arch. There was no glass, and Lexie fought the urge to lean over and look straight down.
“This is amazing,” she breathed, gazing out over the green sea of tree branches below them. The bell tower was the highest point on campus, and she could see all the way across the long quad to the football stadium on the eastern edge. To the north and south were the angled roofs of academic buildings and dormitories, and to the west was an open expanse of field where the agricultural programs kept livestock. The green pasturewas full of black dots that were probably cows, but from this distance, could be almost anything.
“I had to sign all kinds of liability waivers to be allowed up here, so don’t get too close,” Jake warned from across the room.
“Will you get in trouble for bringing me up?” she asked, looking over her shoulder.
Jake shrugged.
“Probably. So, just don’t tell anyone, okay?” Then he laughed. “Actually, I think one of Andy’s first instructions was ‘no girls in the tower.’”
Lexie ran her hand along the rough stone windowsill.
“So, I’m the first girl who’s been up here?”
“Well, I don’t know about that for sure, but you’re the only girl who’s been up here with me,” Jake said, and Lexie thought she saw a flush creep up his neck as he rearranged his equipment.
