Page 38 of Fight for Me
“I fell asleep on the couch waiting for her, and I answered the door when the policeman came. He wouldn’t tell me the truth, because I was a minor, but I knew. I knew she wasn’t coming back. Turns out they’d found her car halfway down an embankment, wrapped around a telephone pole. She was so drunk she probably didn’t feel a thing.”
Lexie felt Jake’s hand slide over hers, his warm fingers curling around her palm as he balanced it on her knee. He had calluses across the pad of his hand, and they scraped against her skin in a way that made her whole arm tingle. She stared down at where his tanned skin contrasted sharply with hers and wondered why she felt more comfort in that small gesture than she did during entire evenings with Colt.
Jake didn’t say anything, but she knew he was listening intently.
“My father had to go downtown and identify her body, and he played the shell-shocked husband the whole time,” she went on. “I heard him telling people afterward that he had no idea why she would have been drinking or why she’d left the house. I’m sure he never once considered he might have been to blame.”
Lexie wiped her free hand across her cheek, though the motion was unnecessary. Oddly enough, she could tell this story without breaking down. It only left her numb.
“She always said a woman has to fight for her man, but what I want is somebody who fights forme.” Her voice finally wavered on the last word, and she scoffed. “Isn’t that pathetic?”
Jake’s hand tightened around hers without hesitation, and he cleared his throat. “No,” he said. “You deserve to be the most important person in someone’s life. You shouldn’t settle for anything less.”
Lexie huffed, pulling her hand away and picking instead at the fraying knee of her jeans. It was too much to be connected to him just then—too raw. She couldn’t fathom being the most important person to anyone. She’d learned long ago not to aim that high.
“I think Colt might be cheating on me,” she said without preamble, blurting it out before she could decide not to. The only answering sounds were the buzzing of bugs and the distant shouts of students passing far below. She chanced a glance at Jake and found him watching her closely, his brow pinched in the middle.
“You think, or you know?” he asked softly.
Lexie wrung her hands in her lap and rolled her lips together, willing herself to say what she knew in her heart was true.
“I know,” she said, and the unexpected weight of disappointment settled on her chest. It wasn’t really because Colt had been unfaithful, though that certainly hurt. It was because she had let herself end up in this place where she said she’d never go. She’d watched from the outside so many times, made so many naive judgments about the way her mother lived. Now, she was getting a taste of what it felt like on the other side. Walking away wasn’t nearly as easy when it was your own life you were turning upside down.
“So, are you going to leave him?” Jake asked, his voice rough.
Lexie looked at the urgency in his eyes, something that bordered on desperation, and wondered why that question was so hard to answer.
His gaze clouded over as her silence stretched on. “Lexie?”
There was pain in his voice, like her next words meant everything.
“I don’t know,” she whispered.
Jake blinked several times, clearly processing. “You don’t know?”
“I don’t know! Maybe I’m overreacting.”
“Overreacting?” Jake asked as he gestured emphatically with both hands. “He’s been with another woman, and you think leaving him might be overreacting?” His eyes searched hers like he might find an explanation within them, like he might understand what she was thinking if he could only see it for himself.
“There is such a thing as forgiveness, you know,” Lexie spat, the words coming hotter and harder than she’d intended because she’d heard them before. And she’d hated them then, too.
“Well, yeah, but does he deserve it? I’ve seen the way he looks past you when you talk, the way he acts like you’re supposed to worship the ground he walks on. You deserve better than that!” Jake said, his volume rising.
“It’s not that simple, okay?” she cried. She scrambled to her feet, and hot shame pricked at the corners of her eyes as she crossed to a far window and leaned her forearms on the sill. The warm stone beneath her arms grounded her when all she really wanted to do was float away.
After a beat, she heard Jake’s footsteps crossing the hard floor. He stopped beside her in the narrow gap, his arm pressed against hers from shoulder to wrist as he leaned out the same window, taking in the same view.
“Tell me why not,” he said, though it wasn’t a demand. Instead, there was an unexpected gentleness to the words that somehow let her open the door she’d always kept closed.
“Because he’s stayed,” she said, staring resolutely over the treetops so she wouldn’t have to see Jake’s judgment. “Because he made room for me when nobody else ever has. Because he says he loves me, and I want to believe him. Because he might be the best I get.”
There was a long silence during which only the birds spoke, and Lexie fought hard against the urge to look at Jake. She didn’t want to see the pity she knew was written on his face. She didn’t want to be a girl he felt sorry for.
After what seemed like hours, he shifted slightly, and Lexie felt his arm trade places with hers, his bicep filling the space beneath her shoulder and his hand trailing down to where hers dangled over the emptiness beyond the window. He linked their fingers together, as if he’d done it a thousand times, and the simple motion took Lexie’s breath away. All she could do was stare down at the place where his warm palm touched hers, her chest too tight for words.
“Lexie,” he said, his voice soft enough that she had to concentrate to hear him—not that he didn’t have her full attention anyway. “You are so much more talented, more amazing, more incredible than you know. You deserve someone who notices when you change shampoo because your hair doesn’t smell like strawberries anymore, who loves the way you bounce when you get excited and would do anything to make that happen. Someone who knows you play classical music when you’re stressed and would keep your favorite tracks on his phone, just in case you ever need them. Someone who will fight for you every day for the rest of his life.”
He lapsed into a silence so heavy that Lexie turned to look at him. She found his eyes studying her face, indecision painted on his features.
