Page 67 of Fight for Me
“What?” his opponents shrieked together.
“Thirty, at most,” the young woman across from him amended. “Deductions for excessive trash talk.”
The group around her agreed, and Lexie watched a young man in a Tennessee Vols sweatshirt approach the whiteboard on the far wall and add thirty points to a column labeled “Sawyer.” Scanning the rest of the board, Lexie noticed Jake’s name a few columns from the left and—to her surprise—her own in the one beside it. She already had 284 points to her credit.
“Probably a newbie bonus,” Jake explained, leaning close to her ear, and Lexie smiled at how he’d known exactly what she was thinking. Suddenly, a familiar-looking girl appeared as if from nowhere and wrapped Lexie in a crushing hug.
“I’m so glad you’re here!” she exclaimed, visibly vibrating with energy. “I’m Brooklyn, Jake’s favorite girl cousin”—Lexie heard Jake snort beside her—“and I can’t believe you’re real! He’s been going on about you for so long I wasn’t sure you existed, but here you are! Okay, have you met everyone yet?”
She was talking so fast Lexie scarcely had time to shake her head before Brooklyn raised her voice and bellowed, “Hey, you guys! This is Lexie, Jake’s lucky lady. Everybody say hello!”
A chorus of welcome echoed back, but Brooklyn was already talking again, pointing to each person in turn.
“This is Sawyer, Jonah, Hannah and her husband Oliver, then over there we have Morgan, James, Drew”—the Volunteers fan scowled—“and I’m sure you’ve met Ashlyn by now...”
The list was exhaustive, fifteen people in all, including cousins and a few friends, and Lexie’s head spun with the challenge to keep them all straight, a task made especially difficult by the way they kept moving around.
“And you may have noticed that you’re on the board already,” Brooklyn said, gesturing to the whiteboard across from them. “We started you off with five hundred points for being brave enough to attend as a guest, but then the group decided coming with Jake shows poor judgment overall, so deductions were made.”
“That’s a big deduction!” Jake protested from Lexie’s side, but Brooklyn ignored him.
“Come with me, and we’ll get you started!” she insisted, all but dragging Lexie across the room.
Brooklyn was so full of enthusiasm, and everyone she met was so glad to see her, that Lexie forgot to be nervous. Before sheknew it, she’d won 305 points in Jenga and lost 200 more for tanking a game of darts, though she did win back 592 points for accidentally landing one of said darts in Sawyer’s Mountain Dew. Jake had gained 619 points for sinking four balls on his first break in a game of pool but then lost 112 of them for the victory dance that followed.
Fifteen minutes into a heart-stopping game of Operation, Lexie scanned the room to find Jake sitting at a card table studying a Monopoly board. As if able to feel her gaze, he looked up and met her eyes over the heads of several cousins stretched precariously across a Twister mat. He winked, and that simple acknowledgement filled her with a warm sort of confidence—both grounding and exhilarating at the same time.
He went back to the game as his turn began, and Lexie watched him for a moment longer before dragging her attention back to the poor patient on the table. She’d already lost too many points for surgical ineptitude—a fact that would have dismayed her father—though a quick calculation said she was still well out of duck-kissing territory.
“So, what is it about Jake that brings you all the way to this madhouse?” Hannah asked later while she and Lexie held down a set of beanbag chairs near the kitchenette.
Lexie watched Jake collect another pile of pastel-colored dollar bills from Drew.
“Everything,” she said, surprised by her own frankness. Hannah gave an understanding nod and followed Lexie’s gaze.
“He’s a good one, for sure,” Hannah agreed, taking a sip of her drink. “You know you’re the only girl he’s ever introduced to us? Even when we were all in school and he was dating someone we knew, he never brought her to cousin night. I think—”
“That’s cheating!” Drew yelled suddenly, causing pandemonium at the Monopoly table. Tiny playing pieces went flying as he upended the board, and Jake dove to the groundafter his substantial pile of paper money. There was a mad scramble by the others to retrieve what he couldn’t reach. A heated argument broke out between Drew and another of the boys, whose name Lexie couldn’t remember, and Brooklyn and Oliver stepped in.
When things had calmed down, Brooklyn took out her phone. “Alright! This seems like a good time for a quick tally of the standings so far,” Brooklyn said.
Everyone followed suit, tallying their own gains and losses, and the final numbers were confirmed and written below their names. Oliver was on top of the heap with 2,472 points, followed by Sawyer and then Ashlyn. Jake ranked sixth with 1,621, and Lexie claimed a respectable eighth place with 1,394. James was sitting sadly at the bottom of the pile.
As the current totals were announced, Jake wandered toward Lexie and flopped down onto her beanbag, bouncing her a bit as he landed.
“Having fun yet?” he asked, reaching to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear.
“Yeah, I am,” she answered as she looked around the room with a smile. She didn’t quite have the words to explain how a room full of strangers already felt more like family than her own. Jake must have read some of it in her eyes, because his expression softened and he slipped his hand behind her head, pulling her close. He placed soft kisses first on her forehead and then on one cheek, but he made it no farther before he was caught.
“Minus five hundred for PDA!” Drew shouted, pointing in Jake’s direction.
“What?!” Jake popped his head up and scowled.
“Another two hundred for protesting!” someone else called, and Jake watched open-mouthed as he slipped firmly into eleventh place.
An hour later, he’d fallen three more spots after heavy deductions for aggressive dice rolling, excessive mockery and aiming a dart at Drew’s backside.
“I’m being sabotaged,” he announced after surveying the new rankings. “Aggressive dice rolling? Seriously?!” He glared around the room, and Lexie was delighted to see more than one of his cousins openly smirking. A lightbulb flicked on in Jake’s eyes.
