Page 68 of Fight for Me
“You want me to have to embarrass myself, don’t you?” he demanded, and the laughter that filled the room brought joy to Lexie’s heart. Jake raked one hand through his hair and looked from the tally on the whiteboard to her with amused resignation.
“Well, I should probably go out with a bang,” he said, shrugging innocently. He crossed the room to where Lexie was leaning against the pool table, caught her by the back of her neck and kissed her so thoroughly there were catcalls from the cheap seats. When he let go, Lexie could do no more than tent her hands over her face and wait for her runaway grin to subside.
Hannah laughed and rubbed one of Lexie’s shoulders in friendly solidarity, while Ashlyn pretended to gag into her drink. Jake, however, gave a cocky grin and backed away, fully owning the –12,478 points that Brooklyn scrawled beneath his name.
“Well, that’s that then,” Oliver said, coming up behind his wife. “Jake’s got to kiss a duck. Might as well get started.”
The whole group bundled into their coats and scarves and drifted into the backyard, where a small pond gleamed beneath a full moon. Cracking his neck and tucking his jeans into his boots, Jake headed resolutely for the water’s edge while Lexie and the rest of his family made themselves comfortable along the split-rail fence. When he finally cornered a duck and held it aloft in a swirl of feathers, she cheered along with the rest of them.
And later, when he chased her around his truck and smeared mud from his clothes onto hers, she felt a palpable shift in her chest—as if all her jumbled pieces were finally falling into place.
14
The rumble ofa pickup truck woke Lexie much earlier than she’d intended the next morning. She looked around the unfamiliar room in the cold, gray light before dawn, trying to place where she was. Everything came flooding back when her eyes landed on a collection of gold-colored soccer trophies on the tall dresser.
She was in Jake’s childhood bedroom, surrounded by the first eighteen years of his life. She sat up, reached for the bedside lamp and flipped it on. In its warm glow, she could see stacks of thin comic books on the shelves, racks of sports awards on the cream-colored walls and an emblem for the Mason County Raiders embroidered onto the black-and-gold bedspread tucked around her waist.
A door snapped shut somewhere downstairs, and she pushed herself up onto her knees to peer through the gauzy white curtains behind the double bed. A dirty gray flatbed truck idled in the open driveway, and Lexie was surprised to see both Jakeand his dad step off the porch beneath her window. Jake was bundled in what seemed to be his muddy clothes from the night before, a dark knit hat pulled low over his forehead and a shining silver thermos clutched in his gloved hands. His breath appeared in white clouds as he spoke to two other young men riding on the truck bed. She recognized them both as cousins, but she couldn’t remember which ones.
Jake’s father, who had insisted she call him Logan, paused near the passenger’s side door of the truck, talking to his wife. One of his hands rested comfortably on her hip as the other accepted the thermos she handed him. He bent and kissed her, then leaned against her hand as she brushed it through the hair that poked from beneath his cap. The tenderness of the gesture made Lexie’s throat clench, and she swallowed hard.
Logan Tanner was a quiet man, tending to listen far more than he spoke, and it hadn’t taken Lexie long at all to see where Jake had learned how to treat a woman. His father seemed to stay connected to his wife in one way or another—an arm across her chair, a hand on her back, a knee touching hers as they sat on the couch. He served her in small, silent ways, and she visibly basked in his affection. Jake was that way, too, always quietly anticipating what Lexie might need and hurrying to provide it before she could ask. She could feel his heart in everything he did, which was both thrilling and unnerving at the same time. If this was love in action, it was unlike anything she’d ever seen before.
Logan opened the front door of the truck and disappeared into the cab as Jake climbed onto the flatbed beside his cousins, his long legs hanging off the tailgate. As the truck slowly bumped forward, Lexie saw him raise his eyes toward the window where she watched. She didn’t know if he could see her, but she waved anyway. A slow smile spread over his face, and he raised one hand in return as the pickup trundled away. As he disappearedfrom sight, Lexie felt an odd sort of tugging beneath her breastbone, almost like a rubber band being stretched but not broken. She rubbed the heel of her hand against her sternum, trying to massage away the unfamiliar feeling.
Too awake to drift off again, she got up and padded quietly around the room, looking at photos of Jake surrounded by friends and cousins over the years. He’d obviously been well-liked, not that she could ever imagine otherwise. She pulled Jake’s hoodie on over her pajama shirt and swapped her flannel pants for jeans before cracking open the door to the hallway. Her stomach grumbled as she listened for signs of life in the rest of the house. The hallway carpet was soft, muffling her footsteps, but she hit a squeaky step about halfway down the staircase. She froze as the noise split the silence, listening hard, and then smiled when she thought of Jake moving through this same house. He would undoubtedly know to skip that step.
The house Lexie had grown up in was cold and sterile, less a place to live and more a place to store the things that made her father feel important, including his wife and daughter. There were no squeaky stairs in that house, though if the walls could talk, they’d tell of scars that ran decades deep.
After reaching the first floor, Lexie made her way quietly into the kitchen, where she was surprised to find Kathleen sitting at the table, a steaming mug of coffee and an open Bible in front of her.
“Oh! I’m sorry!” Lexie said, taking a quick step backward, but Jake’s mom only smiled and beckoned Lexie into the room.
“Come in, come in!” Kathleen said, closing her book. “I was finishing up anyway. I’m sorry if we woke you. I guess Ashlyn is so used to sleeping through the truck that I didn’t even think about it.”
“Where were they going so early?” Lexie asked, sinking into a chair across from where Jake’s mom was settled. A large picturewindow along the back wall showed the sun starting to peek above the edges of a bare field, its light slowly touching the frost that covered the ground.
“Oh, there are always animals to feed—cows, mostly, but sheep and goats, too. Fences to check, waterers to fill. Just the everyday life of a working farm.” She smiled warmly and gestured toward the stove. “I was just about to start breakfast. Would you like some hot chocolate? And how do you feel about pancakes and eggs?”
“That sounds delicious! Can I help?” Lexie asked, but Kathleen clucked her tongue as she stood.
“Oh, don’t worry, I’ll put you to work later. But right now”—Kathleen went to the nearby baker’s rack and grabbed something off the top shelf—“this is for you.” She grinned as she set a thick photo album on the gleaming wooden tabletop in front of Lexie and then turned back to the counter.
Lexie was delighted to see a tiny, red-faced baby staring up at her from the cover, where the gold script read “Jacob Ryan Tanner, born April 18, 1990.” She opened the book and poured over photo after photo, watching Jake grow older with each turn of the page. The child who started out as a squalling infant transformed into a chubby-cheeked toddler and finally a lanky little boy, complete with a farmer’s tan. Lexie ran her fingers over a snapshot of young Jake standing on the bottom rail of a split-rail fence, waving as his father’s harvester went by. He was wearing a tiny pair of Wranglers, his bare chest and feet bronzed by the sun.
“How old was he here?” Lexie asked, looking up at Jake’s mother.
Kathleen brought her a cup of hot chocolate and set it down as she peered over Lexie’s shoulder.
“About four, I think,” Kathleen said. She went to the pantry and pulled out a bag of flour and a small container of vanillaextract. “He was a typical country boy. He loved to ride on the tractors and chase the animals and always came home covered in mud from who-knows-where. But he’s a hard worker, always has been. If there were jobs to be done, he was out doing them—even though staying on the farm wasn’t ultimately his calling.”
Lexie’s eyes moved to the opposite page, where she saw a photo of Jake sitting cross-legged on a barn floor, bottle-feeding a tiny goat that lay curled between his knees.
“He’s always had a soft heart, too,” Kathleen continued, measuring ingredients into a massive silver bowl. “If any of the animals were hurt, he was the first to notice. If someone fell in the creek, he was the first one in after them. He hated to see anyone be left out or mistreated, and he’s still that way. It’s part of what makes him such a good man.”
Lexie felt her chest warm. Jake certainly was a good man, and she could see how he’d become that way.
Kathleen came up behind her, a metal whisk clicking against the mixing bowl as she prepared the pancake batter. She paused and reached one finger down to point out a photo of Jake taken from behind. “And then, of course, there’s all the times I caught him peeing in my flower bed. Boys that age will go absolutely anywhere,” she explained wryly. Lexie felt a blush rush across her face, and Jake’s mother laughed outright. “He would hate for me to tell you that, but it’s the truth. If you ever have any sons, you’ll find out,” she added as she made her way back to the stove.
