Page 71 of Fight for Me
A silence fell between them, and Lexie was acutely aware of the way the knuckles of his right hand trailed lazily along her arm where it lay draped across his stomach.
“I made the meringue, too, you know,” she said, mostly just to fill the silence.
“Youmade the meringue? Grandma Ruby’s dark chocolate cherry mile-high meringue?” Jake asked, his voice filled with surprise.
“Yeah, I guess so. She gave me the recipe card, anyway.”
“Grandma Rubygave youher recipe card?” he asked incredulously.
“Yes... Why?” Lexie narrowed her eyes. It had been a complicated recipe, but it seemed odd for Jake to be so interested.
“That pie is like a family heirloom.Nobodymakes it except Grandma Ruby,” he explained, running his fingers through her hair.
“Why would she let me do it, then?” Lexie asked.
Jake shrugged. “I guess she really likes you. Although I can’t imagine why,” he said dryly, and Lexie smacked his shoulder.
“Be nice to me, or I might start calling you Squirt,” she warned, and Jake let out a resigned sigh.
“You have learned too many things today,” he complained, but his smile said he didn’t really mind.
Lexie chuckled and raised herself on one arm so she was looking down at him. His hand dropped from her hair to her waist as she traced the dark stubble on his jaw.
“I learned you aren’t close to Drew anymore,” she said, sobering. “Why is that?”
Jake didn’t answer immediately, and his eyes darted around her face as if he were looking for the right words.
“Honestly? I’m not sure.”
Lexie furrowed her brow in confusion, and he went on.
“Drew and I were basically twins growing up. We’re only two months apart, so we did everything together for years. But something changed around the time we started high school.”
Jake’s voice was sad, and Lexie longed to smooth away the crease that deepened between his eyes.
“I really think it started with a girl, actually,” he added.
“A girl?”
“Yeah. Savannah, the one I told you about with the answering machine?”
Lexie nodded, remembering the story.
“We’d all been friends for ages, and I wanted to ask her to be my girlfriend, but I sort of thought Drew might have a crush on her. When I asked him about it, he said he didn’t... but everything was different after that,” Jake explained. “Even after Savannah and I broke up, Drew was always upset with me about something. He’d get mad when good things happened, like when I made the soccer team or got good grades; he acted like I didn’t deserve it. And then when I moved to Cypress Valley, it just got worse.”
Lexie ran her hand through his hair, wishing she could somehow make this a better story.
“What was the problem today?”
“Today?”
“Yeah. We saw you arguing after lunch.”
“Oh,” Jake sighed and leaned absentmindedly against her hand. “What is it always about? How he’s here every day, slaving away in the hot sun to keep this place running, while I’m kicked back on a Barcalounger in my cushy bachelor pad,” he said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “He acts like I just abandoned him here in purgatory, like I shouldn’t have had any other dreams. But helikesworking the farm. He’s proud of it; he’s good at it. This is what hewantsto do!
“And I’m proud of it, too! I’m proud to come from a century of farmers, but it’s not in me to spend the rest of my life driving the combine and checking the cows. I mean, I would, if I had to,” he amended quickly. “If there were nobody else to continue the farm, I would do it; I’m not just going to let a hundred years of hard work die with me. But that’s why I’m so grateful that heishere and that hewantsto be a farmer. He and Sawyer and James... they’ll inherit this land and keep it running. They’ll be the next generation of Tanners here, and I’m proud of them for it. But he makes me feel like I decided I was too good for them.”
Lexie watched guilt war with aggravation as both danced across his face. All the muscles in his torso were tense where she leaned against him, and his jaw rolled back and forth as he stared at a point somewhere past her shoulder.
