Page 76 of Fight for Me
“No, please. Stay. Eat,” she managed, then she shoved past him in the direction she had come. The door was near the end of the food line. It had to be. Without it, she was trapped.
She could feel the tide of conversation turning toward her. The eyes that followed her out the door, the whispers that snagged her skin. She knew they were all discussing her now, asking themselves how they’d been so blind, how Jake could have been deceived so completely.
Poor Jake. Poor, poor Jake.
She passed his parents sitting near the exit, and Kathleen reached a hand up as she barreled by, but Lexie ignored it. Her own mother had told her what a disappointment she was more times than she could count. She didn’t need to hear it from his mother, too.
Pushing through the doors, she sucked cool air into her lungs and then hurried toward the house. Just a few more steps—across the yard, onto the porch, through the front door. Within moments, she stood in the empty, quiet living room clutching the back of the sectional couch, desperately looking for something, anything, to ground herself.
What do you feel? What do you smell? What do you hear?
The couch’s worn leather was cool beneath her hands, and a rough place on one of the seams caught her skin as she rubbed her palms over it. The lingering scent of smoked turkey drifted from the kitchen, as did the hum of the refrigerator. The ice maker clattered as it dumped another load into the tray. A television had been left on somewhere down the hall, and the artificial sound of a laugh track grated on Lexie’s ears.
But it wasn’t enough.
Five things you can see, she reminded herself, looking around. There was a multicolored quilt hanging on the back of Logan Tanner’s armchair, the star pattern swirled with silver thread. A half-empty glass of clear soda sat abandoned on theend table, the bubbles still rising quietly to the surface. A magazine, its cover displaying a piece of green farm equipment, was partially tucked into the crease between two of the couch cushions. The gauzy curtains on the front windows shifted slightly over an air vent in the floor, and one of the picture frames on the wall was slightly off-center.
Lexie’s gaze caught on the photographs, all Jake’s work, each showing a different part of life on the farm—a black-and-white print of a barn in the fog, a newborn calf wobbling on brand-new legs, the pink tint of sunrise beyond a hay-strewn field.
“National Geographic is the dream, of course . . .”
He had so much potential. He had plans, dreams, passions... and she was drifting. She didn’t know what she wanted from her life or how to go about getting it.
“You’re allowed to be talented, and you can’t let anyone hold you back from that.”
Lexie turned so fast she stumbled, knocking a vase of dried flowers to the floor. She was already up the stairs, cramming discarded clothing into her weekend bag, before she realized the vase had broken.
16
Jake watched Lexiemake her way to the barn door and sidestep his mother before vanishing from sight. He furrowed his brow, trying to see the missing piece of the puzzle. Surely she wasn’t mad about how he’d carried her off earlier. She hadn’t seemed upset about it at the time, but maybe he’d gone too far. Maybe she didn’t like that he’d done it in front of so many people.
He was still piecing his thoughts together when he noticed both Hannah and Brooklyn staring at him with wide, expectant eyes.
“What?” he asked, his gaze bouncing between them.
“Aren’t you going after her?” Brooklyn asked as she gestured toward the door where Lexie had disappeared.
Jake looked in the direction she’d pointed, debating. “Maybe she just needs a minute,” he said.
“Get up, you idiot!” Hannah practically shouted. “Something’s wrong!”
The frantic tone of her voice spurred Jake to action. He scrambled out of his chair but had only moved a few feet before he was intercepted.
“Jacob! It’s good to see you. How is college going? Senior year, right?” asked an elderly man. Jake recognized him as one of his grandfather’s brothers.
“Yes, sir. It’s going well,” Jake said distractedly. He kept glancing toward the door, but his great-uncle started talking about his own days at Cypress Valley and how much the little town had grown.
“Uncle Jamison!” Hannah’s too-bright voice chirped from Jake’s right. “It’s fantastic to see you! How are all the grandkids?” Her smile was comically wide, and she bumped Jake with her hip, a silent command for him to run while he still could.
Jake took the opening and began to move more quickly toward the door. He avoided two more aunts and a handful of second cousins before making it outside, but Lexie was nowhere to be found. He made his way to the house and opened the front door cautiously. Hurried footsteps sounded above his head, and he followed them until he found Lexie in his old bedroom, frantically shoving a curling iron and a makeup bag into her duffel.
“Lex? What are you doing?” he asked, alarmed. She jumped at the sound of his voice.
“I’m—I’m sorry, Jacob,” she stammered, shoving another T-shirt into the bulging bag. “I can’t do this. I can’t be here. I just... I can’t. I can’t do it.”
“Can’t do what?” he asked as he watched her dart toward the dresser and pull a phone charger from the wall. She really was leaving.
“This, Jacob. All of this.”
