7
Jake:You look tired.
The text message came as Lexie crossed the quad alone, stopping her in her tracks. She looked wildly in all directions, but Jake was nowhere to be seen.
Lexie:Where are you?
Jake:Wouldn’t you like to know?
Lexie smiled for the first time in two days and resumed her path toward the bell tower. It was her favorite outdoor study spot, and she sank onto one of the wrought iron benches at its base before scanning the sidewalks in all directions. Jake was always behind a camera, and with a telephoto lens to his eye, he could be almost anywhere.
Lexie:Why do I feel like I’m being stalked?
Jake:Because you are.
She laughed weakly. This almost felt like flirting.
But, of course, it wasn’t. Because they didn’t do that anymore.
Lexie rolled her neck, trying to relieve the tension in her muscles. Jake was right; she was tired. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw Colt with another beautiful woman—dancing, kissing, touching. The highlight reel was endless. She dreamed about life as Mrs. Colton Derricks, finding unfamiliar lingerie under the bed and between the sofa cushions, and she woke drenched in sweat and jittery with anxiety.
Her phone vibrated again.
Jake:Look up.
She did, and at first she saw nothing. But then something high in the bell tower shifted, and she saw the long lens of a camera peek from an opening in the belfry.
Surely not . . .
“Jake?” she called, her voice the only one drifting through the quiet quad. She thought she heard a faraway chuckle, muffled by the building itself.
“Yes, ma’am?” he answered, and his head poked out several stories above her.
Lexie laughed in surprise.
“Hold on, I’ll come and get you,” he called, his hands cupped around his mouth. A few minutes later, a door at the base of the tower opened. Lexie had tried it a few times in the past, out of curiosity, but it had always been locked.
“How did you get in there?” she asked as Jake waved her over.
He grinned and gave a cheeky shrug.
“There are perks to being me,” he said, his eyes twinkling, and Lexie just shook her head, trying to ignore the rolling sensation in her belly when he smiled. She looked past him to a narrow metal staircase that twisted around the inside of the building.
“Actually, this is a great place to get aerial photos and video footage, so I have special access,” he explained, gesturing for her to start the climb.
Lexie gripped the slender railing tightly, feeling a rush of nerves as she tested her weight on the first step.
“It’s solid, I promise. I’ve been up and down this thing a dozen times, and you probably weigh half what I do,” he said from behind her.
The outer door clicked shut, and they were plunged into semidarkness, lit only by exposed bulbs that protruded from the brick wall every forty or fifty feet along the staircase. The spaces between were filled with shadows, and Lexie could almost imagine the stairs ascended into fathomless space.
“Trust me, Lex. The climb is worth it,” Jake said, and his voice was both too loud and too soft in the small space.
Every hair on the back of her neck stood on end, and she willed herself not to turn around. She had a feeling that if she did, he’d be standing entirely too close. So, instead, she took a deep breath and started up into the gloom.
Jake’s feet shuffled on the stairs behind her, every step making the metal staircase vibrate slightly, and while they didn’t speak, Lexie was hyper-aware of his presence. They climbed for what felt like eons, and her knees screamed in protest. Finally, she reached the top of the stairwell. The bulb here had burned out, and she stood in the humid darkness, staring at what seemed to be a solid wall.
“The knob is down here somewhere,” Jake said, reaching around her to run his hand along the wood. His chest brushed against her back as he searched, and Lexie could feel his breath skate across her shoulder. He kept his other hand on the railing, though if he’d lifted it, she would have been standing in his arms.
She heard his breath hitch and wondered if the same thought had occurred to him as well.
“Here!” he blurted at last, finding the knob and turning it sharply. He sounded almost relieved as the cooler outside air rushed in and Lexie moved forward, putting space between them.
She stepped into a circular room with open windows that looked out over the campus in all directions. Jake’s gear—two camera bags and a tripod—was laid out on the floor.
“You carried all that up here by yourself?” she asked.
“Nah, I have a secret army of lawn gnomes that do all my heavy lifting.”
If Lexie hadn’t been trying to catch her breath, she would have laughed, but instead she leaned against the stone wall and looked out one of the large windows. The sill was at chest height, but the opening soared far above her head in a pointed arch. There was no glass, and Lexie fought the urge to lean over and look straight down.
“This is amazing,” she breathed, gazing out over the green sea of tree branches below them. The bell tower was the highest point on campus, and she could see all the way across the long quad to the football stadium on the eastern edge. To the north and south were the angled roofs of academic buildings and dormitories, and to the west was an open expanse of field where the agricultural programs kept livestock. The green pasture was full of black dots that were probably cows, but from this distance, could be almost anything.
“I had to sign all kinds of liability waivers to be allowed up here, so don’t get too close,” Jake warned from across the room.
“Will you get in trouble for bringing me up?” she asked, looking over her shoulder.
Jake shrugged.
“Probably. So, just don’t tell anyone, okay?” Then he laughed. “Actually, I think one of Andy’s first instructions was ‘no girls in the tower.’”
Lexie ran her hand along the rough stone windowsill.
“So, I’m the first girl who’s been up here?”
“Well, I don’t know about that for sure, but you’re the only girl who’s been up here with me,” Jake said, and Lexie thought she saw a flush creep up his neck as he rearranged his equipment.
She wandered over to where he knelt and lowered herself down beside him. Sitting against the wall, she peered up to the ceiling of the belfry, which was strangely empty.
“Where are the bells?” she asked, cocking her head.
Jake settled himself at her side, leaving a purposeful gap between them, and looked up.
“Not sure. I know one of them broke a while ago, so they started using pre-recorded music instead.”
“What a shame. I had this whole Quasimodo thing going on in my head.”
Jake snorted. “You thought there was a hunchbacked guy jumping up and down up here every hour?”
A grin stretched across Lexie’s face. It felt good.
“Not hunchbacked, necessarily. Could just be a crazy guy who likes bells.”
“And what would he do up here all day?” Jake asked incredulously.
“I don’t know. Maybe he takes pictures of people as they walk by,” she said, glancing at him from the corner of her eye. “Because that’s not creepy at all.”
Jake laughed—just a quick exhale of breath—and shook his head sheepishly. “Alright, point taken,” he said.
Lexie caught his eye, and they both chuckled. She leaned her head against the warm stone behind her and closed her eyes, soaking in the quiet sounds of life above the treetops. It felt like the most natural thing in the world to simply sit in silence with Jake as the afternoon rolled forward. Birds twittered in nests just outside the windows, and more than one flew into the empty space and perched high above, looking down on them with interest.
It was the first time in forty-eight hours that Lexie’s brain was still.
“I heard a song on the radio this morning that made me think of you,” she said finally, her eyes still closed.
“Yeah?”
She couldn’t see Jake, but she could feel his full attention on the side of her face.
“Yeah. It was one of those country songs about childhood sweethearts. Something about a little boy chasing a girl around the playground, and then they grew up and got married and lived happily ever after.” She sighed, hearing her own wistfulness. “You strike me as a third-grade-sweetheart kind of guy.”
Jake gave a self-deprecating sort of laugh. “Not exactly,” he said. “I still thought girls were icky in the third grade. Present company excluded, of course. I’m sure you were never icky.”
“Oh, of course not,” she said, turning to look at him. “I was delightful.”
“I actually broke up with my first girlfriend on her parents’ answering machine,” he admitted, rubbing the back of his neck with a grimace. “I got myself all psyched up to call and tell her I didn’t want to be her boyfriend anymore, and then when I got the machine, I panicked. I word-vomited my whole spiel after the beep and hung up. A few days later, her mom mentioned it to my mom, who mentioned it to my dad, who dragged me across town, walked me up to her front porch and rang the bell.”
“He did not!” Lexie gasped, her eyes wide.
Jake smiled ruefully. “Yes, he did. He stood there until she came to the door, and then he went and sat in his truck while I prayed with all my might for the earth to swallow me whole. Later that night, he gave me a long lecture about how being a man means owning the things I’ve done, both good and bad, and taking responsibility for how my actions affect other people. It’s not one I’ve forgotten.”
“How old were you?”
“Fourteen.”
Lexie felt her heart tighten, wishing every young man had learned the same lesson. Jake must have seen a change in her expression because his humor transformed into something else.
“What is it?” he asked, his voice soft.
Something about the tenderness in it made Lexie want to reach for his hand, which now rested on his knee, only inches away. Her fingers tingled with the desire to move, but she folded them into her lap, unwilling to give in. She stared silently out one of the huge windows, watching a hawk circle in an updraft. Jake didn’t push her, but she could feel him waiting patiently at her side.
“Nobody taught my father that,” she said at last. “I’m not sure he’s ever made a mistake that he believes was actually his fault, including the night my mother died.”
Jake drew in a sharp breath but said nothing, so she went on.
“He cheated on her for years, parading his mistresses in front of her like show ponies, one after the other. That night, I heard them arguing. She asked what she could do better, what he needed that she wasn’t giving him. She begged him not to go back to his girls, but he left anyway. He brushed her aside like lint off his jacket, and he grabbed his keys and shut the door without even saying goodbye. She drank most of a bottle of tequila and then got in her car to go after him. I stood in front of the door and begged her not to leave. But she said, ‘Lexie, a woman’s got to fight for her man. One day you’ll understand.’ And then she left.
“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 for me.” 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.
“Do you love him?” he asked finally, and Lexie felt her whole body lock up.
“I don’t know,” she said, wishing she had a better answer. “I don’t think I know what love looks like.”
Jake swallowed hard. “Maybe you’re not looking in the right places,” he said.
For just a moment, Lexie let herself get lost in his eyes the way she’d always known she could. He was hiding nothing from her. There were no pretenses, no qualifiers, no fences erected to keep her out, and something in the back of her mind recognized how precious that was.
Jake must have realized it too because he stepped back, disentangling their fingers in a way that left her oddly chilled. He held her gaze for another second, looking away as the speakers above their heads began to chime the hour. The pre-recorded music was deafening by proximity, and Lexie suddenly realized life was moving on without her far below.
“I’m late,” she said, sure he couldn’t hear, but she grabbed her bag and darted toward the stairwell all the same. Her first steps on the old staircase were hesitant as something inside her urged her to stay, but soon she was flying down as fast as her feet would carry her.
Jake watched the staircase door shut behind Lexie as the sound of the bells faded, and he let his eyes drift closed. He felt raw, like every nerve had been torn from his body and put on display.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Why had he said all those things? Here he was, the guy who couldn’t take no for an answer, who brought her sad little presents like a magpie and took advantage of her vulnerability to lay his heart at her feet.
What had he been thinking?
He turned and braced both hands on the windowsill, taking one shaky breath after another and trying not to dwell on how warm she’d felt nestled against him in that exact spot not two minutes before. It didn’t matter that she’d fit perfectly. It didn’t matter if some instinct said she was made for him. None of it mattered if she chose someone else, someone who wasn’t nearly good enough for her.
Jake didn’t feel good enough either, but at least he would try.
When his heart finally slowed to an acceptable pace, he knelt to pack his gear. He folded the tripod and secured the legs, counted his memory cards and tucked them away, replaced the lens caps and wiped down the camera body. But he was in no hurry to leave. The downstairs door had locked behind Lexie as she fled, and he was safe in his fortress of solitude. At least up here, high in the sky, he could avoid the inevitable repercussions for a while longer.
Killing time, he flipped the Canon on with his thumb, watching the screen turn white as it powered up. He scrolled through the most recent set of photos, and images from the quad below passed in quick succession as he looked for the shots he wanted.
At the end of the series, he found Lexie. He’d photographed her even before she’d realized he was watching. She looked anxious and withdrawn, like a turtle hiding inside its shell. The images were crystal clear, and the pain on her face made his heart ache all over again. This was what Colt did to her. This was what it looked like when an amazing woman felt worthless.
His stomach tightened, and his hands clenched reflexively. What Colt needed was a good beating. And maybe a few red-hot knitting needles stuck in memorable places.
Jake flipped through the images that followed, watching Lexie look at her phone and smile. That was because of him.
The very last picture, the one where she’d found him at last, showed her looking straight up into the camera, her face a mix of surprise and amusement. She’d been glad to see him. Maybe even excited. He had put that light in her eyes.
Jake studied the image for a long time, wondering if Lexie would ever look at him that way again.