Page 108 of Fighting Jacob

Lola joins me on the couch in her tiny living room to devour the Chinese we just had delivered to replenish the shitload of nutrients we lost the past few hours.

“Which one?” I talk around the forkful of fried rice in my mouth, too hungry to remember my manners. I’m beyond starving. I haven’t eaten since last night, but with Lola being hungry for something other than food, I had more urgent matters to attend to before my hungry tummy.

“The blonde.” Her brows stitch as she stares into space. “The one who kissed you goodbye.”

I’m about to reply that no one with blonde hair kissed me—Jenni’s is more strawberry blonde than platinum—but recalling Rachel’s unexpected peck on my way out stops me. “Do you mean Rachel? About this tall.” I hold my hand to my pecs. “Smells like wildflowers and antibacterial soap?”

My throat works hard to swallow when Lola glares at me with steam billowing from her ears. Faster than I can snap my fingers, the vibe in the room goes from playful to me being concerned I’m about to get my dick cut off.

“What?” Her glare is telling me I’ve fucked up, but I have no clue what I did.

Lola folds her arms under her perfect tits. "You know what she smells like?"

“Yeah, but only because it takes an hour to get her smell out of Noah’s room when she leaves.”

My confession doesn’t alleviate the redness on her face in the slightest. If anything, it increases it. “She visits often, does she?”

“Well, yeah.” I shrug like she’s not seconds from castrating me. “It’s kind of a requirement of her job… since she’s Noah’s therapist.”

As quickly as Lola's anger arrived, it fades. "She's Noah's therapist?"

I jerk up my chin. “The record company brought her in to work with him while he was in the coma. She specializes in that type of rehabilitation. Why, who did you think she was?”

"No one." She takes a bite as if nothing happened. "She just seems a little... friendly for a hospital worker.”

“I guess you could say that. We’ve talked a lot the past few weeks.”

When her eyes slit, reality finally dawns. The woman who’d swear until she was blue in the face that she doesn’t get jealous is jealous.

It’s about fucking time!

“You’re jealous.” Excitement jingles on my vocal cords. I’ve been waiting for this day for over two years, so you can be assured I’m going to milk it for all it’s worth.

“I am not.”

She snatches up the remote from the coffee table to switch on the TV, wordlessly announcing our conversation is over. I'm not as willing to back down. After snatching the remote out of her hand, I turn the TV back off. “You are so.”

Her eyes rocket to mine. They’re slit and brimming with anger. “I don’t get jealous, Jacob. Never have. Never will.”

When she adjusts her position so she's sitting cross-legged, my shirt rides up high on her thigh. I know what she's doing. She's distracting me as only she can. I'm not strong enough to deny her silent pleas for me to forget our conversation, so I tug her onto my lap instead.

Her not putting up a protest already tells me everything I need to know, but the nervous delivery of her next set of words seals it without a doubt. “I’ve never been jealous before.”

The last word in her sentence is the final nail in her coffin. “Before” implies back then, not now.

When she peers up at me with big, confused eyes, it’s the fight of my life not to smile. She looks like a lamb who’s about to be released into a pen of hungry wolves.

That's shocking because there's only one lamb in this relationship. It isn't Lola.

Lola and I spend the next two days in our own little cocoon. It’s nice having a normal existence again. I called Emily and Noah a handful of times, but from what I heard, they’re also relishing the privacy. We’re only rejoining the real world today because Lola has to return to work. Once again, her mortgage repayment will be deducted out of her account on the seventh no matter how sexually sated she is.

After dropping her off at Pete’s for an eight-hour shift, I head to the hospital to visit Noah and Emily. I’m just about to enter his room when a warning sounds over my shoulder. “I’d suggest knocking before entering.”

When I spin around, I’m met with the smiling face of Rachel. She’s standing at the nurse’s station doing paperwork.

“I didn’t see you knock once the past two months, so what changed?”

She grimaces. “Discovering a patient’s inability to walk doesn’t hinder other parts of their body is a great reminder about using your manners.”

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