Page 84 of Fighting Jacob

Hank stops shoveling a second donut into his mouth to nod.

After a muscle-tightening workout, and a super long shower, I pad into Hank’s office. “Do you want to come visit Noah with me today?”

Hank and Noah grew close after Jacob introduced them a little over a year ago. Although I’ve assured him many times he’s more than welcome to visit him, he always refuses.

“Not today. I’ve got...stuff to do.”

I dump the towel I’m drying my hair with on Hank’s desk before plopping my ass on his big leather chair. “Why don’t you visit him?”

His dark eyes pop up from the paperwork he’s scrutinizing. He considers my question for a few minutes before setting down the papers and sauntering to my side of his desk. “Do you know why I started this gym?”

Keeping my gaze arrested on his, I shake my head. He’s very fit, so I’ve always assumed he was a gym junkie back in his heyday.

“From the time he was a little whippersnapper, my son Derrick was a huge boxing fan. He watched reruns of Muhammad Ali’s fights on repeat, convinced they were the secret sauce he needed to become the next heavyweight champion of the world.” He waves his hand around his gym. We’re the only two people here. “I opened this gym to prove no dreams were impossible to reach if you’re willing to put in the work.”

“Did he?”

“Yes.” The pride in his eyes forces a smile onto my face. “I’m not biased when I say he had pure, unrivaled talent—much like Jacob. He climbed the rankings so quick, his dream was this close to becoming a reality.” He holds his thumb and index finger an inch apart. “Then, poof, it was all stripped away from him."

“What happened?”

It takes him a few seconds to continue his story, and when he does, it shreds my heart into pieces. “After a State Championship bout, Derrick was gunned down by his competitor as he left the arena. He tried to hold on, but his injuries were too critical.” He peers up at the ceiling while rapidly blinking. “On the doctor’s advice, his mother switched off his life support machine a week later. She believed she was doing the right thing, but I wanted to give him more than seven days to prove how strong he was. As you can imagine, that’s a tough thing for even the strongest of marriages to endure.”

He returns his eyes to me when I nod. “A couple of months after Derrick's death, I moved in here.” I hate his story, but I love his honesty. “I tried to keep his dream alive, but as the years moved on, they faded into the distance. I was in the process of shutting down this place when I stumbled upon Jacob.” The pain in his eyes switches to humor as his lips furl. “He had that same goofy look on his face Derrick always had at the start of every fight, but he also had the magic in his eyes, the gleam that revealed he could be something great if he was willing to put in the hard yards.” He shakes his head as if he's still in shock. “I don't know why I approached him. To this day, I’m still wondering if I did the right thing.”

“You did. He’d be lost without this...” I wave my hand around his gym as he did earlier. “And you.”

My eyes bounce between his as I struggle to hold in the moisture teeming in them. I lose the chance when Hank says, “Now that I’ve shared, maybe you’ll be willing to do the same? What happened between Jacob and you?”

Chapter Forty-Three

Jacob

“That’ll be $18.95.”

As I hand the café attendant a twenty, my gaze strays to the TV program behind her shoulder. I've barely looked at my phone the past eight weeks, let alone any other electronic device. I'm not much of a social media fanatic as it is, but my dislike has grown tenfold since Noah's admission. Not because I don't want to read the crap gossip reporters pump out multiple times a day, but because the first time I logged onto Facebook, I automatically veered straight to Lola's page—a page I could no longer see since she had unfriended and blocked me.

I don't know about you, but as far as I'm concerned, that a massive fuck you, we're done message for the entire world to see. I'm aware of Lola's coping mechanism—when she's scared, she runs—so my first thought was to reach out to her, but every time I tried, something popped up. Noah's first lot of brain scans came back inconclusive, him being sued for failure to fulfill his contract with Summit Records, his birthday, Christmas, and a whole lot of other shit that has me so close to the edge, I'm literally holding on by a thread.

With how loose my grip on reality is, I can’t add any more to my plate. Call me a coward, but since there’s only so much I can handle at once, I stuck my head in the sand in regards to all aspects of my relationship. Just the hurt look Lola gives me every time she enters Noah’s room has me on the verge of breaking. I can’t add more.

Me losing my marbles won’t help anyone. It won’t help Lola; it won’t help Noah, and it most definitely won’t help Emily. She hasn’t nosedived into depression like Noah did when his brothers died, but I can’t guarantee that wouldn’t have been the case if I wasn’t at her side the past eight weeks. She’s not strong like Lola. She’s only half as brave as my girl is—was.

I run a shaky hand over my head, pretending the world hasn't fallen out from beneath my feet. I'd give anything for a redo of the past two months. I wouldn't do anything the same—not a single fucking thing. I'd stop Noah from getting in that fucking cab; then I'd handle my disagreement with Lola in a more respectable manner—and I wouldn’t let jealousy stop me from talking to her for weeks on end.

Even without knowing what happened between her and Flynn, I miss her more than words will ever explain—enough to have me reaching for my phone for the tenth time this morning. It takes a few seconds to fire up since I turn it off while in Noah’s room, but when it does, it explodes with Google alert after Google alert I set for Noah. They all follow a similar tune:

Noah Taylor, lead singer of Rise Up, in tragic accident.

When I click on a link, it takes me to a live broadcast of a popular morning news program. My breath hitches when the reporter’s location registers as familiar. She’s standing at the front of a hospital—a hospital that looks remarkably similar to the one Noah is a patient at.

Ignoring the barista’s attempt to hand me my order, I move to the main window of the café. It faces the main street. I can barely see the reporters standing shoulder to shoulder on the entrance stairs of Ravenshoe Private Hospital because over a dozen news vans are blocking my view. Security personnel have them contained for now, but I don’t see that lasting long. The paps are a hungry bunch.

As I bolt back to Noah’s room, the breakfast I was fetching for Emily and me is long forgotten. Emily’s hungry gaze notices my empty hands within a nanosecond of me entering Noah’s suite, but my quick snatch of the remote from Noah’s bed shifts her focus. “It’s all over the media.”

“What is?”

When I switch on the TV hanging above Noah’s bed, we catch the last half of the live broadcast.

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