Page 11 of Fighting Jacob

When the freaks hover in close with a promise to heal my broken heart on their faces, I push off my feet to chase down Lola, who's halfway out of Mavericks by now. "What the fuck?! You threw me to the wolves. I was seconds from getting mauled."

“Serves you right.” She cocks her hips before spreading her hands across them. “Next time you’ll think twice before responding to jealousy.”

“Responding to jealousy…? Whatever!” I make a brrrr noise with my lips like she’s one of the airheads I left inside.

She peers at me over the roof of my car. “So you weren’t jealous? You just joined me on the dance floor to dance?”

“Uh-huh. What other reason would I go onto a dance floor?”

She taps her glossy lips. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because you were… jealous!”

I unlock the door and slide into the driver's seat without bothering to open her door for her—tell me one jealous person who does that?

I wait and wait and wait for Lola to join me in my car. When she doesn’t, I peer out the passenger side window. She’s no longer standing beside it. She’s storming back toward Mavericks’ back entrance.

Dust kicks up around my feet when I clamber out of my car. “Where are you going?”

She pivots around to face me, flashing her mischievous grin that got me into all sorts of trouble last week. “Figured since you weren’t jealous, I may as well go dance some more. Who knows, I might get lucky.”

Like a meteor crashing to earth, I finally realize what’s happening. Lola wasn’t the only one placed under the microscope tonight. I’m under there as well, being scrutinized by a woman determined for me to know we aren’t on a date. The fact she told me that exact thing over half a dozen times tonight already makes it clear, but I’ll play along with her little game because I’d rather spend the night with her as a friend than with any of the freaks eyeing me earlier. I like Lola, even without her cookie jar in my sights.

Lola’s brows draw together when my taillights blink, announcing I’ve locked my car. “What are you doing?”

“I thought we were going to dance?”

The fake anger on her face switches to confusion. “We?”

“Well, you.” I fill the gap between us with three big strides. “I’m going to sit back and enjoy the show.”

She could misconstrue my comment as meaning the risqué performance she puts on when she dances, but she’s smarter than that. “What show?”

I smile, loving that she took my bait hook, line, and sinker. "You just announced in a room full of men that you like calling your suitors ‘Daddy,' and that you're newly single. This could only be more interesting if you stuck a big sign on your chest that said, ‘Freak Between the Sheets.'"

She stops me from entering Mavs by placing herself between me and the door. "Maybe we should head out?"

“I thought you didn’t care what people thought about you—?”

"I don't. It's just late, and Rise Up is about to finish their set, so why hang around here? There are a lot more interesting places we could go."

“Like…?” Please say Bronte’s Peak. Please say Bronte’s Peak.

“Umm…” Her eyes stray around the dingy parking lot like the answer is directly in front of her. It is, but it isn’t what she was expecting. “…There.”

I glance down to where she’s pointing. A flyer for a dance club in Hopeton is floating across the dusty ground. “You want to go to A+?”

“Yeah. Why not? It looks like fun.”

"Alright." It isn't how I wanted us to get sweaty, but I'm always up for trying something new—such us pretending I don't want to date her when I do.

Chapter Six

Jacob

“That was crazy. I swear, I've never danced so much in my life.” Lola peers at me with bright, glistening eyes and a sweat-drenched face. "Thanks for taking me out. It was a lot of fun."

"You're welcome. Hopefully we can do it again soon?"

I slide into the driver’s seat of my car before she can voice the rejection I see in her eyes. When she slips into the passenger seat, her phone dings with a text halfway through latching her belt. As I pull out of the lot at the back of A+, she snags her phone out of her purse.

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