Page 42 of Fighting Jacob

“Thanks, Jacob.”

I suck in some big breaths while lowering my phone from my ear. My gut is so knotted, I feel seconds from bringing up the meal Noah and I just shared. That skittish, scared Maggie I was just talking to isn’t the Maggie I know. Usually, nothing rattles her.

“Is everything alright?”

My eyes drift from my phone to Noah. “I don’t know. Maggie asked me to drive Lola home. She said she is too rattled to drive. Can you take me to Mavs, then follow me back to Lola’s house?”

“Yeah, no worries.” He fires up his truck, executes a U-turn, then heads back into town. We don’t talk the entire time. The silence adds to the havoc somersaulting in my gut. Something’s not right; I just don’t have a fucking clue what’s wrong.

When I break through Mavericks' double doors, I scan the nearly deserted surroundings. Including Maggie, who is standing behind the bar, there are only a handful of people milling around.

I make my way to Maggie. When she catches my approach, she wearily smiles.

“Where’s Lola?”

My long strides are sliced to half their length when I notice Maggie’s usually sparkling eyes are full of moisture. She appears seconds from crying, but her focus remains on Lola. “She’s in the storeroom.”

Glancing back to Noah, I gesture my head toward Maggie. I’m torn. I hate leaving Maggie while she’s upset, but I don’t want to leave Lola if she’s just as devastated.

The weight on my shoulders eases when Noah nods, wordlessly advising he'll take care of Maggie while I handle Lola. I wait for him to round the bar before heading for the storeroom out back. The urgency of the situation is unearthed when Maggie fails to object to us trespassing on her domain. Usually, no one but staff is allowed behind the bar—that includes the storerooms.

“Lola,” I call out when I enter the dark and dingy room.

I hear sniffling a mere second before I spot Lola crouched in the very corner of the nearly black space. Her arms are wrapped around her knees, and she's sobbing hard.

Ignoring the heavy pit burrowing in my chest, I squat down in front of her. “Hey, you okay?”

She flinches when I touch her, but that’s quickly pushed aside for relief when she realizes who I am. “Jacob…”

When she bounds off the ground to throw her arms around my neck, her quick movement sends me sprawling onto my ass. She doesn’t hurt me; my heart is too busy breaking from the pain etched on her face to register any pain.

I pull her close to my chest before bracing my back on the shelves she was cowered against. I'm confident she'll hear my raging heart, but I don't give a shit. I'm both angry and panicked as to what has her so upset. Just like the Maggie I was talking to earlier, this isn’t the Lola I know. She’d never cry so hard she’d soak my shirt in under a minute.

As I comfort her the best I can, my brain struggles to work out what happened. During the day, only regulars drink at Mavs, so I doubt any of them would have upset her. Furthermore, I’ve witnessed firsthand how quickly Lola defuses drunken idiots who get a little handsy with her. She whips them into shape in a snap, so once again, I don’t see that being an issue.

So if a customer isn’t to blame for her tears, who is?

Realizing I have the answer sitting in my lap, I raise Lola’s tear-stained face to mine by her chin. She’s trembling so much, her shudders rattle my hand. The cheeky spark in her eyes has been tainted. Now instead of being shiny and unique, they’re haunted and bleak.

I’m about to ask who did this to her, but her request for help stops me. “Can you please take me home?”

Nodding, I remove the last of her tears from her cheeks with my thumbs before standing to my feet, taking her with me. You have no idea how hard it is for me to set her down. The only reason I do is because she’s quick to slip her hand into mine when we lose contact.

We walk into the main bar area, hand in hand, only breaking contact when Lola notices Maggie peering at us. With a sob, she makes a beeline for Maggie, startling her when she throws her arms around her neck like she did me. Maggie returns Lola’s embrace with just as much admiration and respect, her chin dipping when Lola whispers, “Thank you.”

Our drive to Erkinsvale is so quiet, every shallow breath Lola takes adds additional cracks to my already fractured heart. It’s killing me that she’s hurt but doesn't trust me enough to tell me what's going on. I'm on the verge of falling to my knees and begging her to open up to me, but since we’re in the confines of her mom’s car, I can’t. My knees are nearly around my ears, so there’s no way they’ll reach the ground.

Instead, I interlock our fingers. Her pulse is raging so fast, you’d swear I was gripping her heart instead of her hand. Its thump is so convincing, I glance down at our hands to make sure I’m not. Air traps halfway to my lungs when I notice more than overworked veins. There’s a large mark covering a majority of her wrist.

“What the fuck is that?” My voice shakes with both fear and anger. If that’s what I think it is, someone gripped her so tightly, they bruised her.

Lola pulls her arm back to her side of the car before yanking down the sweater she’s wearing over her Mavs shirt. It does little to ease my agitation. The bruise is too large to be hidden by the knitted material. It’s there for the world to see—for me to see.

I raise my eyes to her face. “Is that why you're upset? Because someone hurt you?”

My surging anger is evident in my voice. I’m not angry at Lola; I’m fucking pissed someone placed their hands on her so roughly, they marked her skin.

Working my jaw side to side, I struggle to swallow my anger. My endeavors do me no good when Lola whispers, “I don’t want you in the middle of this. It isn’t your fight.”

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