Page 53 of Fighting Jacob

I’m tempted to twang her protruded lower lip, but since Noah isn’t here for me to rile up, I save my tease for a more appropriate time. We’re in the process of moving Emily into her dorm room at Parkwood State College. Noah initially planned to help us, but his band has a huge meeting with a record label interested in signing them, so I'm picking up his slack—slack we wouldn't have if Noah canceled his meeting as planned.

He hates backing out of any agreements he makes. If I hadn't convinced him we're more than capable of moving a handful of boxes unsupervised, he would have postponed his meeting with Destiny Records. That's how much his word means to him.

That and the fact he hates leaving me alone with Emily.

I'd never touch a hair on her head, but I have too much fun teasing him to ever let him know that. He has a bit of a jealous streak when it comes to Emily. I can’t blame him. I’ve seen the way heads turn when she enters a room, but I see her more like a sister than anything else. I want to say sister-in-law, but Lola made sure that's not an option.

I haven’t seen Lola since my arrest. She was pissed I thought she needed to be saved. That wasn’t what I was doing. I was teaching Callum a lesson. Did it work? Who knows? But he’ll think twice before he lays hands on a woman again.

Lola no longer works at Mavericks. From what I heard, she got a job at a bar in her hometown. I could investigate her life more thoroughly, but in all honesty, I’m not sure I want to. I begged her for forgiveness. I left her hundreds of voicemails and even more text messages. She didn’t return a single call — not one.

At the start, I understood her anger. I took up a fight she didn't want me involved in, but within weeks, that understanding waned. I became furious she had projected all her anger onto me. I flushed my fighting career down the toilet for her, and for what? Nothing but resentment and anger.

Although I was peeved about how things turned out, my fighting career with Isaac smoothed the rocky waters. It doesn’t matter whether I win or lose in his fighting circle. I turn up, fight, then get paid. I’m not saying I don’t fight to win; my track record is solid. In the past six months, I’ve maintained my undefeated title.

Size doesn’t matter in the circle I fight in. If you believe your fighter is good enough to fight another, you propose a fight to their “owner.” If both sides agree, it’s scheduled for a few weeks’ time. The three-thousand-dollar-a-fight purse I negotiated with Isaac seems too good to be true, but I’ll take everything offered. I don’t see many business owners willing to hire a manager with a criminal record.

I don’t know what I’ll do once our agreement ends. I might take it a week at a time and see how it goes. I was given two years’ probation for beating Callum, so I have plenty of time to work out what I want to do between now and then.

My mind clicks back to the present when we approach Emily’s dorm. “Stairs or the elevator?”

Emily glares at me like I’m crazy for even suggesting we take the stairs. “The elevator.” She balances the one puny box she’s lugging onto her hip. “This box weighs a ton.”

She’s such a lightweight. She wouldn't be if she occasionally came to the gym with Noah and me. After giving Noah a brief recap on how my parents met, I told him about my fighting career. Because Isaac had just become my "owner," I ghosted over that part of my confession.

Although shocked at my career choice, Noah said he’d support me. That’s how I’ve managed to drag his ass to the gym a handful of times the past six months. I support him by watching his gigs, and he supports me by sparring with me.

Hank took an instant liking to Noah. They often go a few rounds in the ring while I skip rope for an hour. If Hank's plan to make my fighting stance not as solid weren't working, I'd strangle him with the rope he has me skipping a minimum of two hours a day. I doubt skipping will make me more agile, but since it's part of Hank's punishment for being charged with assault, I'll do it.

Hank was furious with me when he found out I’d been arrested. Weeks passed before he forgave me, and even then, he barely spoke a word to me. Mercifully, he’s still my trainer; he just gets paid by Isaac instead of getting a cut of my profits.

During one of our sessions, I asked Noah not to tell Emily what happened to Lola. I don’t like forcing him to keep secrets from her, but I promised Lola I wouldn’t tell anyone. She may not want to associate with me, but I am a man of my word. Noah was hesitant, but he understood why I didn’t want anyone to know, so he agreed to keep quiet on all aspects of it—my illegal fighting career too.

I’m snapped back to the present for the second time this afternoon when the elevator dings, announcing the car has arrived at the lobby. When a bunch of college girls pile out, I greet them with a friendly wink. “Ladies.”

They return my friendliness with sultry smirks and batting lashes. Emily’s response is nowhere near as sociable. “Really, Jacob, ladies is the best you can come up with?”

“What? It’s hard to talk with my tongue hanging out my mouth. I might tag along when Noah comes to visit. Parkwood State looks like a place I could enjoy visiting.”

I stop waggling my brows when Emily makes a barfing noise. “That’s not funny.”

I’d give her a stern finger point if my hands weren’t loaded with boxes. Instead, I take a giant step away from her. “Yeah, it is.”

She dry-heaves again, louder this time. Noah must have told her about my morbid dislike of hearing people get sick. I hate barf, vomit, spew, chunder, whatever you want to call it. It’s disgusting, and just the thought of someone being sick makes my stomach churn.

Emily continues teasing me until the elevator arrives at her floor. I shadow her giggling ass into the room she’ll call home for the next four years. When I enter her dingy space, flashbacks of Noah’s childhood bedroom race to the forefront of my mind. There’s only one notable difference: Emily’s mattress is on a bed frame instead of the floor.

After dumping my boxes, I go collect some more from my car. “I’ll be back.”

Emily nods, acknowledging she heard me, but she remains standing in the middle of her room. Her nose is screwed up, and her brows are hanging low. She looks bewildered that this is it, her entire life in a handful of boxes. She’s got more than most. Noah only had the clothes on his back and holey shoes when he accepted the spare room in my family home.

Needing to make up for the training session I’m missing to help Emily move, I take the stairs instead of the elevator. I only lug one box this time since it weighs a fucking ton.

As I take the last three flights of stairs, I read the description written on the box. Sex toys and lingerie.

I remind myself to read in my head when two girls in the stairwell giggle. Although they’re giving me kissy gaga faces, I continue climbing the stairwell without exchanging digits. I’m too interested in figuring out how Emily has enough sex toys to fill this box to play nice. I’m not lying when I say it weighs almost as much as I bench press. I didn’t think Emily was a sex toy type girl. Lola... she’d have enough to fill a truck.

When my curiosity gets the better of me, I lower the box onto the top step of Emily’s floor. My eyes dart around the cold, empty stairwell to ensure no one is looking, then I take a peek inside the box, eager to find out what toys Noah has at his disposal.

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