All Broke Down (Rusk University #2) (12 page)

I
only work when I play football. Without it, I really am the trash I’m afraid of being.

Coach doesn’t make me leave. He turns the lights back off and lets me sit in his office alone, and when I listen for the silence I don’t hear music anymore.

I just hear what Williams said over and over again.

I’m sure you’ll be heading Abrams’s way before long.

And all I can think is . . . maybe he’s right.

Chapter 10

Dylan

I
’ve put it off as long as I can.

Friday was my day of lapses in judgment. Saturday, I started cleanup. I started with apologizing to Javier about screwing up the protest. He was mad that I’d acted without talking to him. He’s the leader of our group, and everything is supposed to go through him. He understood that I just got wrapped up in the moment, in the desperation to do something.

One apology down.

Then there is my father, whose persona is that of a man who
never
makes snap decisions. He does woodworking as a hobby, something I always thought was odd for a man with enough money to furnish a small country. But he’s fond of saying that building things with his hands is no different from building a business. You plan, you design, you measure twice, and cut once.

Well, Friday I didn’t measure twice. I’m not even sure I measured once.

I got lucky, though. Dad was called out of town on business, and since there were no major, lasting repercussions from my arrest on Friday, Mom convinced him that we could talk when he got back.

That’s tonight. And since I’m not really sure how he will react (or if I’m still able to be grounded as a junior in college), that means today is the last day that I can go to Silas’s and pay him back for bailing us out.

Something else I’ve been avoiding. Because he’s the one thing I still haven’t sorted out in my head. Every time I think about him, my mind goes right back to that bathroom, and the heat that sweeps through me burns away any coherent thought.

At first, I think no one is home because the driveway is empty, but then I see the familiar rusty tail end of Silas’s truck parked across the street. I shake off the memories of what it felt like to be in his truck, his arm brushing against my leg, the thrum of excitement from being completely out of my element. A girl could get addicted to something like that.

In fact, there are quite a few things about Silas Moore that I could get addicted to.

I’m wearing a silky button-down shirt with no sleeves and a complicated bow tied at the neck. I’ve got my hair back in a long braid again, and a high-waisted skirt that goes almost to my knees and does a much better job of covering my legs than those shorts I’d worn Friday. I made a conscious effort to dress for the way I need to behave today.

Appropriately.

I ring the doorbell, and then try not to think about the fact that I’m sweating through this stupid silky shirt and the strappy heels on my feet are monstrously uncomfortable, and I’m dying a slow, torturous death in the thong I wore to prevent panty lines.

Dressing appropriately sucks.

I wait a minute. No one answers, and I’m beginning to fear that I’ll have to do this all over again later tonight or tomorrow after I talk to Dad, provided I’m still free to do what I want.

I ring the doorbell again, and then raise my hand to knock for good measure, but before my knuckles meet the wood, the door is ripped backward and I hear a gruff, “What?”

I hear his question, but my brain is a little stuck on the fact that Silas is wearing only a towel around his waist and is dripping water all over the floor. I open my mouth to say something, anything, but then I get distracted watching a bead of water slope down over one pectoral muscle. He has a massive geometric tattoo that starts on his shoulder and continues onto his chest. I watch that same bead of water cut through the black lines of his tattoo and escape into the valley down the middle of his abdomen.

Then it falls below the line of his towel, and I’m just standing there, staring at the one part of his body that’s covered, and if there was an ounce of supernatural ability in me, that towel might have
accidentally
fallen to the ground.

But alas, I am not supernatural. Though his abs might be.

I’m still staring at his crotch when he asks, “You need something?”

“Oh!” I snap my head up, a blush exploding across my face. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to keep . . .” That’s probably one sentence I’m better off not finishing. “I didn’t mean to.”

He lifts an eyebrow, and for the first time, I really look at his face. I expected the bruise on his jaw to be healing by now, turning ugly shades of green and yellow, but instead it looks even darker than it did Friday night, and bigger maybe. But that’s not what really troubles me. It’s his eyes.

They remind me of what my eyes looked like after Henry and I broke up, like I’d just found out that life was a game, and I’d been playing on the wrong board for years.

Not sad, per se.
Lost.

“You okay?”

He raises his eyebrow again, grips the door with one hand, and resituates his towel with the other.

I don’t glance down at the towel. Or his magnificently sculpted chest. Because that would be
awkward.
I absolutely don’t . . .
won’t
do that.

Aw crap, I’m awkward. For several seconds. Several
long
seconds.

“Dylan.”

My eyes fly to his, and I expect an eyebrow, perhaps a cocky grin, maybe some dirty, dirty words.

But he looks tired.

“You’re not okay,” I say because I just know. This is not the same guy I met a few nights ago.

He takes a deep breath. “What do you need? Did you leave something?”

“Uh, no.” I lift up the envelope in my right hand. “I’m just here to pay you back. And to say thank you again. So, um, thank you.”

I hold out the envelope, and he stares at it for several long seconds, then his eyes raise up to mine.

“You want to come in?”

I hesitate. Because I want to. In the same way that I wanted his hands on me Friday night. The same way I wanted his mouth . . . the things it did and the things it said. I hadn’t been able to
stop
hearing those words all weekend. I dreamt about it. I imagined what else he might have said if we’d kept going, and I woke sweaty and needy and so, so pissed it wasn’t real.

I might not have taken measure of the situation Friday night, but I’d measured far more than twice since then. I’d thought about it almost constantly. But I still wasn’t sure that was a bridge I needed to cross.

It’s like there are two wills inside me, and each one insists the other isn’t real. Part of me thinks that this is all just some emotional reaction, a self-destructive break of some kind. I need to go home, grovel at my father’s feet, figure out what went wrong, so that I can fix my life.

The other half of me insists that I don’t need fixing. That the reason things with Silas feel so right is that things with Henry never were. That I was just doing what was expected of me like I’ve always done.

But shouldn’t I try to live up to people’s expectations? I can’t just let go of that. What kind of person would I become then?

As I stay silent, warring with myself, something in Silas’s already weary expression starts to fray further, and I step right over the threshold just to make it stop.

Of course, a normal person says yes when they’re invited inside. They don’t step in before the person at the door has a chance to move back. Now I’m less than a foot away from that distracting chest of his, and with his hand braced on the door he’s looming above me in a way that makes my girlie parts roll over and play dead.

I start to step away, and my heel hits the raised threshold, and I stumble back. I would have fallen on my ass right outside the door again if Silas hadn’t reached out and caught my arm.

“Uh, thanks. And sorry.”

He turns and heads into his kitchen. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a back that muscled in real life. There are all these curves and slopes that I wouldn’t have expected, and I have the sudden urge to trace them with my finger, feel where one muscle gives way to the next.

“I’m starting to think those are your two favorite words.”

I come back into focus and close the door behind me. Then I follow him cautiously into the kitchen.

“You want something to drink?” he asks.

Tequila sounds appropriate for this situation.

“Just water is fine,” I say. “Thanks.”

He shakes his head and pulls two glasses down from the cupboard. “It’s just tap. That okay?”

I nod, but he’s not looking at me, so I voice my answer instead. There’s not an ice machine in his fridge, so he grabs ice for my glass from one of those plastic cube maker things. He fills his own glass up with milk and then comes over to join me at the table.

He sets my water down and I ask, “Are you going to go change?”

Tilting his head to the side, he looks down at me. “Do you want me to?”

Oh God. How could I possibly answer that? Of course, I didn’t
want
him to change. I’m not crazy. But I needed it if I was going to keep my head clear. I must take too long again because he sets his milk down and turns away. “I’ll be back, Pickle.”

And we’re back to that again.

When he’s gone I gulp down some water and then press the cold glass to the side of my heated face.

I don’t know what it is about this guy that screws with my head so much. It’s like he releases some kind of airborne toxin that melts all my sense. The Silas Virus.

He comes back not even two minutes later. He’s still damp all over, his shaggy hair stuck to the sides of his face and the back of his neck. And he’s
still
not wearing a shirt. He’s swapped out the towel for a pair of gym shorts, which does nothing to make me any more relaxed. I suppose there’s less chance of a wardrobe malfunction now, but he’s still so very naked.

And nice to look at.

The legs of the chair scrape against aged tile as he pulls it out to take a seat. He demolishes half his glass of milk in one long drink, and my eyes stick on the way his neck moves. His Adam’s apple bobs, and I notice how very defined it is. It’s chiseled like his jaw and his muscles, and as weird as it is . . . it’s kind of a turn-on.

If I can’t even look at the guy’s freaking Adam’s apple without getting tingly, there’s probably no hope for me.

He sets the glass down and wipes his mouth.

His mouth. Oh God.

“Water okay?”

I blink. “Hmm? Oh. Yes, it’s fine. Thanks. I mean—”

“I think you’re the most polite person I’ve ever met.”

I shrug and trace a finger through the condensation on my glass.

“Strict upbringing.”

That’s an understatement. The foster home I’d been in before the Brenners adopted me was practically a military institution. We were out of bed at dawn, and had a full day of scheduled chores and activities. There was never a spare minute to just be . . . to play or imagine or discover something new. I was the youngest one in the group, and all the older kids were used to it, but I still only wanted to be outside lazing around in the sun, climbing trees, playing games.

I can’t be too sorry, though. The Brenners had liked how well-behaved I was. At nine years old, I’d stopped dreaming that some family would come take me away. Or at least . . . I told myself to stop dreaming about it. Even then, I was practical to a fault. But they met me, liked how polite I was. They’d laughed and looked at each other every time I uttered “please” or “thank you” or “sir” in my high-pitched voice. And they picked me, just plucked me up and gave me a new life, and there are still days when my life before that feels like a dream.

So really, structure has worked out well for me most of my life. It’s only the last week and a half that it’s been crumbling around me.

Needing to do something to fill the silence, I push the envelope toward him and say again, “Thank you for helping me and Matt. That was a really nice thing to do.”

“Nice,” he mutters and lifts his glass to his mouth again.

“Yes. It was very nice. As was getting your friends to give us a ride and inviting us over to your place.”

He clears his throat. “Trust me. My intentions were not nice at all.”

“You were nice to me.”

I see the first hint of a smile on his face since the moment he opened the door, and even though it’s small, it nearly knocks the breath from my lungs.

“Yeah, well. That’s the only kind of
nice
I know how to be.”

I blush. Because I hadn’t meant what he’d done to me, though that had been far more than nice.

“I mean . . . you were honest with me. You didn’t get angry when I decided to leave. You offered me a ride home even though you probably didn’t want to see my face again. You invited me inside today, and you didn’t have to. I think that qualifies as nice.”

He taps his fingers on the table and lifts those gorgeous eyes to mine. “I’m not sure my intentions are any nicer today than they were then.”

I swallow, but even with the water I’ve been sipping, my mouth is so dry that it takes longer than normal just to perform that simple task.

“Oh.”

He laughs. Actually laughs. And it reminds me just how different today’s Silas has been from the one I met the other night. I smile back at him. It feels really good to know that even for a few seconds I pulled him back from that. I spend most of my days trying to make a difference, and none of it has ever felt quite as satisfying as that laugh.

“How’s Matt?” he asks.

“Telling everyone that he met you and Carson. He won’t shut up about it, actually.”

“Well, I’m glad someone left that party happy.”

“I didn’t exactly leave unhappy, you know. A little confused, yes. Overwhelmed. But not unhappy.”

Then I wonder if he wasn’t talking about me, but himself, and I’m not sure how I feel about that. I won’t feel guilty for leaving on Friday. It was the right thing to do. And if he was so upset at how things
didn’t
turn out, he could have gone downstairs and found another girl. I’m sure he would have had no issue there.