All Broke Down (Rusk University #2) (18 page)

I close my eyes and bite back a smile. Feeling a little vindictive over an ex is normal, right? Totally valid.

“Come on, then.”

I lead him back to the section of the house we’re supposed to clear from vines. They’ve crept their way from a nearby tree, all the way up to the gutters. Silas whistles. “I think we’re gonna need a ladder.”

I nod. “I’ll go see if I can find one.”

He touches my shoulder to stop me. “I got it.” Then just for a moment, he tucks a stray hair behind my ear, and his fingers linger on my neck. As he leaves, I can’t help but wonder if this is what dating Silas would be like. Little touches. Warm smiles. Uninhibited laughter.

Could it be
good
? Could it be more than just mind-blowing kisses and miraculously talented hands? Am I crazy for even thinking that’s a possibility?

I have to remember that Silas and I live by very different definitions, and
dating
would no doubt fall into those disparities.

I pull on one of the pair of gloves that Greg gave me and start clearing away the brush at the bottom of the house. I give an experimental tug on a grouping of vines. The thickest one holds fast, but I manage to grip a smaller one and pull a couple feet of it away from the house before it snaps, just leaving a piece of it in my hands.

I’m bent over at the waist tugging at the larger vine again when Silas returns.

“Bad news.”

I glance up and he’s staring at my butt. I straighten, but his eyes stay glued to a backside that I know is on the larger side because I don’t really have the time or inclination to spend much time working out. And by much, I mean any.

“Bad news?” I prompt.

He looks up at me with a lopsided grin, completely unapologetic, and says, “All the ladders are being used, so we’ll have to improvise.”

“We can work on the stuff we can reach until one opens up.”

“It might be a while,” he says. “But I’ve thought of an alternative.”

I raise my eyebrows in question.

“If you sit on my shoulders we should be able to reach pretty close to the top, enough that you could probably pull at the highest stuff.”

“Is that why you were staring at me?” I don’t say at my butt, because we both know what I’m talking about.

“I’m not sure that’s a question you want me to answer in public.”

Well, clearly my earlier outburst didn’t faze him at all. Or if it did, he’s not letting me see.

“Are you sure it’s not better to wait for a ladder?”

“That doesn’t sound better to me at all.”

I try to ignore the flirting, not to take it too seriously, but he’s gorgeous so it’s more than a little difficult to keep a clear head.

“You’re not going to drop me?”

“I’m not Henry. I think I can handle you, Pickle.”

“You’re never letting go of that, are you?”

“I could be persuaded.”

Yeah. Not even touching that one.

“Let’s just do this.”

I grab his forearm and lead him around the back of the house to the steps and climb up two of those to give me a little extra height. He bends until he’s practically resting on his heels, and then using our newly repaired handrail for a brace, I put one leg over his shoulder and then the other.

“Ready?” he asks. I keep a hold on the handrail and then tell him yes.

He stands like he’s got twenty pounds on his shoulders instead of a whole person, and I lock my legs tightly around him, hooking my feet around his sides, and sinking my hands into his hair while I try to find my balance.

“Not how I pictured having my head between your legs for the first time.”

I slap his shoulder hard, and he laughs. “Just being honest.”

“Honesty is not one of your issues.” I mean it to be a joke, but he stills beneath me, and I know I’ve brought up the memory of our earlier argument, and it must bother him, no matter how much flirtation he hides behind.

His arms lay against my calves and his hands hook over the top of my thighs to hold on, and he starts walking back to our work area. He lets me direct him to stand where I want him, and then with my legs squeezing tightly to hold myself in place, I reach up and begin to pull.

My first lump of freed vines falls all over Silas’s head below me, and I make an idiot of myself apologizing again and again, like somehow he might know I’m really apologizing for everything.

“Just be glad it isn’t poison ivy,” he says.

I gasp because I didn’t even think of that, nor do I know for sure it’s not. Maybe that’s why Greg gave me the gloves.

“Oh my God. What if it is?”

I lean over to look at his face, checking for reddening skin, and he has to reach out one of his bare hands to balance himself against the house in response to my movement. And now his naked hand is on the vine, and he’s going to hate me by the time this day is over if I keep this up.

“It’s not,” he says.

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure. The stuff was all over the house and yard I lived in during high school.”

I pause, going over his odd choice of words.
The house he lived in during high school.
Not a home. Not his childhood. He talks about it like I talk about growing up in foster care. And I wonder, maybe, if we have that in common. If maybe he wasn’t quite as lucky as I was.

“Ask me a question,” I say.

“Why?”

“Because I want to ask
you
one, but it’s not my turn.”

“Even though I didn’t answer your last question?”

“Oh that one’s still on the books. I’m just kind and generous and am willing to give you some time before I cash in.”

He laughs and shakes his head, and his cheek rubs against the inside of my thighs. The movement makes something warm curl low between my hips, but it’s doused seconds later when he asks his question.

“Fine. Why did you and Henry break up?”

I stiffen, but fair is fair. So I answer, “You’d have to ask him to know for sure, but he told me he just didn’t feel the same way about me anymore.”

“He broke up with
you
? Are you fucking kidding me?”

I shrug and pull on another vine.

“Well, I say good goddamn riddance.”

I can’t help my smile. “Bad Boy Rehab task number two—maybe try to cut back just
a bit
on the cussing.”

He draws a thumb down the side of my thigh into the sensitive hollow at the back of my knee.

“I’ve got a dirty mouth, babe. No changing that. You’ll just have to count it as part of my charm.”

Charm.
I resist the urge to snort. Charm is smooth and subtle. Silas Moore is a force of nature. A freaking avalanche. He doesn’t have a subtle bone in his body.

I let the cussing go for now, and take my turn.

“Where are you from?”

“Nowhere that matters. Out in the middle of nowhere in West Texas.”

“Where?” I try again.

“You wouldn’t know it even if I told you. Between Odessa and Lubbock. The whole place is an ever-expanding pit of nothingness. Just dust and mesquite trees and deadbeats who always talk about leaving, but never do.”

I swear to God, even with this question quid pro quo, getting information out of this man is harder than finding the perfect pair of jeans.

“What’s the harm in just telling me where it is if I won’t know?”

“Because I got out, Dylan. I’m one of the few, and I’m not going to spend my time talking about it like I never left. I’d rather pretend it never existed.”

I swallow all the questions I still have and postpone them for another time. Asking questions doesn’t work with him . . . at least not yet. The more I ask, the more he fights back. I guess we’re kind of similar in that way. I don’t like answering questions, either.

I need him to trust me first.

I concentrate on the vines again, and I develop a system where I pull out and to the right, so if anything falls it doesn’t fall into his face. As I pull the vines away, they take the paint with them, leaving these patterns on the wood where the vines used to be. It looks almost like the vines are still there because every little leaf has left an imprint.

Silas might want to forget where he came from, but he’s just like this house. He can strip away the town, his past, his upbringing, but they all leave marks behind. And like we’ll do to this house when we’re done, Silas has painted over those marks, and he doesn’t want anyone else to know they’re there.

Another thing we have in common.

Though I’ve never exactly fit comfortably in my new life, I try not to acknowledge my old life, either. I was in foster care from three years old on, and I don’t remember anything before that. I suppose most people like me hit that stage in their teens or twenties when they’re filled with a desire to know where they came from, why they were dealt the hand they have. They go looking up their birth parents or other family.

There’s no point in that for me. Richard and Emily told me when they adopted me at nine years old. Even then, they’d treated me with a rational practicality, like I was an adult who just happened to be two feet shorter than them. They didn’t give me all the specifics of my birth mom’s death, but I think it was something messy. Drugs, maybe. Or suicide. If it were something like a medical issue or a car accident, they would have told me. I could ask now, and they would give me whatever information I want. But do I really want to know if it’s that bad? I don’t remember her. And it’s easier that way.

I work in silence for a while, and eventually I notice that Silas has started working below me, too. He still has one arm wrapped around my shins in case I were to lose my balance, but with his right hand, he’s pulling away vines and adding to my pile.

“There’s an extra pair of gloves, you know.”

He shrugs.
With me on his shoulders.
It’s like he doesn’t even feel me. “It will keep my calluses up until I get back to practice and back in the weight room.”

I don’t ask why he would
want
calluses. I just write it off as some sports thing that will never make sense to me.

“When do you go back?”

He blows out a breath. “Next week. As long as I’m certain I won’t lose my head and fuck things up even worse for myself.”

“How will you know you’re ready?”

“I was going to have you tell me.”

“Silas . . . I can’t do that. How could I possibly know what’s going on inside your head?” I leave off the implied
unless you tell me.

“You’re the authority on having your shit together. I figured you’d be able to recognize when I got there, or when I was on my way or something.”

If only.

“Apparently I don’t have things as together as I thought.”

I’m working on a particularly strong vine. I tug hard, and my hand slips right out of the oversized glove I’m wearing. I swirl my arms, trying to right my balance, but it only makes it worse. I’m falling backward. We both are. I might scream something. Silas’s hands clamp down on my thighs like bands of iron, but I’m still teetering.

It occurs to me to protect my head, just as Silas pitches himself forward onto his knees. He hits hard, and the jolt unseats me from his shoulders, but thanks to him I’m closer to the ground. And with reflexes practically in superhero range, he even manages to snag my hand as I’m falling. His hold keeps me up just enough that my bottom hits first, followed by my lower back, but my head never goes down.

Even with Silas’s efforts, my tailbone hurts like a mother, and my lower back spasms painfully, so I let go of his hand and lay back against the grass. His knees have got to be hurting just as badly, but he still shifts to lean over me.

He blocks out the sun, and maybe it’s the pain or maybe it’s just him, but it feels like one of those rare total eclipses where you know you’re not supposed to look because it can destroy your eyes or something, but it’s so incredible that you can’t help it.

“Dylan, are you okay?” He says the words slowly, and I get the feeling that he’s already said them once, and I just tuned them out.

I blame the pain, but when the impulse rises, I let my hand stretch out and touch his face. Just a skim of my fingers across his jaw, but the jolt of energy I get from that small touch is nearly as debilitating as the jolt from my landing.

He closes his eyes, and without his gaze on me, I come back to my senses. I draw my hand away just as a few people round the edge of the house, drawn no doubt by the screaming that I probably (almost certainly) did a lot of. A few others lean over the roof to check out the situation, but my eyes automatically search out Henry to see the look of complete horror on his face at the sight of Silas hovering over me, one of his legs between mine.

I realize I still haven’t answered Silas, so I say, “I’m okay,” and use the same hand that had touched his face to push him back enough that I can sit up. My tailbone protests, but I grimace until it passes and ask, “Are your knees okay? That was crazy, but I’m pretty sure I would have cracked my head open if you hadn’t done it.”

He shifts back to sit beside me and closes his eyes as he slowly straightens out his legs. That’s the only outward sign of feeling he shows, but I know it had to hurt badly to hit with the force of his own body, plus my extra weight.

I have a sudden horrible realization that something like that could
really
hurt him. Aren’t knee injuries really common for football players? What if I’ve just ruined his career, ruined
his life
?

“Oh my God. Oh my God.” I don’t even feel any pain as I lurch up to my knees and grab his face. His eyes open to look at me, and they look dark, too dark, almost clouded by something. “Tell me you’re okay. Is it your knee?
Knees?”
Oh God, what if I’ve done something to both his knees? He doesn’t say anything and there are fireworks of panic exploding one after another in my chest. “I’ll go get my car. We’ll get you to the hospital. Ice! I’ll also get ice from Mrs. Baker before we leave. And pillows. To prop up your legs in the car. I’m so,
so
sorry. Just . . . I’ll be right back. Don’t move. I’m so sorry.”

I start to stand, and my legs wobble like a newborn colt. Just as I get them steady, Silas tosses his head back and laughs.