All Broke Down (Rusk University #2) (26 page)

“This one’s a fast little sucker. I nearly didn’t catch him.”

The puppy is a Labrador and cattle dog mix, and even as a puppy, he’s almost too big for my arms when Silas hands him over to me.

“What’s his name again?” he asks.

I check the pup’s tag and answer, “Leo.”

He scowls. “That’s a terrible name. He’ll never get adopted with a wimpy name like that.”

I smile. “You got a better one?”

“Hell yeah. I think we should change his name to Bo Jackson.”

He leans over and scratches the dog’s ears.

“You just pull that name out of nowhere?”

Holding his hand up to his heart, Silas gives me a pained look. “You’re killing me, baby. Bo Jackson is only one of the greatest athletes of all time. Possibly
the
greatest. And he was crazy fast.” He scratches the dog’s ears again, curving his large hand around the puppy’s head. “Just like this dude.”

My heart
might
be beating a little faster. Maybe. And I didn’t really process anything he said after “baby.”

I just know Silas plus puppies is a dangerously sexy combination.

“Has anyone ever told you that you’re kind of sweet?”

He abandons the dog to focus his attention on me. Reaching out, he wraps my braid around his hand as he’s so fond of doing, and tugs just enough to tip my head back.

“Anyone ever tell you you’re fucking gorgeous?”

“You did. This morning.”

He closes his eyes and smiles. “That’s right. You were incredibly hot this morning. And greedy. And wet—”

I fumble with the dog until I’ve got one hand free and slap it over Silas’s mouth.

“You’re terrible. Someone might hear you.”

He nips one of my fingers with his teeth, and his eyes are dark as I pull back.

I better head this off before we get a little too personal in public, and I’m no longer allowed to volunteer at the animal shelter.

I step back. “I’m going to put
Bo Jackson
in his cage. You go ahead and get the next dog we’re supposed to walk.”

By the time I get the little rascal in his cage and wash my hands like we’re supposed to do between contact with different pets, there’s a group of three college girls surrounding Silas. He holds our next walking buddy, some kind of pit bull mix, and the girls are cooing and smiling at the dog in his arms. I’m 100 percent sure their attention has less to do with the dog, and more to do with who’s holding him.

I walk up just in time to hear Silas say, “You should take him home. He’d be a good guard dog. Good thing to have, especially if the three of you are living alone.”

One of the girls snags the dog’s tag to read his name, but Silas stops her. “Don’t pay any attention to the tag. You should call him Emmitt. That’s a good, tough name for a dog like him.”

“Emmitt,” one of the girls says, raising her eyebrows at a friend.

Fifteen minutes later Emmitt is on his way to a new home, and Silas looks smug as can be. By the time we go on the last walk of our four-hour volunteer shift, five dogs have found new homes (and new football-related names), and there’s no deflating Silas’s ego, so I don’t even bother.

“I’m pretty sure that’s more adoptions today than they’ve probably had the rest of the week combined. You might be the shelter’s new secret weapon against prospective pet owners with two X chromosomes.”

He switches the leash of our current dog to his other hand. I thought for sure when we got to the girl dogs, he’d let up on the football names, but apparently there was a famous running back named Gale, who’s the namesake for the cocker spaniel we’ve got now.

“So what lesson was I learning today?” he asks.

I smile. “Nothing really. I was just stressed and wanted to play with puppies.”

He shakes his head and drops an arm over my shoulder. “You tricked me.”

I wrap my arm around his waist and say, “If it makes you feel better, you can say you were working on being compassionate.”

We’re too busy looking at each other, so we don’t notice until it’s too late that little Gale has popped a squat right in front of Silas’s foot. He looks down and curses, pulling his shoe out of the puddle.

“Aw, shit. It’s soaking through my sneaker.”

“Maybe you should get a dog. It would probably teach you some anger management skills.”

He uses the arm around my shoulder to pull me closer to him.

“Let’s go back to my place. I think it’s definitely my turn to teach you something.”

I
GASP AND
then moan as Silas pushes me against the door to his bedroom. My breasts are flattened against the wood, and I can feel the muscled curves of his body against my back.

His mouth falls to my neck, and he bends slightly, so that the jut of his erection pushes into the curve of my ass.

“And . . .” I break off for a few seconds as his teeth graze my shoulder and my thoughts scatter. Then I push on. “What are you planning to teach me?”

“I’m still deciding.”

Oh God. I’m terrified and eager, but both emotions are irrelevant as soon as he spins me around to face him. He towers over me, and his hands make quick work of my braid so that he can sink his fingers into my hair. He tilts my head back as far as it will go, and presses close against me so that I feel him now against my stomach.

He trails a thumb over my mouth, and on instinct I wrap my lips around it and suck.

His grip tightens, and his hips push harder against me. His thigh is fitted between my legs and presses tight against my center.

“I’ve mentioned that I love your mouth, right?”

I pull back and smile. “Maybe a few . . . hundred times.”

He bends, licking and sucking and biting until my lips feel deliciously swollen, all while I rock myself against his thigh.

I reach between us to stroke the bulge in his jeans, and he breaks away.

“Fuck, baby. I had a plan. I was going to make you beg, make you tell me what you want.”

“But?” I add for him.

“But you drive me crazy, and I can’t wait to be inside you.”

It’s my new favorite game, making Silas lose control.

“So don’t wait,” I tell him.

He growls and kisses me again. I’m almost dizzy with want when he pulls away. He points a finger at me and says, “Clothes. Off. Now.” Then he darts to the nightstand, where he has condoms stashed in a drawer.

I’m bent over, trying to do away with the underwear currently stubbornly clinging to my ankle, when he returns.

Things move fast after that. His hands smooth over the curve of my ass, and I find my chest pressed to the door just like this whole thing started.

“This is gonna be hard and fast, babe. Can you handle that?”

My only answer is to reach one arm behind me and hook it around the back of his neck. He uses his foot to nudge mine a little farther apart. His fingers dig into my hips, and he pulls them back just a little so my back arches. Then he’s pushing inside me, and I hold my breath.

It’s different like this. Not just because we’re standing up, and I’m facing away. He hits something inside me that makes my legs go a little weak, and for a few moments, I think I won’t be able to stay standing.

But he holds me tight, and the door keeps me from falling forward. And just when I catch my breath, he moves. He slides back and then in, hard, and I cry out. I can’t help it. And each time I think I’ve got it under control, he thrusts and another noise rips from my mouth before I can even think about stopping it.

And it’s so good, I’ve forgotten how to breathe.

And I don’t even care.

T
EN MINUTES LATER
, we’re curled up naked in his bed, his big body curved around mine, and my heart is still beating fast.

“So what lesson was that exactly?”

He laughs, and I feel his chest vibrate against my back.

“That particular lesson was about the fact that your ass drives me crazy.”

“Even crazier than my mouth?”

“All of you,” he whispers against the back of my neck. “Every single thing about you gets to me, digs deep.”

He slides an arm around my waist and up through the valley between my breast. His wrist presses directly over my racing heart, and his hand curls around my shoulder, holding me snug against him. It feels both strange and normal to be held against him like this. I would never have thought there would be any kind of intimacy after the kind of sex we just had, but with Silas . . . it just works.

Then I go and screw it all up.

“Can you answer my question now?”

He hums behind me, and his reply sounds groggy, like he’s about to fall asleep even though the sun’s not even down. “What’s your question?”

“The question. The very first one I asked you.”

He tenses behind me, and the arm he has looped around my body falls away. He rolls onto his back, and I miss the warmth of his skin against mine.

But I need to know this.

He seems like a completely different guy than the Silas I met a few weeks ago. He’s happy and funny and sweet, and I haven’t seen even a glimpse of the anger that got him into so much trouble.

But I’m not naive enough to think it isn’t there. And I’m not doing him any favors by pretending along with him.

“I waited,” I say. “I gave you time. But now I’m asking you again, Silas. What is it that scares you? What is it about Levi and your hometown and football that always puts you so on edge?”

I hear him sigh behind me, and I want to turn over to see his face, but I think maybe this way will be easier for him. Less pressure.

“I’m scared of failing,” he says. “That’s it. Nothing special.”

“Failing?” I do turn over then because I’m calling bullshit. “And that’s what you wouldn’t tell me the first time I asked?”

“I’m not smart, Dylan. Or rich. Or particularly talented at anything besides football. I lose my spot on the team, I lose my only shot at a decent future. I’m sorry if I didn’t want to say that to a girl I just met.” He leans close and kisses me. Short. Perfunctory. Like he’s trying to shut me up. “A girl whose ass drove me crazy even then.”

He drags his mouth down to my neck, but I know a diversionary tactic when I see one. He’s not telling me the truth. Or at least he’s not telling me all of it.

I slide away and mumble, “I have to go to the bathroom.” I pull on one of his T-shirts and my underwear, and I escape out of his bedroom and into the bathroom across the hall.

The bathroom where everything started.

That is, if you don’t count the police station.

I face myself in the mirror, and I want to be annoyed that he still won’t open up to me. I mean, I can infer the basics. He’s running from his past. I just don’t know why. The only thing in his life pre-Rusk he’s ever talked about is football. He’s not mentioned any family or friends or anything.

But even knowing that . . . I can’t muster any anger over him closing me off. Because how can I ask him to deal with his past, when I, too, am so good at pretending mine doesn’t exist?

Whatever I’m asking him to dig up is no doubt messy. It’s probably painful. And God knows, I get the appeal of trying to leave that kind of thing in your past. I’ve always told myself that it was pointless to drag up stuff like that when it can’t be changed.

But I think that’s Silas’s problem. He thinks that because it can’t be changed, the way he
feels
about it can’t be changed, either.

And maybe it’s time I take a little of my own medicine and face the things I can’t change. Maybe then I’ll know how to better help him.

Chapter 23

Silas

I
don’t hear from Dylan for three days. She never dropped by. Never texted me about helping with some charity or nonprofit or anything. I texted her, but she never answered. By Saturday evening, two nights before we start back to school, my patience has all dried up. Life is shitty enough with football how it is, I’m not going to just let her ignore me. I decide to just show up at her apartment and make her talk to me, but the problem is I only have a vague idea of where she lives. I know the street, and I’m pretty sure about which complex it is, but I’ve got no earthly clue which apartment it is. So instead, I get a hold of her friend Matt, and he gives me her address.

When I leave the house that evening, I’m all set to storm over to her apartment and bang on her door until she talks to me, but I pull up short when I get to my truck.

She’s already here.

She’s wearing a dress that looks like an oversized men’s T-shirt, has her hair braided over one shoulder, and her face scrubbed free of makeup. Leaning against my car door with her arms crossed over her middle and her hair down, she looks so subdued. Normally, she’s sunshine. She’s light and happy and unsinkable. Today, it’s like her flame has been snuffed out.

And I realize what’s happening.

She’s ending this. That’s why she hasn’t called, why she looks so forlorn now. A warm evening breeze blows a few loose strands of hair across her face, and when she lifts her head to pull them away, she sees me. Her hands drop from around her middle, and she takes a step forward away from my truck.

My chest feels hollowed out at the sight of her. I want to soak her up after the days apart and keep my distance all at the same time.

“Hey,” she whispers, and I don’t so much hear the word as see it on her lips.

“Hey.”

“Sorry I’ve not been around.”

I want to cross to her, push her up against my truck, and kiss the apology right off her lips. But I don’t. I plant my feet and stay exactly where I am.

“Where have you been?”

She shrugs. “Nowhere. Locked in my room, mostly.”

I don’t know how to do stuff like this. I’ve never been in a relationship. The last few weeks with her are the most serious thing I’ve ever had, the only relationship, romantic or otherwise, that has ever meant this much. I don’t know the rules. All I know is that I’ve missed her, that my life seems out of balance without her.

“Dylan, I need you to tell me. Whatever it is that you’re thinking right now, please put me out of my misery and just tell me.”

She lifts a hand and traces the outer rim of my oversized rearview mirror.