All Broke Down (Rusk University #2) (3 page)

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I know I should turn around and walk back out to my truck. There are only stupid decisions waiting for me here.

But I’ve never cared all that much about being smart.

I stalk across the bar and slide onto the stool next to him. I tip back the beer and fix my eyes on the baseball game playing on the old TV sitting up beside bottles of liquor on the shelf.

“What? I don’t even get a hello?” Levi says.

I ditch the hello and ask instead, “How was prison? You got out fast.” Must be nice to have a lawyer for a dad. Hell, must be nice to have a dad in the picture, period.

Levi lifts his hands in a shrug and says, “Can’t keep me down.”

Sad thing is . . . he’s probably right. Guys like him always get second, third, and fourth chances.

“What are you doing here, Levi?”

“What does it look like I’m doing? I’m having a drink, and then I’m gonna get laid. Priorities, am I right?”

“I mean . . . what are you planning to do here?”

“I thought I just covered that.”

“You’re just going to hang out here in town? When you’re not allowed to set foot on campus? Are you even allowed to be in a bar right now?”

He shrugs. “I just can’t be around drugs of any kind. Alcohol might count, but nobody’s gonna find out.” He gestures to the deserted bar. “And why do I have to figure out what I’m doing right now? I’ll just hang out. It will be the same as it always was . . . but now I don’t have to go to class.”

“The same as it always was,” I mutter and drain the rest of my beer in three big gulps. I wave down the bartender for another while Levi continues.

“Yeah, man. We should drive down to Austin this weekend. Go to Sixth Street. We’ll get plastered. Maybe float the river.”

“I have practice on Monday.”

“You’ll be back in time.”

I shake my head. “I can’t. We’re supposed to be keeping a low profile.”

He scoffs. “Fuck. Coach Cole is the worst. Soon you guys won’t be able to do jack shit.”

“It’s not Coach. It’s all of us.”

“All of you?”

“Yeah. We want the team focused. McClain and I—”

“McClain? Are you fucking serious right now?”

“Yeah, I’m serious. You seem to be forgetting that you screwed us all over. McClain stepped up.”

Levi scowls, a low, bitter laugh rolling out before he takes another drink. “That guy’s nothing. Walk-on, junior college piece of shit.”

I’d always felt more at ease with Levi than anyone else. He reminded me of my brother in ways. My brother was always kind of an asshole, too.

And with my past pressing in on me, I know I’ve got two choices. I can go the easy way, the way that comes naturally to me. I can stay at this bar, get drunk, get some girls, and ride out my time here at Rusk doing whatever the hell I want for as long as it lasts. That’s how I’ve always lived—take the good you can get before the bad catches up to you.

But I actually feel sick at the thought of staying here with Levi. As easy as it would be, as many times as I’ve made that choice, it doesn’t hold the same appeal now. It used to feel smart, like I was one leg up on the world, but now it feels like I’m running downhill because I’m too much of a pussy to turn and face the incline.

I stand up, take one last gulp of my beer, and throw some cash on the bar.

“I gotta go.”

Levi moves, too, his stool scraping the cement floor as he pushes it back.

“What the hell, man? You just got here.”

“I don’t see much reason to stay.”

“Are you shitting me?” Levi asks, getting up in my face. “I thought out of everyone you would have my back.”

“I’ve got my
own
back.” That’s the one thing I’ve always known. I can’t depend on anyone else but me. “The only thing I care about is staying on that team. You’ve already fucked up your shot. And I’m not gonna let you or anyone else do the same for me.”

“
That team
will fall apart without me. Then what will you do? Run back to the trailer park you came from?”

That shouldn’t sting. It wouldn’t on any other day, but I can’t help but think that it’s only a matter of time before everyone here knows that about me.

I want to get right back in his face, turn this on him, make him feel like the worthless one. But I get the feeling that’s why this is all happening. Maybe I’m not the only one feeling out of control today.

“Nah, man. You got it wrong. The team is better off without you.”

I turn to walk away, and he shoves hard at my back. Stumbling forward, I collide with a few stools, toppling them, and barely staying on my feet.

I try to breathe, but my vision goes black around the edges, and that familiar need to hit something roars back. I clench my fists to rein it in and stand, my eyes on the door.

“You’re nothing, Silas. You’ve already got has-been written all over you.” I glance back, even though I know that’s exactly what he wants. The bartender is pointedly ignoring us, polishing a glass that probably hasn’t really been clean in five years. Levi continues, “Don’t you fucking look down on me. I know you, man. I’m gonna be just fine, but you? It’s just a matter of time before you fuck it all up. And then what will you have? Nothing.”

And that one? That hits a little too close to home.

I get up in his face, nose to nose. “You
know
me? You don’t know shit.”

“I know enough. Brother’s in prison. Mom’s a whore. Trash is trash whether you dress it up with a scholarship and a uniform or not.”

His face makes a satisfying crack when my fist connects. The jolt of pain in my wrist, the bite of broken skin on my knuckles . . . it dulls out my thoughts and sharpens everything else.

Satisfaction and anger and exhilaration burn through me, and the world sure as fuck doesn’t feel muted anymore.

He’s slow to recover and retaliate, and even though I see it coming, I let him get one hit in. He goes for my midsection, but he must still be dazed from my hit because it makes even less of an impact than I expect. I barely feel it. And I don’t know why, but the piss-poor punch makes me even angrier.

“Come on, Levi. I might be trash, but you’re pathetic. Lazy. Couldn’t even play football without cheating.”

He swings again, and I lean back enough that he only clips my jaw. The jolt is enough to sting and break the dam on my much-needed adrenaline. I grip him by the shirt and ram him into the bar on my right. A few glasses go sliding and crash onto the floor. The bartender yells something, but I don’t listen, delivering my own hit to Levi’s stomach, followed by a second.

He curses and shoves me back, and I stumble into a chair, sending a few more glasses shattering against the concrete floor. He comes at me, and I shift, using his speed to leverage him past me, tossing him forward into a table that topples and splinters under his weight.

He rolls onto his back, groaning, but I don’t let him stay down. I need more of a fight than this. I drag him to his feet and make him look me in the eye. He swings and clocks me in the side of the head, but my blood is pumping so fast and hard that it’s more obnoxious than painful. I don’t know if I want to hit him again or just shake him as hard as I can. While I’m standing there thinking like a dumbass, he gets a good punch into my kidney, and my whole body locks up against the pain for a few seconds. Before he gets off another, I shove him into the wall. He hits hard, and only my hand keeps him from slumping down to the ground.

“You just couldn’t leave it the fuck alone, could you?” I ask. “Spoiled rich boy is unhappy, so he has to drag everyone else down with him.”

Levi is beginning to list to the side, and I’m sure if I let him go, he’d keep on leaning until he crashed. Whatever pain he’s in, it doesn’t hamper the angry look he gives me.

He spits and his bloody saliva lands on my shoe. I’ve got him pegged and he hates it.

“That’s enough,” I hear the bartender say behind me. “Walk away.”

Levi laughs. “Don’t pretend I dragged you down. You came here looking to fight. You work better down in the gutter.”

“Maybe I do.”

Then I clock him once more, and his expression goes slack, and he slumps down against the wall at my feet. His head droops toward his chest, blood dribbling down from his busted mouth.

Reflecting colored lights dance over the walls now, and I hear police sirens. And
fuck,
I think I might actually be jealous of that black, nothing world Levi’s lost in.

How the hell did I go from walking away to this?

For the first time, I take stock of the bar around us. Broken glass. Broken furniture. The dude from the booth is long gone. A woman has her head poking past the kitchen door, watching me warily with her cell phone to her ear. The bartender is an older, chubbier version of Mr. Clean, and though he has a bat pressed beneath his palms against the wooden bar, he doesn’t look ready to use it.

I turn and head for the door, but even before the cop steps inside, I know I’ve got no shot at walking out of here that easy. The cop asks me what happened, but there’s no point in saying
he started it
like a little pansy. Not when you’ve got a juvy record. He gets the rundown from the bartender and the woman who called them. While a paramedic checks on a barely conscious Levi, I’m put in the back of a police car.

They say bad shit happens in threes, but I gave up counting a long time ago.

The bad seems to follow me. Or hell. Maybe Levi’s right. Maybe it’s me that follows the bad.

Maybe I don’t know who I am apart from that.

Chapter 3

Dylan

T
he plastic zip ties bite into the skin of my wrists, and I wait, my shoulders aching from having my hands bound behind my back. My heart is racing, has been since I refused the officer’s order to disperse from the protest and got arrested instead. I wonder how long my heart can beat this fast without giving out. Maybe I’ll pass out soon, and then I’ll get at least a modicum of relief from the guilt and fear gnawing at my insides.

The female police officer is finishing up my paperwork, while my friend Matt is being escorted away to the holding cell by another officer. He meets my eyes and makes a ridiculous face. I don’t know how he’s so calm. With his massive russet beard, he looks more scary than silly. He’s got a good six inches on the guy who arrested us, and I don’t blame the cop for looking nervous. Matty looks like he could go Sasquatch on everyone and bust his way out of here.

“Miss Brenner?” Officer Tribble stands in front of me. She’s in her mid-thirties, dark hair, and frown lines around her mouth. She knows my father. Everyone knows my father. It’s probably naive to think he’s not already aware I’m here. My stomach twists again, and I hunch over in my chair, hoping it will make the aching worry go away. But I don’t get much time to see if it works. She takes my elbow, her grip soft, and helps me stand, and then we’re walking in the direction Matt was taken.

At the end of a hallway are two holding cells, one across from the other. Lined with metal benches bolted to the floor, the cell on the left contains three men. A middle-aged man in a ratty T-shirt lays passed out on a bench in the corner. On the other side of the cell, I see Matt in all his bearded glory. Despite the fact that there are several empty benches, he’s seated on the one containing the third occupant of the cell. He’s talking, but his cellmate appears to be ignoring him, which doesn’t faze my friend in the slightest. He sends me a wink as Officer Tribble parades me past and stops in front of the empty cell across from Matt’s. I breathe a sigh of relief. Despite my fear, when Matt tilts his head toward his cellmate and waggles his eyebrows suggestively, I laugh. The guy next to Matt looks up, and the laugh dies in my throat.

He sports a bruised jaw, bloomed purple over stubbled skin. His messy hair is somewhere between blond and brown and tumbles over his forehead, leading me to a set of hazel eyes that are astoundingly pretty and at odds with the rest of his hard appearance. His knuckles, too, look ripped up, and his eyes follow my progress with an intensity that has my stomach twisting with a fear that is altogether different from what I’ve been feeling for the last hour. Even so, I continue watching him . . . watching him watch me, really, as Officer Tribble cuts off my plastic binds and locks me in the empty cell.

I move to sit at the same end as Matt, so we can talk to each other quietly, but the intense-eyed stranger sits closer to the bars, blocking all but the wave of red hair that adds an extra two inches to Matt’s already tall frame.

The guy is young, around my age, I would guess, and I wonder if the bruises have something to do with why he’s in here or if they’re just a separate part of his bad-boy mystique. Like
oops, I forgot to put on leather before I left the house today, better get a little bloody instead.

Matt doesn’t seem concerned that he might be dangerous. Then again, Matt is rarely concerned about anything. When he leans his bulky frame around his cellmate, I finally manage to tear my gaze away.

“You okay, Pickle?” he asks.

I’m going to thump him for using that nickname later. That is
not
a nickname to be used in front of beautiful people, even potentially criminal ones.

“Fine, Matty.”

That’s what I tell him, but I hunch over again. The worry is a physical weight in my belly, a stone that presses down on my gut, and I wonder how quickly one can develop a stomach ulcer.

“You don’t look fine,” my friend says. “You look like you’re going to vom everywhere.”

Lovely. As if I weren’t mortified enough already by my actions today. But I can’t be mad at Matt. If he hadn’t stuck with me, I’d be here alone, which would be infinitely worse. “I’m sorry. This is my fault. I feel terrible that you stayed with me, and I got you into this.”

He shrugs. “No harm, no foul.”

Only Matt would call being arrested
no harm.
The guy is so laid-back, he’s like the human equivalent of Xanax. I want that. I
need
that. All I can think about is what my father might say, and whether or not this will go on my record, and if it will affect my scholarship, and what Henry will say.