All Broke Down (Rusk University #2) (31 page)

What I don’t expect is to find the weight room already occupied on a Sunday morning after a game.

Keyon has two of the larger dumbbells and is doing lunges across the weight room. His back is to me, and for a moment I consider leaving, but instead I watch him. His head is down, and he’s moving at a fast pace. He’s focused. Determined.

“Your strength isn’t why you can’t break a tackle.”

He drops the weights and whirls around to look at me.

He’s immediately tense and defensive.

“What do you want?”

“For this team to win games.”

Keyon scowls and waves a hand at me. “I get it. I ran my mouth and now it’s your turn to give some back. Go ahead. I can take it.”

“I’m not here to cut you down, man. I came here to work out, same as you. But I’m serious. Strength isn’t your problem. It’s your pad level. You’re getting laid out because your body is too high, and you can’t fight them off when they come up underneath you. Hasn’t anyone ever told you the lowest man wins?”

“Do I look like an idiot? Of course I know that.”

“Then why aren’t you working on that instead of being in here lifting weights?”

“I am working on it. Stronger legs can stay lower longer.”

“I told you strength isn’t your issue. It’s your head. And muscle memory. You need to get used to staying low.”

“I’m trying.”

I’m probably going to regret this. I don’t even fucking like the guy, but I think back to how I felt watching that game, like the only thing I had left was slipping through my fingers, but I didn’t have control over my own hands to do anything about it.

Seems like I’m feeling that way a lot lately.

“I’ve got an idea. Let’s go for a run. I think I might know something that can help you out.”

I grab a football from the locker room, and tell him to follow me.

Sometimes to switch things up, I run away from campus instead of toward it. So, I know the neighborhood behind ours is mostly families. Professors who want to live close to campus, grad students who are married and have kids. When I run that way, I always end up passing this park with a cool, modern playground.

Williams looks confused as fuck when our run ends up there.

“Is this some kind of joke? Hazing or something? Because if so, you suck at it.”

I laugh. “No joke, man. We could have done this with some of the official stuff on campus, but I don’t have a key to the equipment closet, so we’re improvising.”

“On what? The merry-go-round?” I step up into the playground area, deserted this early on a Sunday morning, and feel my feet sink into the soft wood chips that cover the ground. That’s going to make things even more difficult for him, but that might be a good thing.

“Anyone ever make you run arches?”

He shrugs.

“They look like giant versions of those metal croquet things you hit the ball through. You know what I’m talking about?”

“Not a fucking clue.”

I laugh. “Yeah, I’d never heard of it, either, when my high school coach mentioned it. It’s a rich-people thing, I think. Or old people. Both probably. Anyway, they’re small enough that you can’t run through them upright, and they’re narrow so that you have to keep your arms in close, the ball tucked tight against your body. Run through those long enough and it becomes second nature to bend your knees and stay low.”

“But we don’t have those.”

“No, we have this.” I place my hand on top of a long set of monkey bars, made for kids. I’d guess it’s about five and a half feet tall, maybe a little more. Point is, it’s low enough to make it hard for guys like us to run underneath at full speed. I toss him the football and he automatically holds it tight against his stomach the way we’re taught. I walk to the end of one set of the monkey bars and look down the length of them. It’s a little less than ten yards, so not ideal, but I think we can make it work. I decide to have him work on his feet at the same time, too.

“Let’s do it like this.” Slowly, I show him what to do, running beneath the bars with my knees bent and my body hunched. There are three sets of bracing on the sides of the monkey bars that also serve as miniature fireman’s poles, and I use them like cones, popping out from underneath the bars to weave around one pole and then back under the bars until I weave around the next fireman’s pole on the opposite side. I round one more pole, and then circle completely around the ladder at the other end of the monkey bars before ducking underneath them and repeating the same process on the way back. It’s a little lower than the practice arches we have on the team, but he’s not wearing a helmet or pads, so I figure that evens out the difficulty level.

He follows my lead, moving through it once at half speed to get a feel for it, and then he tries it at full speed. After rounding the second fireman’s pole, he knocks his head going back under the monkey bars and drops to one knee.

He curses, and I do my best to hide my smile.

“I don’t want to be a dick,” I say. “But I told you that you were running too high.”

“I thought you didn’t want to be a dick?”

“It comes naturally. I’ve learned not to fight it.”

“Well, if it’s so easy, you do it.”

He tosses me the ball, and I try not to look too smug as I walk over to the starting spot. I might be a dick now, but high-school-me was an outright asshole. That’s what happens when you don’t have a parent around to put you in your place: You become pretty damn certain that you know what’s best about everything. Coach Cervera, my football coach the last two years of high school, had no problem showing me how wrong I was. The guy made me run arches every day until, I swear to God, I was walking around bent and hunched even outside of practice. I take a deep breath, blink to make sure my vision is completely clear, and then I speed through the course as fast as I can. My feet slip a few times on the wood chips, but I don’t think Williams noticed, at least not based on the suspiciously blank expression he has when I’m done.

“Fine. Give me the damn ball.”

I do smile then, tossing it like he asked.

I lose track of time while we work. Football does that to me. Dylan is the only other thing that has ever been that way. I could listen to her talk, watch her sleep, run my fingers through her hair . . . anything. I could do that all day long, and never get bored.

Fuck.

That’s over. Done with.

I shake my head and focus back on the task at hand.

Keyon is now good enough that he’s running the drill five times in a row before stopping, rather than just the one lap. He’s still not quite at full speed, he’s too unsure of himself, but he’s already much better. I think the quick turns around the fireman’s pole are helping to train his vision, too. It’s a good start. And he doesn’t need me anymore. Not for this.

As we wrap up, I tell him, “I know a couple more drills that would help if you want to meet up this week before or after practice.”

He finishes out the loop he’s on and says, “Wait.” I hadn’t even moved yet, but I raise my eyebrows in question. “Why are you doing this?”

“I told you. I want the team to win.”

“But I’m your competition. What if I end up taking your spot?”

“If a few hours of drills makes you that much better than me, then you deserve to take my spot.”

“You’ve still got to miss another game, though. What if I show you up?”

“I’m not exactly sitting on my ass doing nothing, Williams. Besides, if you’re good enough, maybe Coach will look at going to a two-back offense. You, me, and McClain? We could be pretty damn impressive, I think.”

He nods. “Cool. Yeah.” He holds up the football. “You need this back?”

“Nah, you keep it. You could stand to do this, oh, another thousand times.”

I start jogging back in the direction of my house.

“Still being a dick!” he yells behind me.

“See you at practice, fish.”

Chapter 28

Dylan

O
n the next game day, I agree to get lunch with my parents because I’m not sure I can handle watching another game with Stella mentioning Silas every few minutes. The masochism has to stop sometime.

But before I’ve even finished setting the table, I know this was a mistake. Mom has brought up Henry three times. She thinks maybe we should invite him and his parents over for dinner . . .
since I’m not dating anyone new.

She gives me a look when she says that last thing, and I know I didn’t fool her at that party.

Ironically enough . . . I no longer need to fool her. Because Silas is so beyond done with me.

There’s that masochism again. Rubbing salt in my own wounds.

As we take our seats for lunch, and Mom passes around all the perfectly plated dishes, I struggle to keep my mind off him. I struggle with all the things that used to come easy. The pleases and the thank-yous. Dad notices.

“What’s on your mind, sweetheart?”

“Hmm?” I look up from the food I’d been pushing around on my plate. “Just have a lot on my mind, I guess. Sorry.”

God, I never want to say that word again. Never. I’d be the rudest person ever, but if I never had to say that word
not
followed by a kiss again, it would be okay.

I tune out the conversation about some big donation Dad is trying to land for Rusk, and instead sneak my phone out underneath the table.

Phones aren’t allowed during meals. It’s one of Mom’s rules, but I can’t help it. I have to know what’s happening at the game.

I don’t know if they’re playing an easier team or if things have changed since last week, but on my phone I watch the score climb, as I periodically pause to scoop some food off my plate so my parents don’t become too suspicious. Rusk leads by three. Then ten. Then sixteen. And I find myself imagining Silas’s face on the sidelines. Is he happy for his team? Or still too frustrated by his inability to play?

“Dylan? Is that a phone beneath the table?”

I drop my phone into my lap and look up at Mom. Guilty.

“Yeah. Sorry, Mom. I just had to check something.”

“Are you waiting on a call?”

“No, I was . . . sorry. I’ll put it away. That was rude of me.”

I hear Silas in my head telling me to stop apologizing, and then I imagine him kissing me, and it feels like my lungs are filled with water.

“What are you checking?” Dad asks.

I could lie. Say I’m waiting on an e-mail about school or the shelter or anything. But I’m so tired of lying.

“I was checking the score on the football game. Rusk is up by sixteen if you were curious.”

“Honey.” That one word from Mom is chastising, and I don’t know if it’s for using my phone at the table or for the information she’s inferring after that confession.

As always, Dad gets straight to the point. “That football player you were talking to at the party. I don’t want you involved with him. I’m not sure what he told you, but he’s violent and troubled, and he’s been suspended from the team because of it.”

I don’t know what to say to that because
technically
the things he’s said about Silas are true. Granted, I wouldn’t go so far as to call him
violent.
But he does walk that line, and I can’t ignore that, can’t excuse it just because I’m attracted to him.

“He’s worked really hard to turn that around, Dad. I think if you asked around now, you’d hear a different story.”

“Kids like him always have the same story. And it always ends up the same eventually.”

Those words burn something up in me, and now I’m the one battling violence. Words like that,
people
like my father . . . they’re the reason Silas feels like he doesn’t fit in my world. And honestly, I’m not even sure that’s the kind of world I want to be in.

“Then why adopt me?” I ask. “If you think people are only products of where they came from and they can’t change . . . why bother?”

“Oh sweetheart,” Mom says, reaching across the table for my hand. “You were one of the good ones.”

I pull my hand away and stand up, “
Silas
is one of the good ones. He’s dealt . . . is dealing with a lot. And if you knew him—”

“I don’t need to know him,” my father says. “You think I haven’t seen hundreds of guys like him go through that university? I’m happy to have them there, for them to get an education in exchange for the money they bring in on the team. But that doesn’t mean I want him anywhere near my daughter.”

I shake my head and purse my lips against the urge to cry. I can’t believe I ever contributed to this, that I ever made Silas feel like any of this was true.

“You do need to know him, Dad. Because I’m pretty sure I’m in love with him.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Mother says fast. “You and Henry have only been apart a month or two.”

I look at her then, pause, and make sure she sees the seriousness in my face when I say, “Henry and I are never getting back together. I don’t love him. I don’t want to be with him. That’s not going to change. Not ever.”

“You’re overreacting. Henry hurt you, and now you’re lashing out in the best way you know how. I understand that. And this Silas is certainly attractive, so I don’t blame you for getting confused.”

“You think I’m confused?” I can’t help but laugh. “For the first time maybe ever, I know exactly how I feel and exactly what I think. And you’re not going to tell me I’m confused or wrong, not going to convince me I don’t know who I am. Because I do. I
finally
do.”

“No one is saying you don’t know who you are.” Dad cuts in. “But perhaps if you’ll sit back and think—”

“I didn’t know who I was,” I tell them. And there’s no stopping my eyes from tearing up now. “Not until Silas. Before that . . . I was whatever you wanted me to be. Or whatever Henry wanted. I was so worried that I’d lose you, that you wouldn’t love me, or you’d regret taking me in, that I was too scared to be anything other than what you considered the perfect daughter. But I’m not perfect. I can’t be. Not even if I was still interested in trying. And Silas . . . he was the only person to see that. To see how hollow I’d let myself become. So I
do
love him. I’m not confused or misguided. Not anymore.”