All Broke Down (Rusk University #2) (34 page)

And now that what’s done is done, it shouldn’t be so damn hard to get someone to do something about it. Life has already been unfair enough. Stella shouldn’t have to live with that too.

“You feel certain that Jake did this?”

“I do,” I say. “If you could have seen his face, seen how defensive he was . . . you would too. And even if he didn’t set out to do it, even if she was awake when they went in the room, an innocent person would have handled things differently. He wouldn’t have left her there like that. And I know fighting him probably wasn’t the answer, and it’s my third strike and you have every right to kick me off the team. I hope you won’t, but I’ve got to say, I’d rather be off the team than play a single game alongside Jake. This team has heart and strength and courage, and he doesn’t deserve to taint that.”

Coach is quiet for a long while. He looks at me, then up at the ceiling. He scratches at his jaw and sighs, before turning his gaze somewhere else and repeating the whole process all over again. Finally, he stands and moves across the room to the window that looks out onto an open grassy area of campus where students play games or study when the weather’s nice.

“You know, when I suspended you from the team, I told you I needed you to be a leader. I wasn’t sure then if you had it in you. I knew you could play, knew you loved the game. But I couldn’t tell if you only cared about your own future, or the team’s as a whole. Even without hearing what you just said, I knew the answer before you ever opened that door. You know how?”

I shake my head, too many emotions lodged in my throat to speak.

“First thing Carson told me Saturday night after he explained what happened was that I couldn’t suspend you again. He said the team needed you. Brookes and Torres showed up at my door the next morning saying the same thing. Keyon rang my doorbell last night in the middle of dinner. He busted into my house, interrupted my date, and told me that you deserved to play. And if that weren’t enough, my daughter told me in no uncertain terms that if I didn’t support you, she wouldn’t speak to me for the rest of the season. People love you, Silas. They respect you. They trust you, and I do, too. And I probably shouldn’t say this, but I’m damn glad it was you that found Stella instead of someone else. Maybe fighting wasn’t the best way to handle it, but I’m not sorry that’s how it went. You shouldn’t be, either. That girl . . .” He stops for a minute, closing his eyes and collecting his words. “I love Stella like she was my own. She brought my daughter out of her shell, and she’s . . .” He trails off and looks out the window for a while. He doesn’t say anything, but I can see him swallowing again and again, trying to keep his composure.

When he turns to me again, his expression is serious. “You’re a good man, Silas. A good player. And I’m glad to have you on this team.”

Goddamn it. I’m not going to get emotional in here. I’m not.

“I may not have any legal authority to address what happened this weekend, but I do have authority over my team. Jake is suspended indefinitely and pending a university investigation, will likely be dismissed from the team altogether. All I need is the athletic director’s okay, and I promise you I’ll get that. One way or another.”

I grip the arms of my chair tightly and nod my head. “Thank you, sir. Thank you so much.”

He comes around the table, and I stand to meet him when he holds out a hand. He shakes my hand, firm and quick, and it has all the softness of a cobra strike, but it’s what nearly puts me over the edge.

I swallow hard, nod my head, thank him one more time, and then head for the door.

“Silas,” he calls before I’m all the way out. “Williams told me about the playground. Pretty inventive idea.”

I shrug. “I guess.”

“I sure do hope this game works out for you, son. But if it doesn’t, I think you could make a damn fine coach.”

I close the door behind me with a quiet click, and I let the relief seep through my shoulders.

I swear to God, it’s like the whole team decided to show up for early morning workout today. Torres and Brookes are pretending to watch game film in the lounge area right outside the office, and they pounce as soon as I’m out. Half a dozen more guys slink in from the locker room to hear me give them the news. Coach Oz and even Coach Gallt nod at me as they leave the office and head into the weight room.

It still doesn’t quite feel real when I leave the athletic complex and head for my pickup so I can make my first class on the other side of campus. Then I see a familiar sleek gray number parked next to my rusty piece of junk, and Dylan climbs out of the driver’s side.

The wind catches her hair, tossing it up in this golden column that catches the sun. She crosses to me quickly and huddles in close so that my body blocks some of the wind.

“So?”

“I’m still on the team. No suspension.”

She squeals and throws her arms around my neck, and I lift her up off her feet so I can bury my face in the warm skin of her neck. Whatever tension was still left in me begins to melt away, and I could stay right here forever.

“I knew everything would be okay. I knew it.”

“Carter is suspended, and if Coach has his way, he’ll be cut soon.”

She pulls back and smiles, running a hand along my cheek. “More good things.”

I kiss her lightly and slowly lower her feet to the ground.

“Good things” doesn’t even begin to cover it.

She grins up at me, slips out of my arms, and crosses to lean against my truck. She’s wearing shorts and the same fall-off-your-shoulder shirt she wore the night we met. She gives me a wicked smile.

“What do you say to skipping our morning classes and going for a drive instead?”

“I say get your gorgeous ass in the truck and let’s go.”

I leave the windows down as we drive, so Dylan’s hair blows across my chest and face as the wind sweeps through. But I don’t mind because she’s pressed tight against my side, my arm resting in the cradle of her thighs so I can switch gears.

I don’t go as far out of town as we did last time, but I drive until all the houses and businesses disappear and there’s nothing but green, wide-open space. When I park, I pull a blanket out from under my seat, and Dylan laughs.

“Oh . . . You’re getting better at this.” I lift her up into the truck bed and together we spread out the blanket.

“I do try to please.”

“Now I don’t have to worry about getting all rusty and dirty.”

I sprawl on the blanket next to her feet, and tug her down into my lap. Our legs end up tangled, and she laughs as she tries to get situated.

“Rusty, no. But the other . . . I make no promises.”

Summer is teasing its way into fall, and though it’s warm out, the wind tells a different story. She presses close against me.

The sky is big above us. The countryside stretches out for miles in every direction. And neither of our lives has ever been so complicated. But I don’t feel overshadowed by any of those things. Not with her in my arms.

There’s still her parents to worry about. And she’s got me trying to rope in more guys from the team to help with a new protest about the shelter. I mentioned to Stella that Dylan might be able to help, that maybe she could do something to draw more attention so that the prosecutor would take a more serious look at the case. But she just changed the subject.

I don’t know when life stopped feeling small and started feeling too big, too much to handle, but I know it’s easier with Dylan in my arms.

Me and her together . . . I believe we’re big enough to face whatever comes.

Epilogue

One Week Later

Dylan

I
completely underestimated football uniforms.

During the first and only other game I had attended, we’d had a seat high up in the student section, so I’d only really seen these big, hulking gray and red masses. But Silas’s first game back is an away game. It’s only a six-hour drive, so Dallas, Matt, and I make the trip, and we snag much better seats. And oh my goodness, Silas in a uniform is just . . . I don’t even have the words. And the game hasn’t even started yet.

Stella said she had a big art project to work on, and I can tell by the persistent worried look on Dallas’s face (and the way she keeps checking her phone) that she feels badly for leaving her behind.

Stella loves football. Or loved it.

But we have to trust that she knows her lines. And maybe she really does have a project she needs to work on, but if she doesn’t . . . I don’t blame her.

It takes us all a while to get in the groove of being without her, though. Matt tries to fill in, stepping up to play DJ as we drive. But the drive felt . . . just
less
without her.

“Ryan talked to her,” Dallas says, after receiving a text. “He said she’s really at the studio. He heard her talking to some other students.”

“Good. That’s good,” I say.

Dallas nods. “She’s strong.”

“She is.”

“She’s going to be okay.” I can’t tell whether she’s phrasing it as a question or a statement, so I just repeat the words back to her, and that seems to make her feel better.

Right before kick off we get a mass text from Stella.

I expect pictures! And updates! And if any of those punks suck it up, you guys better yell at them for me.

Dallas smiles, and we send her a picture of the three of us, decked out in Rusk gear, holding up our wildcat claws. Dallas keeps up a steady stream of updates for her as the game begins, and then I get sucked into watching Silas play.

I can’t see his face. But I know by the way he holds himself, the way he moves . . . I know he’s in his element. And I know he’s happy. And I swear I’m so full of pride and joy for him that I’m about to burst at the seams. Or start crying. One or the other.

I could make an effort to understand more about the game, to expand upon the knowledge that I learned last time, but I figure that can wait for another time. Today I just glue my eyes to number twenty-two and watch him do what he loves.

Football grounds him, and I will love football for all my days if only for that very reason.

It’s strange, really, to think how quickly my life has changed. I’m still figuring out what I like and what I don’t (with Silas’s help, of course). And I know I won’t undo a life of pretending in just a week. It will take time. Time to break the habits. Time to form new ones.

But I’m looking forward to it.

I’ve got new friends, new goals, new interests. It’s exciting and overwhelming, but beneath all that . . . there’s a calm that I’ve never felt before. I no longer feel the need to search for things to do, ways to ingratiate myself to people. I don’t have anything to prove, not to anyone else, anyway.

And Silas . . . he’s technically new, too, but it doesn’t feel that way.

As I watch him move across the field, graceful and strong and fearless, I can barely remember how I felt before him. I try to think back to the way things had been with Henry, but that seems like a different life, a different me.

And everything about those memories is muted and dull.

The team has now moved across the field, and they’re only yards away from the other team’s end zone. I watch Carson hand the ball off to Silas and he pushes through the huddled mass of players, breaking through and crossing the white line painted onto the field, putting Rusk’s first points on the board. I know it was probably incredibly difficult, all those big, bulky bodies in the way, but Silas makes it look so easy.

He’s good at crossing lines. Pushing boundaries.

He pushed mine, and because of it, I can breathe.

I love Silas Moore, and I feel pretty certain that because of that, my life will never feel muted again.

Author’s Note

I
njustice is defined as “a lack of fairness, undeserved hurt, or a failure to respect a person’s rights.” For me, injustices always seem to carry with them a certain amount of shock.

Shock that people could behave so reprehensibly. Shock that no one stopped them. And too often, shock at the world’s lack of empathy and pursuit of justice.

It’s strange, isn’t it, how we can continue to be surprised by the world’s cruelty when we have witnessed it time and time again? The first time I thought of the idea for this book, it was on the heels of just such an unjust occurrence. I was moved by the things I saw and read, but nothing moved me so much as people’s reaction to it—the way some banded together to speak out even when there was no changing what happened. Their only hope was to change people’s perspective, to make people notice. I created Dylan’s character that night. Jotting down a few of her thoughts on a sticky note that stayed on my desktop until the story was finished.

And I made a promise to myself then to notice more. To speak more. To care more.

And I make that challenge to you now. Notice injustice. Speak out against it. Care more for those who suffer it. This world belongs to all of us, and it could be you or someone you know who goes unnoticed tomorrow.

And if you’ve been the victim of a violation of your rights, your civil liberties, or your person, talk to someone. Ask for help. You are absolutely not alone.

The sad truth is according to statistics compiled by RAINN (the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network), a person is sexually assaulted in America every two minutes. Sixty percent of sexual assaults go unreported. Even fewer lead to an arrest and prosecution. In fact, they estimate that out of every 100 rapes, 40 are reported, 10 lead to an arrest, 8 make it to prosecution, 4 lead to a felony conviction, and only 3 rapists will spend time in prison. These statistics boggle my mind and hurt my heart. And when the law fails to serve justice, many young women and men turn to their universities for help. And even though 1 in 4 women are sexually assaulted during their time in college, 41 percent of colleges haven’t conducted a single sexual assault investigation in the last five years, according to “Sexual Violence on Campus,” a 2014 report conducted by Senator Claire McCaskill.

I could throw statistics at you all day long, but I think it’s clear that victims of sexual assault are continually and heinously overlooked, blamed and re-victimized, and left without justice.