All Played Out (Rusk University #3) (29 page)

“No,” I say, placing a hand on her arm. “It’s okay.”

Torres leans on the other side of the table, and he’s so big, his arms so long, that he grips both sides of the table easily. His gaze meets mine, and he raises an eyebrow. “So that was your
first
time playing beer pong?”

There’s an edge to his voice that I don’t like. It makes it hard for me to swallow, and I’ve got goose bumps even though it’s warm in the crowded room. “It was.”

“Beginner’s luck, I say.”

Stella scoffs. “You wish, Teo. She’s a natural.”

He smiles, and holy crap, it hurts. It hurts that he can stand there like nothing’s changed, like I’m just another girl for him to tease. And the fact that it hurts makes me
furious
.

“Are we going to play or what?” I ask.

“Who’s on your team?” Stella asks Torres.

“Oh, I think Ryan is around here somewhere. He’ll do.”

It’s Stella who stiffens this time. The blond guy with curly hair that I always see around her steps up beside Torres. His lips are pressed together as he looks across the table at Stella, and I can’t read his expression at all.

A few beats of tense silence pass before Stella claps her hands. “Let’s get to it, then.”

I add, “You guys can go first.”

Torres shakes his head. “Oh no, we’ll decide this the official way. With the eyes.”

My brows furrow. I don’t remember seeing this in the set of rules that I read online.

“What’s that?” I ask.

He picks up a ball and gestures for me to do the same. “First throw is decided by eyes. One person from each team gets a ball, and you have to stare into your opponent’s eyes and toss the ball without watching where you aim. First one to make a cup goes first.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me. If you think I’m going to believe—”

Stella cuts me off. “It’s true.” I shut up fast. “I’ll do it. Give me the ball.”

“No.” Torres plants a firm hand on the table, and the whole thing sways slightly under the pressure. “Nell and I are doing this.”

I don’t get why he’s being this way, why he’s so tense and pushy. I mean . . . I get that I probably shouldn’t have come to his party. This is his territory, and I’m trespassing. But he could have just asked me to leave. He could have avoided me. Anything but this.

“Fine,” I say, and I hate that my voice is quiet. I roll the ball between my fingers and step to the center of the table. I take a deep breath and face him. His eyes are dark, but more than that, the look he wears is dark.

Shit. He’s mad. Really mad. I should just leave. Screw beer pong and keg stands and my list. This is a bad idea.

But I don’t look away. My gaze stays locked on his.

Ryan puts a hand on his shoulder and says, “Sure you’re up for this, man? You should probably—”

“Oh, I’m up for it.”

He shoots me a cocky grin, and I nearly bolt. Nearly.

I’m not scared of him. I’m not scared of this party or fitting in or being different. I’m not even scared of being scared. I’ve got this.

“You ready?” I ask.

“On the count of three,” he says.

Then he proceeds to give the slowest count in the history of the universe. I swallow because his eyes are piercing. There’s no other word for it. And I’ve never been good at looking him in the eye. I remember that night in the pickup truck when he let me close my eyes so I didn’t have to, and I very nearly give in to the impulse to close them now. But I stay steady, and when he says three, I toss the ball, doing my best to find the rhythm that I’d felt in the last game.

Both our throws end up in cups, so now it’s up to Stella and Ryan to decide.

We end up forfeiting first toss when Stella breaks eye contact with Ryan as she throws. It’s a closer game than our last one. Torres and Ryan are stronger opponents, and their presence seems to have put both me and Stella off our games.

When Torres sinks a shot and mine bounces off the rim of a cup and misses, I have to drink my first beer of the night. It tastes just as bad as I remember, and I have to close my eyes and force myself to chug it quickly. When I set the empty cup on the table, Torres’s expression is drawn in dark edges, and I think he’s somehow even angrier at me than he was before. Which makes no sense because it’s
his
fault that I had to drink.

Gah. Men.

The game stretches on longer and longer, and the room is now packed full of people. Tension that’s about more than just competition spreads taut between us, and by the time we get it down to one cup on each side, my nerves are frayed. It’s just a game, but it feels bigger than that. As if we’ve all got something on the line. Pride, I guess. Our remaining cup is directly in front of me, and theirs is in front of Ryan.

Torres steps up to take his shot, but his eyes find me instead of the cup. I wait for him to look away, but he doesn’t. He keeps his eyes on me as he tosses the ball, and it hits the rim of the cup and bounces off.

This is my chance. With his miss, I could end the game if I throw the ball into their last cup.

I close my eyes. I’ve had to down three cups of beer in all. They weren’t very full, so I think I’m still fine, but I also don’t want to be overconfident. I blow out a breath and focus in on that cup. I think about the trajectory I want, how soft I want my throw so it’s more likely to bounce into, rather than away from, the cup if it hits the rim, then I let go.

It falls perfectly into the cup, and Stella throws her arms around my neck at the same time as our audience goes crazy.

My eyes pass briefly over Torres, and I could swear he’s smiling, but I don’t let myself look back to check.

“Keg stand, and then leave,” I tell Stella.

She nods, and while she tells the crowd that we’re done for the night, I start making my way to the door. Stella’s small hand grips my elbow a moment later. “You okay?”

I nod. “Yep. I just want to do this and get out of here.”

“The keg’s usually in the backyard. Come on.”

I resist the urge to look back over my shoulder. I’m hoping Torres won’t follow. Stella told everyone we were done for the night, so maybe he’ll leave me alone if he thinks I’m leaving. Even so, I walk a little faster. There were a lot of people in that room, and even if he does follow me, I have every intention of being outside and out of sight before he can catch up to me.

Chapter 28

Mateo

F
uck . . .” She’s long gone when I finally push my way out of my room. I spin, scanning the party for her dark hair, her curvy form.
“Fuck.”

It had been such a shock to walk into my room and see her there. She’d looked vibrant and confident and unbelievably sexy. And everybody was watching her, and that asshole friend of Ryan’s with the beanie hugged her, and it took all my self-control not to suffocate him with that beanie.

I hadn’t had any intention of partying tonight. I was coming into my room to drop off my bag, and then I was going to go to Nell’s apartment. And by some miracle that I still didn’t understand, she was already here.

What did that mean?

She certainly wasn’t here at the house to see me. The way she’d tensed up when I volunteered to play told me that. But why would she come here if she didn’t want to see me? Was it to rub my face in the fact that she’s just fine, and I can’t walk or talk or do fucking anything without thinking of her? Because she sure as hell looked like she was doing just fine without me.

I knew she’d gained a lot of confidence and was more comfortable in her skin than when we first met, but I still never would have expected to find her completely at ease playing beer pong at a party like this.

God, I’d spent the whole damn football game thinking about her, aching to go after her. I thought about her as the team’s trainer examined me on the sidelines and went through all our concussion protocols. I’d thought of her when Coach said he’d rather not chance sending me back into the game. She’d been the only thing that kept me sane on the sidelines as we traded points with the opposing team. Our defense had an off game, and our opponent’s wasn’t particularly strong to begin with, so it ended up becoming about who could score the most points.

And in a game like that, you’re never safe. Even when you’re ahead, things can turn around so fast. I paced and paced and paced, and I thought of her. I planned out what I was going to say to her. During halftime, I grabbed a spiral from my bag and wrote it down. Then time ran out, and we won, and all I could think about was talking to her. But Coach wanted to talk after the game, check in on how I was doing, and give me the nonabbreviated version of the lecture he gave me on the field. And all that fucking time that I’d been sitting in his office, she was here in my house. She’s still here somewhere . . . unless she’s already left.

I hear cheering and clapping in the backyard, and follow the pull in my gut to the door. When I walk out onto the back porch, I catch sight of her immediately, hands balanced on top of the keg, and her perfect fucking legs straight up in the air. Stella stands beside her, but she isn’t tall enough to keep a hold on her, so some other dude I don’t recognize has his hands around her ankles, holding her up.

I see red.

It’s bad enough that she’s in my house, and all these other people are here, so I can’t just grab her and devour that damn pouty mouth of hers. But no one else touches her. No one. Jesus, I’d take a concussion over this any day.

I fly down the stairs at the same time as she stops drinking and the guy starts lowering her feet toward the ground. She’s laughing, and her long hair is wild and twisted over her face. She pulls it away so she can see, and while she does it, Keg-Stand Guy keeps a hand on her lower back like he needs to steady her.

I march over to them and grip both her shoulders to spin her away from him.

“What the fuck, man?” he calls at my back.

But now I’ve got my hands on her. A few locks of hair are caught between my fingers and her shoulders, and I just want to bury my fingers in those thick tresses.

“What are you doing?” Nell asks.

She’s breathing heavy, probably from being upside down and chugging beer, which she doesn’t even like.
Damn it,
everything about this night is pissing me off.

“That’s two more firsts tonight,” I growl.

She tries to pull away, but I tighten my grip.

“Stella and I were just about to leave. We are leaving. Now.”

“Oh no. Not yet, girl genius. You and I need to talk.”

Maybe she’s all good. Maybe I’ll be making a complete fool of myself in a matter of moments, but I’ve got to do it. I force myself to let go of her shoulders and reach down to take her hand.

“Come with me.”

“But—I—”

“Nell? You okay?” Stella asks from nearby.

“I just want to talk. Then you can come back out here to Stella. You can do whatever you want.”

She worries her bottom lip between her teeth, and I fight off a groan. “It’s okay, Stella.”

Everyone outside is watching us. I can’t just take Nell over to a quiet spot in the yard, not like this. So I squeeze her hand and lead her up the stairs and back inside. We pass through the living room, where the music is thumping to a fast beat, and I lead her back toward my room. There’s not as many people inside as there were when we were playing beer pong, but it’s not empty, which is what I want.

“Everybody out! I need the room.”

“Come on, man.” It’s Keyon, a true freshman running back, and he’s holding a Ping-Pong ball, ready to throw. “You said we could play.”

“I know. I’m sorry. But now you can’t, so get out.”

I know my voice is stern, and I probably seem like the biggest asshole around, but I don’t care. The people grumble as they leave, and Nell pulls her hand out of mine to retreat to the far side of the room. The longer it takes for people to leave, the more pressure builds in my head that has nothing to do with my recent injury. Two girls on my bed are the last to leave, and they linger at the door, looking at me.

One look at my hard face, though, and they disappear. I shut the door, and with my back still to Nell, I take a deep, fortifying breath.

I turn, and take in the red plastic cups scattered around the room, which looks like a damn tornado has moved through it.

“Sorry about that. The Ping-Pong table is mine, so whenever we have parties, I let people use my room to play.”

“You didn’t have to kick them out for me,” she says

“If I hadn’t, you would have disappeared without saying another word to me, right?”

She shrugs in answer.

I cross to the table and start stacking empty cups just so I’ll have something to do with my hands. I’ve been thinking about talking to Nell all day, but now that she’s here, I don’t know how to start.

I can’t screw this up.

When I go too long without talking, she says, “Listen, I’m sorry about showing up like this. Stella and I were just planning to get in, check a couple things off my list, and be on our way.”

That snaps me out of it. “She knows about your list?”

She’s leaning against my far wall, a few feet to the left of my bed, and the sight is messing with my head. Especially because her hands are pressed up against the wall behind her like she needs it to keep her from falling.

“I told her today. We’re going to finish tonight. In fact, I’ve just got one item left.”

“What is it?” I ask, and she hesitates. “Come on, you already cheated me out of two firsts today, at least tell me this.”

If it’s something sexual . . . if she’s planning on checking it off without me . . .
Fuck
.

“I didn’t cheat you out of anything. They’re
my
firsts.”

Before I know what I’m doing, I’m crossing the room and planting my hands on the wall right beside her head, caging her in. She sucks in a breath, like she’s trying to take up less space so we won’t touch.

“We’ve covered this before. I called those firsts. You were supposed to do them with me.”

“Oh my God, do you hear yourself?” She tries to shove me away, but I don’t budge. “The world does not revolve around you, Mateo Torres.”