All Broke Down (Rusk University #2)

by Cora Carmack

  It’s the freshman. Keyon Williams. I might not have been sure of his name before today, but I know it now. He’s shorter than I am, and a little bit stockier. The guy’s got a pretty good sprint, but no real endurance. Not that I can really talk about endurance at the moment.

  “What?” I bark.

  “We didn’t really get introduced at the party Friday. Just wanted to say hey. Tell you good practice.”

  I shrug his hand off. “Is that a fucking joke?”

  He holds his hands up. “Nah, man. Didn’t mean anything by it. We all piss the bed some days.”

  I lose it. Completely. I shove him up against the wall right outside the locker room and get in his face. “Listen, fish. You don’t know shit about me.” I said those same words to Levi, and now this asshat is fucking grinning, just like he did. It takes everything in me not to bash his teeth in. Carson steps into the doorway, and I catch his eye. I force out a breath and take my hands off the kid. Mouthy fucking freshman.

  “Just stay out of my way.”

  I turn and head for McClain when the dick opens his mouth again. “It’s you that’s in my way. But not for long. Not how you’re playing. I’m sure you’ll be heading Abrams’s way before long.”

  I’m almost to the door, but those last words tug me back and his too white smile is all the extra motivation I need. I drop my helmet and ram him into the wall. He clips me on the healing bruise on my jaw, and my teeth rattle. But I hit him with a perfect uppercut, and blood starts pouring out of his mouth. He shoves me back and we both go tumbling to the ground. We struggle for control, rolling a few times, and just when I’ve got the upper hand and am about to lay into him, multiple sets of hands grip and pull me back.

  I struggle for a couple of seconds, but there are at least three people holding me back. And now that I get a good look at the guy lying on the floor, blood all down the front of his shirt, I don’t really feel the need to get back at him.

  In fact, I don’t feel much of anything except my stomach dropping to the ground.

  Then the coaches are there. Gallt and Oz are down by Keyon, and Coach Cole slides into my vision. I’ve never seen him so livid. His face is purpling, and his eyes have that psycho look to them, like he might flay me alive. I brace for him to yell but he doesn’t.

  Instead, in this quiet, intense, fucking terrifying voice, he says, “My office. Right now.”

  I open my mouth to say something. An apology, maybe.

  “Now, Moore.”

  My teammates let me go, and I turn to face them. There’s McClain, Brookes, and Carter. I wouldn’t have expected Carter to jump in. He’s usually one of the instigators, but I give them all a nod that will have to do for a thanks.

  I shouldn’t have let that dude get to me. I don’t know why he did. It’s not like I can’t handle a little talking shit. When I was a freshman, I was the biggest asshole of them all. I head through the locker room, where everyone is silent and still, paused in the middle of getting undressed for their showers. They stare as I walk through the room and toward the lounge area that opens up into the offices.

  For the second time today I enter Coach Cole’s office, but this time I’m alone. The room is dark, and I don’t turn on the lights. I just take a seat and bury my head in my hands, and I listen to the silence. I listen to it like it’s going to tell me the answer, going to explain why I can’t keep my head on straight. After a little while it starts to sound like music. The muffled sounds from the locker room, the ticking of coach’s clock, the low whirring sound of his computer. There’s a hell of a lot of noise to be found in the silence, almost as much as there is in my head.

  The door opens, and I keep my head down. I hear Coach pause by the door, and I know he’s looking at me. I think for a second that maybe he’ll leave the lights off. That he’ll let me get away with not looking at him during this. But then the moment passes, and he flips on the light.

  He crosses the room and slams my helmet down onto the middle of his desk. He stands behind his chair and grips the back until his knuckles turn white.

  “You better have a damn good explanation for what I just saw out there, Moore.”

  I sit up straight in my chair and face him head-on. I owe him that much.

  “I don’t, sir. I’m sorry.”

  Coach presses his lips together like he wants to yell and curse, but is trying to stay calm. He runs a hand roughly through his hair.

  “Damn it, Moore. McClain filled me in. Told me what Williams said. He’s a freshman. You know how this game goes. You’ve been there. You have thicker skin than this.”

  I nod because I do. I did, anyway.

  “You’ve got to give something here, son. Help me understand.”

  How was I supposed to help him understand when I barely had my own head wrapped around it? All I knew was that something about Levi getting arrested had me all fucked-up. And Mom showing up had spun that tiny problem into a hurricane. There was my old life . . . living in the mobile home of whoever Mom was dating at the time, or in that rickety shack she left my brother Sean and me in when she split for good, always surrounded by people, never a moment of privacy, never having anything that was mine. There were my drunk uncles and cousins. People throwing punches over who did or didn’t get groceries. My barely there granny who couldn’t read or write, so I had to sign my own permission slips for football and school. There was Sean arrested for breaking into houses, leaving me alone with those people who thought of me as another brat running underfoot. That neighborhood was all about strength, about who was big and bad enough to fend everyone else off. I hated that neighborhood, hated what it did to my brother, but it was better than what came after. When Gram died, and my piece-of-shit uncle sold the house, and I had to beg people for a place to stay so I didn’t get trucked off with some relative and torn away from my team. I fucking hated begging.

  I’d let myself forget about all of that. Let myself believe it was behind me because my life here was so much better. I was part of a team. I had my own bed, my own room even. I had friends who had no idea what kind of life I’d had, and they just assumed I’d grown up like them.

  Maybe I started believing it, too.

  Then Levi got arrested and it was like my two worlds collided, and I could see that old life waiting just a layer below this new one, and I can’t explain how that makes me feel.

  There’s just this word that keeps popping into my head.

  Inevitable.

  It’s inevitable that I’ll end up back there. I forgot to keep running, and now it’s all caught up to me. That shit is in my blood, and there’s no rinsing it out or diluting it with scholarships and classes and all the other shit I’ve been kidding myself with. I don’t know how to be anything else but who I am, and who I am will never be good enough to make it in this place with these people.

  I can’t explain that to Coach because not saying it out loud is the only thing keeping it from being completely real. And if that’s gone, I won’t be able to hold it together.

  Coach finally has enough of my silence and sits down at his desk. He’s back to that scary quiet that isn’t the calm before the storm . . . it’s the storm that destroys you because you think it’s not a threat. “We’ve got enough battles to fight outside this locker room. I don’t need someone starting trouble inside the team, too.”

  My stomach starts falling, and I wait for it to hit my feet, to drop through the floor. But it just keeps falling.

  “I don’t tolerate violence on my team, Silas. No matter how good you are. As of now, you’re suspended. One week of practice, and the first two games of the season.”

  Impact.

  But it’s not just my stomach that’s fallen. It’s everything. My head. My heart. If it weren’t for the chair, I know I’d have fallen to my knees, too.

  “Don’t you step back on my field until you’ve got your head screwed on tight. Because I’ve got to tell you, Silas . . . two games is a minimum. If I still think you’re not
good for this team, I’ll cut you out like a cancer. It will hurt me to do it because I know what you’ve got in you. I know you can hack it, but I’m not willing to bet this team on you getting your act together. I’ve got too many other kids’ dreams in my hands. So you better shape up and bet on yourself and prove to me that you’re better than what I saw today.”

  He scoots his chair back, and I know the conversation is over, but I can’t get up. My legs won’t work. I can’t piece together words.

  If my present self is the top layer of skin and my past is the layer below that, football is every vital thing inside me that makes my body work. Muscles. Arteries. Veins. Organs.

  I only work when I play football. Without it, I really am the trash I’m afraid of being.

  Coach doesn’t make me leave. He turns the lights back off and lets me sit in his office alone, and when I listen for the silence I don’t hear music anymore.

  I just hear what Williams said over and over again.

  I’m sure you’ll be heading Abrams’s way before long.

  And all I can think is . . . maybe he’s right.

  Chapter 10

  Dylan

  I’ve put it off as long as I can.

  Friday was my day of lapses in judgment. Saturday, I started cleanup. I started with apologizing to Javier about screwing up the protest. He was mad that I’d acted without talking to him. He’s the leader of our group, and everything is supposed to go through him. He understood that I just got wrapped up in the moment, in the desperation to do something.

  One apology down.

  Then there is my father, whose persona is that of a man who never makes snap decisions. He does woodworking as a hobby, something I always thought was odd for a man with enough money to furnish a small country. But he’s fond of saying that building things with his hands is no different from building a business. You plan, you design, you measure twice, and cut once.

  Well, Friday I didn’t measure twice. I’m not even sure I measured once.

  I got lucky, though. Dad was called out of town on business, and since there were no major, lasting repercussions from my arrest on Friday, Mom convinced him that we could talk when he got back.

  That’s tonight. And since I’m not really sure how he will react (or if I’m still able to be grounded as a junior in college), that means today is the last day that I can go to Silas’s and pay him back for bailing us out.

  Something else I’ve been avoiding. Because he’s the one thing I still haven’t sorted out in my head. Every time I think about him, my mind goes right back to that bathroom, and the heat that sweeps through me burns away any coherent thought.

  At first, I think no one is home because the driveway is empty, but then I see the familiar rusty tail end of Silas’s truck parked across the street. I shake off the memories of what it felt like to be in his truck, his arm brushing against my leg, the thrum of excitement from being completely out of my element. A girl could get addicted to something like that.

  In fact, there are quite a few things about Silas Moore that I could get addicted to.

  I’m wearing a silky button-down shirt with no sleeves and a complicated bow tied at the neck. I’ve got my hair back in a long braid again, and a high-waisted skirt that goes almost to my knees and does a much better job of covering my legs than those shorts I’d worn Friday. I made a conscious effort to dress for the way I need to behave today.

  Appropriately.

  I ring the doorbell, and then try not to think about the fact that I’m sweating through this stupid silky shirt and the strappy heels on my feet are monstrously uncomfortable, and I’m dying a slow, torturous death in the thong I wore to prevent panty lines.

  Dressing appropriately sucks.

  I wait a minute. No one answers, and I’m beginning to fear that I’ll have to do this all over again later tonight or tomorrow after I talk to Dad, provided I’m still free to do what I want.

  I ring the doorbell again, and then raise my hand to knock for good measure, but before my knuckles meet the wood, the door is ripped backward and I hear a gruff, “What?”

  I hear his question, but my brain is a little stuck on the fact that Silas is wearing only a towel around his waist and is dripping water all over the floor. I open my mouth to say something, anything, but then I get distracted watching a bead of water slope down over one pectoral muscle. He has a massive geometric tattoo that starts on his shoulder and continues onto his chest. I watch that same bead of water cut through the black lines of his tattoo and escape into the valley down the middle of his abdomen.

  Then it falls below the line of his towel, and I’m just standing there, staring at the one part of his body that’s covered, and if there was an ounce of supernatural ability in me, that towel might have accidentally fallen to the ground.

  But alas, I am not supernatural. Though his abs might be.

  I’m still staring at his crotch when he asks, “You need something?”

  “Oh!” I snap my head up, a blush exploding across my face. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to keep . . .” That’s probably one sentence I’m better off not finishing. “I didn’t mean to.”

  He lifts an eyebrow, and for the first time, I really look at his face. I expected the bruise on his jaw to be healing by now, turning ugly shades of green and yellow, but instead it looks even darker than it did Friday night, and bigger maybe. But that’s not what really troubles me. It’s his eyes.

  They remind me of what my eyes looked like after Henry and I broke up, like I’d just found out that life was a game, and I’d been playing on the wrong board for years.

  Not sad, per se. Lost.

  “You okay?”

  He raises his eyebrow again, grips the door with one hand, and resituates his towel with the other.

  I don’t glance down at the towel. Or his magnificently sculpted chest. Because that would be awkward. I absolutely don’t . . . won’t do that.

  Aw crap, I’m awkward. For several seconds. Several long seconds.

  “Dylan.”

  My eyes fly to his, and I expect an eyebrow, perhaps a cocky grin, maybe some dirty, dirty words.

  But he looks tired.

  “You’re not okay,” I say because I just know. This is not the same guy I met a few nights ago.

  He takes a deep breath. “What do you need? Did you leave something?”

  “Uh, no.” I lift up the envelope in my right hand. “I’m just here to pay you back. And to say thank you again. So, um, thank you.”

  I hold out the envelope, and he stares at it for several long seconds, then his eyes raise up to mine.

  “You want to come in?”

  I hesitate. Because I want to. In the same way that I wanted his hands on me Friday night. The same way I wanted his mouth . . . the things it did and the things it said. I hadn’t been able to stop hearing those words all weekend. I dreamt about it. I imagined what else he might have said if we’d kept going, and I woke sweaty and needy and so, so pissed it wasn’t real.

  I might not have taken measure of the situation Friday night, but I’d measured far more than twice since then. I’d thought about it almost constantly. But I still wasn’t sure that was a bridge I needed to cross.

  It’s like there are two wills inside me, and each one insists the other isn’t real. Part of me thinks that this is all just some emotional reaction, a self-destructive break of some kind. I need to go home, grovel at my father’s feet, figure out what went wrong, so that I can fix my life.

  The other half of me insists that I don’t need fixing. That the reason things with Silas feel so right is that things with Henry never were. That I was just doing what was expected of me like I’ve always done.

  But shouldn’t I try to live up to people’s expectations? I can’t just let go of that. What kind of person would I become then?

  As I stay silent, warring with myself, something in Silas’s already weary expression starts to fray further, and I step right over the threshold just to
make it stop.

  Of course, a normal person says yes when they’re invited inside. They don’t step in before the person at the door has a chance to move back. Now I’m less than a foot away from that distracting chest of his, and with his hand braced on the door he’s looming above me in a way that makes my girlie parts roll over and play dead.

  I start to step away, and my heel hits the raised threshold, and I stumble back. I would have fallen on my ass right outside the door again if Silas hadn’t reached out and caught my arm.

  “Uh, thanks. And sorry.”

  He turns and heads into his kitchen. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a back that muscled in real life. There are all these curves and slopes that I wouldn’t have expected, and I have the sudden urge to trace them with my finger, feel where one muscle gives way to the next.

  “I’m starting to think those are your two favorite words.”

  I come back into focus and close the door behind me. Then I follow him cautiously into the kitchen.

  “You want something to drink?” he asks.

  Tequila sounds appropriate for this situation.

  “Just water is fine,” I say. “Thanks.”

  He shakes his head and pulls two glasses down from the cupboard. “It’s just tap. That okay?”

  I nod, but he’s not looking at me, so I voice my answer instead. There’s not an ice machine in his fridge, so he grabs ice for my glass from one of those plastic cube maker things. He fills his own glass up with milk and then comes over to join me at the table.

  He sets my water down and I ask, “Are you going to go change?”

  Tilting his head to the side, he looks down at me. “Do you want me to?”

  Oh God. How could I possibly answer that? Of course, I didn’t want him to change. I’m not crazy. But I needed it if I was going to keep my head clear. I must take too long again because he sets his milk down and turns away. “I’ll be back, Pickle.”

  And we’re back to that again.

  When he’s gone I gulp down some water and then press the cold glass to the side of my heated face.