All Broke Down (Rusk University #2)

by Cora Carmack

  I start to stand, and my legs wobble like a newborn colt. Just as I get them steady, Silas tosses his head back and laughs.

  It’s only then that I notice the full audience we’ve gained, and at Silas’s reaction, they all begin to laugh quietly, too.

  “This better mean you’re okay.” I point a threatening finger at him. “Because you’re not allowed to laugh if you’re actually hurt.”

  He holds a hand to his abdomen and laughs even harder.

  God, he’s such a jerk.

  A really handsome jerk, who kind of, sort of sacrificed himself for me, and looks even more gorgeous when he laughs. A laugh, by the way, that’s low and throaty and pretty much makes my ovaries melt.

  I know when I’m fighting a losing battle. It’s a sensation I’ve felt at many a meeting or protest. And this battle with Silas, he’s winning by a landslide.

  Chapter 15

  Silas

  I don’t mean to laugh, especially because my knees do hurt like a bitch, but her panicked determination to wheel me away to a hospital after a measly fall is just so damn cute.

  If the same thing had happened to me on the football field, I would have been called a pansy already and told to get up and walk it off. I decide to do just that, and when I bend my knees to stand, pain spears through the joints. My legs are stiff, too, like I’m caked in drying cement. I must wince because Dylan is kneeling by me in seconds, her blue eyes intense on me.

  “You are hurt. Damn it, Silas!”

  I can’t remember if I’ve ever heard her cuss or not. Those words sound better from her lips than I think they ever have.

  “I’m fine. Just a little stiff. It will go away.”

  “How do you know?”

  I give her a look. “I have some experience hitting the ground with considerable force.”

  “Smartass.” I really like it when bad words come out of that good girl mouth. “What can I do?”

  “Just help me up.”

  She crawls underneath my arm, but she’s not strong enough to help me up, and it’s taking most of my willpower just to bend my knees. Putting pressure on them to lift myself up isn’t happening. It’s the project leader, Greg, who takes hold of my other arm, and together they help me up.

  I shut my eyes against a pain so sharp, it feels like my nerves are rubbing raw against my bones. Dylan is right up against my side, and if her arms wrap any tighter around me, I’ll have difficulty breathing in addition to difficulty standing.

  “Walk,” I mutter. One word is all I’m going to manage right now.

  “Are you sure?” Greg asks me.

  I nod.

  Dylan says my name, and I make myself look at her. Her teeth are clamped down on her bottom lip, and her eyes are flickering around my face at lightning speed. “Nothing’s broken,” I tell her.

  If something were broken, I’d be screaming where I stood. Ditto for torn ligaments or tendons.

  Greg takes a step forward, and I follow. There’s no good way to do this. I can’t hobble or hop because both knees are smarting.

  “Maybe you should take him to the hospital,” Greg tells Dylan.

  “No.”

  “Silas, please. What if something is wrong?”

  I take another step, and the pain continues, but I’m getting used to it. It’ll fade soon, and I’ll just be sore. That’s all.

  “Keep walking,” I say.

  The stiffness is still there. I’m keeping my legs as straight as I can with each step, and after a few more strides, I can bear enough of my own weight that I let go of Greg, and just use Dylan to keep me steady.

  “See?” I grunt at her. “Better already.”

  “You are such a liar.”

  “She’s right, man. Your expression looks like you just took a knee to the balls.”

  I look up and Dylan’s redheaded friend Matt is ahead of us. I didn’t even know he was here, but it’s kind of nice to see another familiar face.

  “I’ve survived that before, too.”

  Dylan mumbles, “Probably multiple times.”

  It shocks a laugh out of me even through the ache. “Hit me while I’m down why don’t you.”

  “Yeah, well, you’re a cocky bastard, and I’m mad that you laughed. And that you won’t let me take you to the hospital.”

  Dylan Brenner might have plenty of practice telling other people no, but I’m not sure she’s heard it very often herself.

  “At least let me take you home, so you can rest.”

  “That sounds like a deal.”

  She scoffs. “You and your deals.”

  “You like my deals.”

  It’s Matt who cuts in: “You guys even have inside jokes now. This is so freaking weird.”

  She says, “Matt, can you get some ice from Mrs. Baker?”

  “Don’t bother,” I tell him. “We’re five minutes from my place.”

  “It’s going to start swelling soon.”

  I bend my face down to hers and rest my forehead against her temple. “Thank you for worrying about me,” I murmur into her ear. “But really I’m fine. And I’d just like to go home and handle this without an audience.”

  She swallows, and with my head still touching hers, she nods.

  I look back up at Matt, and notice Henry watching from a few feet behind him. Matt says, “I’ll help you get him in the car.”

  Dylan apologizes to Greg, but says she won’t be coming back to work in the afternoon. He tells her to take care of me, and something inflates in my chest at those words. He asks her to call him after she gets me settled so he can get all the information about the accident down in a report.

  By all logic, the thought of being taken care of should annoy me. But because it’s her, it’s different. Everything is a little bit different where Dylan is concerned.

  Even when I get to the point that I could probably handle walking on my own, I don’t say anything, and continue letting her walk along with me.

  Our pace is slow as we cross the yard, and I’m thankful when Matt volunteers to go get Dylan’s car where it’s parked a few houses down.

  “This is all my fault. I’m so sorry, Silas.”

  “It was my idea not to wait for the ladder.”

  “I pulled too hard on the vine.”

  “I decided to drop to my knees.”

  “Because of me.”

  “Damn right, it was because of you. I promise you, this is nothing. A few days of rest, and I’ll be fine. Better my knees than your head. That wouldn’t have been fixed with a few days rest.”

  “I had my head covered. I would have been fine.”

  “I don’t care. If I had it to do again, I’d do the same thing.”

  We stop and wait for Matt on the sidewalk in front of the house, and she squints against the sun as she looks up at me. I can see her cataloging me, examining my words and my actions, and filing them all into the appropriate boxes in that too-ordered head of hers. She thinks and rethinks through everything she does and says. And if everything in her head is perfectly organized, mine is more akin to a trailer park after a tornado, something I experienced a number of times as a kid. I know the way those funnels hop, destroying one house and sparing another. I think that’s what’s happening to me. My past is creeping up on me, dropping down from the sky when I least expect it, demolishing some parts of me, and leaving others for another day.

  And what my history hasn’t bulldozed, Dylan is flattening, sweeping through my life like a flood that I’m welcoming just so I can drown in her. I’m doing just that, caught up in her gaze, when her car glides to a stop in front of us.

  It takes some maneuvering, getting me into her sporty car and keeping my legs stretched out as much as possible. I end up in the backseat, knees slightly bent so the door can close. It hurts, but it’s worth it to get out of there and on the road.

  By the time we get back to my place, though, my knees have gone stiff, and I know they’re swelling.

  It’s just a sprain. I
t happens. I’ve had them before from the occasional rough tackle. It will hurt for a couple of days, but that’s it. That has to be it.

  I refuse to let it be anything else.

  There cannot be another thing keeping me away from football, because I won’t survive it. I’ll self-destruct so quickly and efficiently that it will make the current damage in my head look like a fucking walk in the park.

  The front porch steps are a bitch, but I manage to get up them with nothing worse than a grimace.

  I don’t have the energy or the willpower to climb upstairs to my bedroom, so instead, I shuffle to the couch in the living room. There’s a bag of chips, a fast-food wrapper, some shoes, and a balled up T-shirt on it that Dylan removes without a blink.

  Then she immediately heads for the kitchen. “Let me go get you some ice.”

  I call after her, “There should be some cold packs in the freezer already. We tend to get injured a lot in this house. And medicine in the cabinet next to the microwave, but if you can’t find any kind of anti-inflammatory, there’s some in the medicine cabinet in the upstairs bathroom.”

  With her gone, I reach for the button on my jeans and flick it open. I kick off my shoes, and slide my pants off with as little bending of my knees as possible.

  When I see my knees, I curse. They’re already swollen, as I suspected.

  I hear a high-pitched noise behind me and turn to find Dylan looking at the ceiling, holding out two ice packs, a glass of water, and some pills.

  “Sorry. I didn’t realize you’d be . . .”

  “I’m not naked, Dylan. You’ll know when I am.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “I can’t exactly ice my knees with jeans on.”

  Her eyes leave the ceiling and go to my legs, and she sucks in a breath. Then her eyes lift a little higher, to the growing bulge I can’t hide, and she exhales in a rush.

  She’s embarrassed and shy for a moment, but then a change comes over her, determination in her expression, and she crosses to me.

  “Sit,” she commands.

  I do as she says, wincing at the twinge of pain in my knees.

  She wraps the cold packs in kitchen towels that I hadn’t noticed draped over her arm, and then she makes me sit back against the armrest and situates the ice on my knees.

  “I like Nurse Dylan,” I say. “She’s hot. And bossy.”

  She shoves the bottle of pills in my face and says, “Shut up and take these.”

  “You still mad at me for laughing?”

  I shake out a few pills into my palm and grab the water.

  “No, I’m mad at myself. “

  I swallow quickly and ask, “Why?”

  “Because I got you hurt. I’m supposed to be helping you, and instead I’m making things worse.”

  I put the water aside, and with one well-placed pull, I’ve got her tumbling into my lap. The impact jostles my knees a little bit, but her flustered look is worth it.

  “You’ve got a thing for pulling me into your lap, don’t you?”

  “Hell yeah, I do.”

  I slip a hand up her back and curl it around the nape of her neck, pulling her closer into my chest.

  “What are you doing?”

  “This morning I had my lesson; now it’s time for yours.”

  Her cheeks flush. “A lesson in what exactly?”

  Her wide-eyed, innocent look goes straight to my dick, and she can no doubt feel it vying for her attention at her hip.

  “Get your mind out of the gutter, Brenner. I’m not teaching you anything like that.”

  I could be imagining it, but I think for a brief moment she looks disappointed. And fuck . . . I might be making a liar out of myself very soon.

  “Lesson number one. Everything wrong in the world is not your fault.”

  Her brows furrow.

  “I know that.”

  “No you don’t. You take everything on yourself. That protest at the shelter. When people weren’t listening, you thought it was your responsibility to make them. Matt getting arrested. I was there . . . I heard you apologizing again and again to him.”

  “But he’s my friend, and he—”

  “Is an adult who makes his own decisions.”

  “But—”

  “When I asked you about your breakup with Henry, you shared the blame. Like it was somehow your fault that he’s a fucking idiot. And now you’re apologizing to me, again for something I did. Not you.”

  “But—”

  “New rule. Every time you apologize, I get to shut you up.”

  Her eyes widen. “And how are you going to do that?”

  “I’ve got a few ideas.”

  She presses her lips together tightly, like she’s worried she might just spontaneously apologize. I grin, enjoying the emotions playing across her face. Nerves. Curiosity. Indignation. Embarrassment.

  For the first time in my life, I want to ask her questions, want to dig until I find the thoughts responsible for each of those expressions. Normally, I steer clear of questions. Getting to know a girl just complicates the whole exchange.

  I promised Dylan simple. I convinced her that was what she needed, and now I’m starting to think it’s not at all what I want.

  Chapter 16

  Dylan

  Needing a break from the intensity of being this close to him, I awkwardly climb off his lap and say, “I’m going to grab some pillows for you. Is it okay if I go in your room?”

  “Go ahead,” he calls back.

  I take in a calming breath and scale the stairs. My eyes flick to the restroom door where we kissed for the first time, and the back of my neck flashes with heat. I remember the way his hand had curled there, holding me against him, even though nothing could have made me move away in that moment. He’d done the same thing on the couch downstairs, and part of me had really hoped that was where he was going with that lesson. I blink and shake off the memory. But I can’t get the nerves to flee as I open his bedroom door. I don’t know what I expected to find . . . drug paraphernalia, condom wrappers, dirty clothes.

  There’s none of that. The room is clean and neat. Even his bed is made. It’s simple, sparsely furnished with no real decorations, unless you count sports equipment, and a few Rusk mementos. He’s got four pillows on his bed, two on each side, and I grab them all. With them held tight to my chest, I breathe in the scent they carry, clean and masculine with just a little spice.

  I take one last look around his room, and imagine how things might have gone differently if I’d followed him in here during the party. Would I ever have seen him again? Would that have been it? Or would that have just been the first of several times, like he’s implied?

  I shake my head because I’m being stupid. While I’m up here imagining things that can’t be changed, he’s down there in pain and uncomfortable. I rush down the stairs and back into the living room to find him with his eyes closed. He’s removed the Rusk T-shirt he was wearing earlier, leaving him in just a white, fitted undershirt and his black boxer briefs. I swallow, square my shoulders, and walk up beside him. I drop all of the pillows on the ground but one, and then touch my fingers to his shoulders.

  He looks exhausted and I say quietly, “Lean up.”

  He plants his hands beside him on the couch and pulls himself a few inches forward. I settle the pillow behind him. I’m still adjusting it when he leans back onto it, so I end up leaning over him, one arm on either side of his head, trying to straighten it so he’s comfortable. I try not to think about how his head is even with my chest, but who am I kidding? It’s all I’m thinking about.

  “Now for your legs,” I say. I remove the ice packs and place them on the coffee table. He lifts his feet for me, but only a couple of inches. I hook an arm under his calves to lift them higher so I can fit all three pillows under his knees. I hear him wince, and I pause for a second to look at the swelling before I replace the ice. His thighs are thick and muscled, and his knees are so inflamed that they’re only a littl
e narrower than the rest of his leg. I make sure the hand towels are wrapped neatly around the cold packs, and then place them back where they were.

  I look for something, anything else to do. “Blanket?” I ask. I glance around the room and see one tossed on the floor beside a recliner. I pick it up and shake it out as he says, “I’m fine.”

  I bring the blanket back over with me, but he turns it down. I hug it closer to me and sink down onto the floor beside him. I lean back against the couch and stare straight ahead.

  “I really am sorry. I promise I won’t make you—”

  I don’t get the rest of my thought out because he sits up on one elbow, grips the back of my neck, and bends over to cover my mouth with his. His lips are warm, and when I don’t immediately open my mouth, he nips my bottom lip. I suck in a breath, and his tongue sweeps past my lips. My whole body braces for the onslaught that is kissing Silas Moore, but this time, he’s soft and sweet and patient, like we have all the time in the world. When I follow his tongue back into his mouth, he groans. The sound vibrates against me, and the sensation echoes out over the rest of my body. I shiver, and he pulls back until I feel only his breath against me.

  “I told you I would shut you up the next time you apologized.”

  He slides his hand around to cup my jaw and kisses me again. Once. Twice. And a third time. Hard. Then soft. Just my bottom lip. The corner of my mouth. His lips play over mine like he’s trying to uncover every possible way to kiss me and check them off the list one by one. I open my mouth immediately when his tongue flicks out, but I taste him for only a second before he pulls away, wincing. He falls back against his pillow, and I notice for the first time that one of his cold packs has fallen on the floor, and the other is lost somewhere in the couch.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you were hurting?”

  “Because then I would have had to stop.”

  My heart is a spinning top in my chest, and now that he’s not kissing me and things are slowing down, I can feel myself about to topple out of control. I shake my head and get the ice packs back where they belong.