Level Hands: Bend or Break, Book 4

by Amy Jo Cousins

“Maybe you’ve forgotten about the whole “island piece of ass fucking his way onto the team” shit he talked, but I haven’t. I’m hanging up now.” He bit off the words. “I need to sleep. I’m fucking exhausted. Good night.”

  Before Denny had a chance to say a word, Rafi ended the call. He stared at the phone in his hand.

  Bad. Move.

  He knew that was a mistake. But he didn’t have it in him to call Denny back right then and there and apologize. They were supposed to meet up for dinner. He could show up, hat in hand, and…say he was sorry.

  For being totally realistic and right about Boomer and his fucking trash talk.

  He closed his blinds, dimming the light, and crashed on his bed. Dinnertime would be better.

  When he woke up, it was pitch-black in his room. He fumbled around for his phone, finally managing to illuminate the face.

  2:03 a.m.

  Fuck.

  He showed up at Denny’s dorm at five thirty in the morning, a literal hat in his hand. He’d dug a plain, pale blue ball cap out of his closet and written on it with a Sharpie. Sorry I’m an Asshole. When Denny saw him standing under the halogen light outside the dorm entrance, his smile after reading the cap was pretty grim, but at least it was a smile.

  Rafi didn’t wait for Denny to say a word. “Blowing you off for dinner was an accident. I overslept. I’m sorry.”

  “No, it wasn’t.” Denny’s voice was flat, but at least he was talking to Rafi.

  “So, how long was it between when we got back and when I started fucking up?” Acid churned in Rafi’s gut.

  “About an hour. You know hanging up on me because you were pissed wasn’t cool either, right?” No mercy was the flag flying in Denny’s eyes.

  Rafi sucked in a deep breath. “I apologize for that too. I’m gonna do better. Just, don’t give up on me.”

  Denny shook his head, his lips pressed flat. “That’s not how this works, Rafi. I don’t quit just because you’re a pain in the ass and make me feel like shit sometimes. But I don’t have to put up with your crap either, you understand?”

  They hopped on their bikes and headed to the boathouse, Rafi following Denny because he didn’t quite trust Denny’s judgment of his own ability to ride one-handed down the curving streets to the boathouse. The frigid air sliced through his fleece like an icicle knife. He was glad this was one of their last weeks on the water. Spending the winter working out indoors and sprinting on the ergs might be boring, but it was better than hypothermia.

  Rafi spent the time before practice officially started updating teammates he looked on as friends and ignoring the ones whose voices got suspiciously quieter whenever he passed by. Coach Lawson pulled him aside for five minutes to check on him, and—thank the sweet baby Jesus—reassure him that he wasn’t in trouble for anything Austin had done.

  Denny didn’t do anything differently than he had in the past few months. Nothing, that is, except deliberately move from where he usually dressed to an unused locker right next to Rafi’s.

  Statement made.

  Rafi was almost one hundred percent sure he managed to hide his flinch. But in case he hadn’t, he made a point of grabbing Denny’s hand when they walked into breakfast together.

  Baby steps.

  Two hours after practice ended, class began, and Rafi was slammed with the realization that he had a shit ton of work to get done before the semester’s end. He shot Bree a text message asking her to block off time on her calendar every week from then until winter break. He was gonna need it. Another panic snake threatened to tighten around his throat at the idea of managing all the work, but he didn’t let it take over.

  Rafi was trying. Trying to put up a good show at practice, worried about whether or not his lack of superhuman commitment to the team was going to cost him his scholarship. Trying to focus on getting his schoolwork done, using all the things he’d learned about managing his time and his planning since arriving at Carlisle. Trying to ignore the gossip he could feel swirling around him everywhere he went, like sloppy currents in a river after a heavy rain. Trying to make sure Denny didn’t see him at anything other than his happy, affectionate best. The tension coating his bones had him so on edge he started snapping at anyone foolish enough to ask him, “Hey, how’s it going?”

  Trying not to worry every time a morning or an afternoon went by without him hearing from Lola was the hardest. His need for constant updates on her physical therapy was getting on her last nerve, she’d made it clear, but he couldn’t help himself.

  The comments in the boathouse weren’t as bad as he’d feared, but the general disinclination of most of his teammates to give a crap about Rafi’s personal life threw Boomer’s constant, subtle—and-not-so-subtle—digs into sharp relief. Rafi knew he should ignore that asshole. Shouldn’t let him get under his skin, but he failed at that over and over again.

  A disco ball of emotions was spinning in him, shooting out anger and exhaustion, frustration and depression, at random moments until he wanted to take a sledgehammer to it and smash those feelings into tiny, mirrored bits.

  Two weeks later, right before the end of the semester, he did.

  Rafi never wanted to be the kind of guy who grilled his boyfriend about who it was whenever his phone beeped. But every time Denny got a text message from his ex, his face did this whole thing where it got soft and he smiled and Rafi wanted to dump Louisiana into the Gulf of Mexico. Accidentally.

  Seeing it happen in his own room just reminded him of how deep Denny’s safety net was. And how Rafi’s wasn’t.

  “I can’t take it anymore. This isn’t worth it.” He slammed his latest library book and threw it, not into the wall like he wanted to, but onto his bed, because he wouldn’t smash up a book.

  Denny was studying on Rafi’s bed while Rafi sat at his desk, so the book-cum-projectile weapon was an extra bad idea.

  “What? What isn’t worth it?” He’d jerked back from where the book smacked into the mattress near his feet.

  “All of it. I’m going out of my fucking mind over here. I worry about everything. All the time. Every day. I worry about what’s going on back at home. I worry about deserving my scholarship by giving my all to the team. Then I worry about losing it because I’m not giving enough to my classes. I worry about Lola and Mari and Sofi and Nita, and I can’t fucking take it anymore.” The words spilled out of his mouth like vomit he’d been swallowing for days. Rafi knew he was out of control and tried to wrestle it back. He held up a hand, staring at the floor, needing a minute of silence to get his shit together.

  “Maybe I can—”

  No. He couldn’t, could not, take advice from this golden boy with the money and the grades and the life that made this all so fucking easy for him. “Denny, please.”

  “Just—”

  “You’re the worst of all.”

  Whitening face like Rafi had slapped him. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “Everything is easy with you. For you. And I’m having a hard time dealing with how shitty it makes me feel to fucking struggle with everything in front of you.” Which wasn’t what he’d meant to say, but now that the words were out, he could hear the truth in them. He’d been hiding how much of a challenge it was for him back at school, hoping Denny wouldn’t notice.

  He’d been fooling himself all along, but this, this was honest. This was Rafi, totally overwhelmed and out of control.

  “What’s easy for me?” Denny slid his feet off the bed and onto the floor, sitting up ramrod straight now. “Rehab? Watching you take your place on a team I love and can’t even row with?”

  “Everything. You already have your place. You got an ex who’s just dying for me to fuck up so he can take my place, and friends who weren’t assigned to your room or forced to welcome you on their team. You’ve already done half the shit I’ve never even heard of. You’re, lik
e, most of the way done with college already. I’m just fucking starting, man.” Which wasn’t exactly true. He’d felt that way early on in the semester, but things had been different before Lola’s wreck. That didn’t seem to matter right now, though, when he was floundering for a reason to take out his frustration on the nearest, safest target.

  “Wow. Ouch.” Denny eyes were darker than usual, like the lake before a storm. “Okay. Maybe I should’ve seen this coming, but I didn’t.”

  Frustration was burning off Rafi’s skin in waves that crashed against the walls of his tiny room. He knew he wasn’t making any sense. Denny was the same year as him at Carlisle. And the louder he got, the stiller Denny grew, until he stood up, looming over Rafi like a marble statue in the middle of the room, and his voice sounded brittle like stone when he talked back.

  “We need to take this down about seventeen notches, Rafi.”

  “And this!” Rafi threw a hand forward like he was pitching a curve ball at Denny’s chest, so hard his ribs would crack. “What’s wrong with you? Do you even get fucking angry?”

  “Just because I’m not having a tantrum doesn’t mean I’m not angry.” Denny crossed his arms, which only pissed Rafi off even more.

  “We don’t fit, Denny. We never did.” Admitting that, saying it out loud, felt like ripping a Band-Aid off. He’d braced himself for this, it turned out, but he wasn’t ready for the hurt. “Sometimes it feels like we were crazy to think this was going to get any easier.”

  He could see the struggle on Denny’s face to act like Rafi’s words didn’t drag him down. “I told you it wasn’t going to be easy. You said you were going to try harder. That we would both try harder.”

  “Fucking you is easy. Kicking your ass in video games is easy. This? This is too hard.” And now he was being mean on purpose, digging, pushing with the words because he would never push with anything else. But he needed a fucking reaction. Needed to see Denny give enough of a damn about something to lose his cool, damn it.

  In the furthest corner of his mind, someone was shouting that he was pushing too far, but Rafi couldn’t stop himself.

  He hadn’t known that Denny would stop him. Could stop him. By the simple expedient of packing up his backpack and putting it on while slipping into his unlaced running shoes.

  “Where are you going?” Rafi snapped.

  “Home. This isn’t my idea of a good time. I don’t like how you fight,” Denny said flatly.

  Rafi snorted. “Back atcha, buddy. Except you don’t even fight, do you? Just get all superior and high and mighty.”

  “I don’t yell and shout and throw things, no.” Denny’s lips were thin, pressed together.

  “Dude, I ain’t thrown shit at you.” And wasn’t that fucking great. Him sounding like a banger while Denny sounded like a…like a fucking banker.

  Denny stared pointedly at the book on the bed. “Whatever. You know exactly what I mean.”

  “Yeah. ’Cause you don’t even give a shit, deep down, really. Except now it ain’t exactly that fucking deep, is it? Let’s get all this shit right up at the surface, shall we?” He twisted his voice at the last second, making a mockery of the restraint that had Denny acting like a damn robot.

  “I don’t think so.” A white line edging his lips where they pressed together. Denny shook his head tightly. “I think I’m done here.”

  And turned and left Rafi’s room, closing the door quietly behind him.

  As soon as Denny was gone, the anger in Rafi’s chest went out, like he’d been pushed overboard from a shell while on fire. One minute he was ready to spit and scratch and slap, and the next he was sitting on the edge of his bed, sick to his stomach and knowing he’d lost control in a way he never had before in his entire life.

  He sat there as the light changed, the sun setting earlier now than ever. Heard his roommates come in and chatter in the common room. Ignored their knock for dinner, and a later one when The Walking Dead came on, because he’d managed to find some kind of equilibrium with Austin after his suitemate managed to stay in school and on the team. Rafi ignored his phone buzzing when Lola called, and a second call from Mari.

  He sat in the dark until his back ached from not moving and one thing became perfectly clear.

  If he couldn’t talk with any kind of control, of kindness, of restraint, then maybe he shouldn’t talk at all.

  Rafi sent one text message and turned his phone off.

  I’m out of control. I need some time to know how to apologize. And what to do so I can stop this. I won’t come to see you until I figure it out. I understand if you don’t want to wait for me, but I hope you can.

  He hadn’t realized how quiet life could be, how constantly he’d been checking that electronic lifeline, until he shut it down to save his sanity and went through twenty-four hours without saying a word outside of class. The sudden silence in his head when he and Denny stopped talking, face-to-face or via the Internet, was deafening.

  His suitemates were mad and not speaking much to him either. Well, not mad, exactly, so much as frustrated at how his fight with Denny was wrecking the smooth rhythm of their group friendship, not to mention the equilibrium of the team. They pushed him in their own ways to talk about it. Austin by joking, Bob by hinting and Vinnie by flat-out telling him to get off his ass and fix the problem.

  But Rafi didn’t feel like talking in his suite or at the boathouse or anywhere else he was surrounded by people who were so deeply woven into his life now that he couldn’t escape them even when he wanted to. He was still showing up to practice, working hard, if not killing himself. Denny nodded at him, but never came close enough to make conversation the obvious next step, and Rafi stayed away from him while he tried to figure out what the hell he was going to do now.

  The only place he felt like talking was in the writing center. For the first time since he’d arrived at Carlisle, he’d shown up for an appointment without dread of making a fool of himself. With maybe the smallest bubble of excitement rising in his belly.

  His anthro professor had assigned a final paper in his History of Protest and Revolution class. As was his habit now, Rafi had brainstormed some potential topics, then scribbled sketchy outlines of each one, trying to figure out where he had the juiciest ideas.

  By the time he threw his backpack under the table and slid into the seat across from Bree, he’d managed to find one thing to eke out a smile for in his fucked-up life.

  “Ask me.”

  “What?” As if she didn’t know.

  “G’wan. Ask me.”

  Bree didn’t know about his personal problems, so she could grin at him and lean forward on her elbows, getting right in his face. “Whaddaya got for me today, Castro?”

  He smacked his notebook down on the table. “I got a kickass anthropology paper outline for you, my friend. Check it out.”

  “You outlined? Before coming to see me?” She lifted one dark eyebrow and tilted her head. “Progress. Give it here.”

  He didn’t even have to watch. Propping his feet up on the chair next to him, he crossed his arms and leaned back, staring up at the ceiling. He considered whistling casually.

  He felt as fake as he’d ever been in his entire life.

  The little hmmm of satisfaction Bree let slip after a minute made him want to punch his fist into the air. But that clashed with the laissez-faire persona he had going on, not to mention was so far from his actual feelings he couldn’t even see it from here, so he didn’t.

  Rattling papers drew his attention back to his tutor as she slid the outline across the table. “Nicely done, my friend.”

  “Nicely done?” He shook his head mournfully, feigning sorrow. “That’s all I get.”

  Rolling her eyes at him, she kicked at the leg of his chair under the table. Rafi jolted in his seat and stuck his tongue out at her. The glow of one tiny triumph was riding h
igh in his chest, and he was milking the moment, damn it.

  “You get grilled about next steps, that’s what you get.”

  He left his feet on the chair, because he was getting so good at this he didn’t even need to sit up straight to think hard anymore. Which sounded dumb, but he’d realized at some point that he was so tense about whether or not he could keep up at Carlisle that he was literally demanding perfect posture of himself, because at least he could look like he belonged.

  When she was done going over his research options, Bree waited for him to head out, but Rafi wasn’t quite ready. He hesitated for a minute, but finally came out with it. The rest of his life was such a mess he hadn’t even had a chance to mention this to Denny or his sisters or anyone else, but he could maybe say it to this girl who was only peripherally part of his tangled world.

  “I’m thinking that maybe I want to go to med school. But that’s crazy, right?”

  “Why is it crazy?” Bree pushed the cover of her laptop closed and yawned hugely. He knew she worked a ton of hours and felt guilty pushing to extend their time. But he didn’t want to fuck her or fight with her, and that made her a safer place to try out something he’d been thinking about ever since Lola’s accident.

  “Let’s face it. I’m not the greatest at studying. And I’m pretty sure you need to be better than average at it to get into med school. Not mention, you know, graduate.”

  “You do fine. Most of what’s slowing you down is that you’re still learning the basic strategies. I think you’ll find out that by this time next year—”

  “If I’m even still here next year.” Because some days it felt like there were seven hundred reasons to go home, and some pretty small change balancing out that scale on the stay side.

  Denny. If he’s still speaking to you, Denny balances it all out, and you know it.

  But Rafi didn’t know how to shut down the other voices in his head when they started to drown out what he knew was true.

  Unlike every single other person in his life, Bree didn’t argue with him when he said shit like that. It was one of his favorite things about her.