All Broke Down (Rusk University #2) (25 page)

“I’m sorry that I have to leave so fast.”

She yawns and holds up one finger. “I’ll owe you for that apology.”

I don’t realize how nervous I’d been about whether or not this would keep going, until she says those words.

“In that case, I’m very, very sorry. More sorry than I’ve ever been.”

She laughs and ticks off two more fingers before burying her face in my pillow and stretching out her legs.

I finish pulling on the rest of my clothes, keeping an eye on the clock. I grab the last of my things and bend over to trail a hand over her cheek. She blinks up at me, and I’m fairly certain she fell asleep again in the minute since we spoke.

“Stay as long as you want,” I tell her. “No one will be here to bother you.”

“Is this the part where you tell me you’ll call me? And I worry about whether or not you’re telling the truth?”

“Stay here until I get home, and I won’t have to call you. If you still want to be naked, I won’t even complain.”

“You’re going to be late.”

I kiss her again, curling a hand around her backside for a quick stroke.

“Worth it.”

She laughs. “Go.”

“If get laid out today because I’m too busy daydreaming about your mouth, I’ll expect you to nurse me back to health again.”

“Go, or I’m going to lay you out.”

“Sounds fun, but let’s save that for tonight.”

I can still hear her laughing as I jog down the stairs. I don’t even realize I’ve got my athletic shorts on backward until I’m in my truck and pulling out of the driveway.

My head is too full of her to care about anything else.

I
HEAD TO
Coach’s office without being asked this time. My palms are sweaty, and my neck tight with nerves. Most of the other coaches have already left the office to get last-minute things ready, but Coach Cole is still in his office, on the phone.

His back is to me, and I hear him talking. “We will soon, Annaiss. I promise. She’s finally getting to where she talks to me about things. We haven’t been this good since she was a little kid, and I want to make sure we’re solid before I throw another curveball at her.”

I feel like a dick for interrupting, but if I don’t, there won’t be time to talk to him before practice.

I knock on the doorjamb, and his chair spins. His face is unreadable as he sees me, and he says without reaction into the phone, “I have to go. I’ll see you tonight.”

Rumor is Coach is seeing someone, a professor at the university, but Carson and Dallas have both been pretty tight-lipped about it, so I figured it wasn’t true.

Guess I was wrong.

“Morning, Silas. Come in.”

I close the door behind me and take a seat in the same chair where my world had been flipped upside down last week.

“Brookes tells me you had a minor injury.”

Damn it, Zay. I told him to tell Coach that I was working everything out. That didn’t give him license to tell Coach everything I did.

“Just a bit of a sprain, sir.”

As I bounce my knee nervously, I don’t let myself think about the fact that the joint is still tighter than it used to be.

He hums and nods, running a palm over the short beard he has growing in.

“He also tells me it happened while you were doing some sort of community service.”

I sigh. “Something like that.”

Coach stands and takes a seat on the edge of his desk. It puts him looking down at me, which doesn’t help my nerves.

“I’ll admit. That’s not how I expected you to spend your suspension. I think it shows a lot of maturity.”

It feels strange to be praised for something that wasn’t my idea, something I only really did for a girl. And I don’t want to lie to him because I haven’t magically become a model citizen overnight. I’m still the fuckup trying to make it through the day without ruining his life.

“It was a friend’s idea, really.” I trip over the word
friend
because that word is too damn small for how big Dylan feels to me. “Gave me something to focus on, instead of sitting at home being angry.”

He nods. “That’s good. Really good, son.”

Damn . . . this isn’t going anything like I’d thought it would. I was prepared for Coach to still be mad, for him to send me out to run until I pass out with Oz again.

“Did it help?” he asks.

I shrug. “I don’t know. It was something to do.”

“And how is that sprain feeling now?”

He’s asking like he cares, and it freaks me out because I know he does. He does care, and I’ve never had this many people in my life who care about me at once. I’ve never had this many people around for me to disappoint.

“A bit tight, but nothing I can’t handle.”

“And now that you’ve had some time to cool off, you have anything else you want to say about the fight with Keyon? Or with Levi?”

I miss the anger. Having it to hold on to had grounded me, had given me focus and kept me from thinking too much. I don’t know if it was last night with Dylan or this whole week, but when I reach for it now, it’s harder to grab, like trying to hold on to smoke. And I don’t know how to answer his question (or avoid it) without that anger.

“It felt good to be angry,” I tell him. “At Levi. At Keyon. At you. As long as I was angry, I didn’t feel the fear.”

“Fear of what?”

I scratch the back of my neck and resist the urge to pull at my hair, to drop my head down and stare at the floor.

“Screwing things up. Like Levi did. Like I have a tendency to do.”

Coach laughs and moves to sit in the chair beside me. Together, we stare forward at his empty desk, at the trophies and plaques lining the wall behind it.

“I know a thing or two about you, Moore. I’ve read your file, all your stats from high school until now. I know you had some problems in school before you got into football. But how much do you know about me?”

I shrug. “Everything there was on the Internet when they hired you before the start of the season last year.” I gesture at the awards on his wall and say, “All that stuff. Plus the schools you turned around, the programs you built up from nothing.”

“We all deal with screwups in our own way. Like you working on those houses this week, I’ve spent my life building things up in front of me, so I’ll never have to look at the ruined things behind me. It works for a little while. Worked nearly twenty years for me, but sooner or later you gotta face the thing you’ve spent all your energy ignoring. The anger might have felt good, might have been easier, but it would have run out eventually, son. But if you go that route, it will take everything from you before it does. Or you can do what I didn’t, stop yourself from wasting decades, and face your problems now.”

I swallow. Is that what I’m doing now? Facing them? Or have I just found a new way to ignore them? A new distraction in Dylan?

“It’s a head game, Silas. If you stood on that field constantly thinking about all the ways the defense could take you down, you’d never gain a yard. You’re a damn fine player because you know how to look for the gaps on the field, and how to push through and make one when the opening isn’t there. Live the way you play ball, and you’ll be just fine, I promise you that.”

Live the way I play.

It seems so simple that I feel stupid, like he switched on a light I didn’t know was there while I spent years stumbling around in the dark. It’s still sinking in when he claps a hand on my shoulder and squeezes.

“You’ll be with Gallt and the rest of the running backs for drills through the rest of camp, but when we’re covering plays and scrimmaging, I’ll be going with Williams. He’s got to be ready to start in a few weeks. Can you handle that?”

I clench my jaw and nod because I don’t really have a choice.

“Good. Now get out on the field. Coach Oz is waiting for you and the running backs. That fight counts as your second infraction, which means you and your group run. Unless you want Gallt to skin you alive, I suggest you figure out how not to get a third.”

Fuck. Just how I wanted to start back to practice, by pissing everyone off.

I
T’S THE WORST
practice of my life. Not because I play bad. I play just fine. But Coach’s understanding attitude did not stretch to the rest of the team. They were pissed. Keyon’s lip is still scabbed, and I keep catching him glaring at me like he’s just waiting for the perfect moment to jump me. Coach Gallt didn’t like me to begin with, and his opinion of me sure hasn’t gotten any better. If any of the other backs were feeling charitable, that’s gone by the time we finish my punishment,
our punishment,
with Oz.

When the running is done, we do drills and drills and more drills, which wouldn’t be so bad if I got to play when the drills are over, but I don’t. Instead, I stand on the sidelines watching for the first time in years. Even as a redshirt, when I wasn’t actually playing in games, I still got time in practice on the field. And after the mess with Levi, Coach is big on making sure we’ve got depth on the team. He rotates in backups and the backup backups to make sure there’s always someone who can get the job done.

I don’t get rotated in once, and when the final whistle blows, I can feel the familiar anger just beneath my lungs, and it’s a lot easier to call it up now. Every time I breathe it’s there, waiting to be let out.

But I hold it in. Hold my breath even when Williams clocks my shoulder as he walks past to get some water. It would be so easy to lay into him, and not with a punch this time. One thing that standing on the sidelines has given me is time to watch and analyze. The guy might be fast, but he’s not
quick.
Give him an open field or a missed tackle, and he’ll rake in the yards. But when there’s just a split second to break through a hole, he misses it 50 percent of the time. And on top of that, he runs high. Instead of getting low and making himself a smaller target, he’s more concerned with showing off, and it makes him easier to tackle.

So the guy can bump into me as many times as he wants, but until he fixes his pad level and gets quicker on his feet, he doesn’t have shit on me.

That and the possibility of Dylan still being at my apartment when I get home are the only things that get me through practice, through the looks in the locker room, and through the final task I set for myself today.

I’m waiting outside on the sidewalk when Keyon exits the building.

He’s walking with a few other freshmen, probably heading back to their dorms, and when I step up their conversation stops.

He lifts his chin and says, “Got a little smarter, did ya? Waiting until Coach ain’t around?” He drops his bag, cracks his knuckles, and shakes out his shoulders.

I sigh and shake my head. Was I this much of an idiot my freshman year?

“Relax, man. I’m not coming at you.” Even if he could stand to be taken down a peg or two. “Just wanted to say . . .” I twist my lips and spit out the word, “Sorry. You caught me on a bad day, and instead of brushing it off, I took it out on you.”

He turns his head to the side and squints up at me. Then he looks at his friends and laughs. “Man, you’re a pussy. You wanna hug it out next?”

God, I want to hit this kid so bad.

Instead, I take a deep breath and back up a few steps. “See you on the field, fish.”

“You mean on the sidelines, right? Since that’s the only thing you’ll see for a while.”

Keep walking. Keep fucking walking.

Before I even realize what I’m doing, I’m picturing Dylan—her sweet laugh, that tempting pout, her blue eyes always studying me. I picture her, and I put one foot in front of the other all the way to my truck. I keep it up through three red lights, a stop sign, and one slow-ass car that decided to drive fifteen miles an hour in a thirty-five zone.

But then I’m home and climbing the stairs and throwing open my door to a perfectly made bed and an empty room.

I crack. Wide open. It feels like my ribs have been pulled back like a wishbone, and I somehow have come up with all smaller halves. I throw my bag at the wall, but the thud as it hits isn’t the least bit satisfying. I hear Brookes and Torres moving around downstairs, and I slam my door shut. Leaning my forehead against the wood, I squeeze my eyes shut tight and try to talk myself down.

I can’t let this drag me down again. Football is too important. My future is too important to lose it every time something doesn’t go my way.

I’m two deep breaths down when I hear a knock on the other side of the door.

“Go away, Brookes. I’m not in the mood.”

“Um, Silas?”

It’s not Brookes. I tear open the door so fast that her blonde hair flies up around her as if on a breeze. Her eyes widen in surprise, and I pull her up and into my arms within seconds. She squeals and wraps her arms around my neck. I close the door again behind us, and when I press her back against it, her legs wrap around my hips.

I kiss her mouth, her cheek, her jaw, her neck. I kiss absolutely every piece of her I can reach, and when I run out, I pull her legs down and make her stand. Then I drop to my knees in front of her, and push up that same sheer shirt from yesterday to drag my tongue over the soft flesh of her stomach.

“S-Silas?” she asks quietly. “Are you okay?”

Dragging her shorts down her legs, I wait for her to lift her feet so I can throw them away, then I kiss her bare hip, just above the lace edge of her underwear, and say, “I’m perfect.” I drag that scrap of lace down, too, and put my mouth where I’ve wanted it for days. One of her hands clutches at my head and the other locks on to the doorknob, holding her steady. She moans while I taste her, and between flicks of my tongue I tell her again, “Absolutely perfect.”

And I was right that day in the kitchen. With my mouth on her and her hands in my hair and those tiny gasps she makes, the whole fucking world just disappears.

Chapter 22

Dylan

T
his is either the worst idea I’ve ever had. Or the best. If the tumbling, twisting sensation behind my ribs is any indication, I’m going to say best.

Silas crosses the playroom toward me, an adorable brown and gray mottled puppy in his arms.