All Played Out (Rusk University #3) (12 page)

No, I was off my game because of Nell. Because I couldn’t stop thinking about her. Her skin. Her mouth. Her curves. The barely shielded panic in her eyes when she asked me to stop. The fact that she’d practically run away from me. And that last devastating look she gave me before she left with Dylan and Silas.

All of that would have been enough to do my head in, but it only got worse. I dreamed about Lina. About Nell. About both of them. They kept morphing into each other in my dream, and I couldn’t keep up with who was who. I dreamed of that last fight that Lina and I had, when she ended things for good. Only I had the fight with Nell, and then Lina showed up, and everyone was fighting with everyone, and I woke up pissed and confused and hard.

Even in the second half of the game, I played better, but my head still wasn’t quite my own. It doesn’t help when I exit the locker room with Brookes, just behind McClain and Moore, and we watch them reunite with their waiting girlfriends. They stand there holding each other as we approach, and there’s a sting of something that might be envy in my gut.

Lina never much liked football. She came to my games, but she didn’t think it was smart of me to pin my entire future on a sport where I could be injured or replaced or just plain not good enough. She was fond of calling it a hobby, not a career. And as much as I loved her, I loved football, too. And in the end, I chose the sport over her one too many times.

Needing a distraction, I look over at Brookes and say, “You need a hug, Isaiah? I could hold you if that would help.”

McClain gives me the finger. Moore actually pauses from kissing Dylan long enough to say, “Fuck off, Torres.”

I smile, feeling a little more normal, not to mention pleased when the couples end their affectionate hellos.

Dylan says to Silas, “Dallas is going to drop me off at home to get some things and my car, but then I’ll head over to your place?”

“I’ll be there,” he answers.

“Me, too,” I say, and Dylan gives me a patient smile.

“I’ll see you, too.”

Moore lifts his chin to McClain and says, “You and Dallas are welcome to join. It’ll just be us. Low-key. Just some TV or something, and Dylan said she’d cook.”

Dallas says, “Sure. I think we’d like that.”

“Don’t expect too much,” Dylan says. “I get by, but Antonella’s the real cook in our house.”

My chest tightens at her name, and the words are out of my mouth before I can help them. “You should bring her with you.”

Dylan gives me a searching look, but she doesn’t make any more speeches, nor does she tell the group about my little infatuation.

“I’ll ask.”

Then thoughts of Nell consume me on my drive home, and the whole time Silas, Isaiah, and I spend tidying up the apartment before everyone’s arrival. Will she avoid me? Ignore me? What will I have to say to get her to open up to me again? It won’t be easy. There will be too many people around, and she’s shy, but I’ve got to figure out some way to talk to her. I’m not okay with leaving things the way they were last night, and if I’m honest, I definitely don’t want a few minutes in a pool to be it between us. I need more time. Right now, she hasn’t blocked out Lina like I planned. Instead, she’s just stirred up even more memories, and I can’t live like this. It will keep messing with my head until I crash and burn. Or worse . . . until I call Lina. Something I haven’t allowed myself to do in nearly a year now. Because as good as it always felt to hear her voice, the stilted conversation, the space between us, was a knife to the chest. And I spent too damn long being a masochist over her.

Nell is supposed to end that. She has to end it.

Just as we finish cleaning up the living room, Silas gets a call from Dylan, and I listen in to his side of the conversation.

“Hey . . . Oh. Okay . . . Yeah, I’ll call McClain and tell him . . . It’s fine, Dylan. Really. Is she okay?”

She?
Who is she? Nell?

“No,” Silas continues. “I’ll be fine alone.” Even I can hear the disappointment in his voice, which is why I’m guessing there’s a longer gap as Silas listens to whatever Dylan is saying. “You’re sure? If you need to just be with her—” He gets cut off. “You’re sure? We won’t just get in the way?” He pauses and then nods. “Okay, I’ll be there in ten.”

He hangs up and turns to Brookes and me. “Change of plans. Dylan needs to be at her apartment, so she can’t come over. But she said you guys are welcome to come over there instead if you want.”

He calls Carson, and that’s when I get the real explanation.

Nell is drunk, and Dylan doesn’t want to leave her home alone. When he hangs up the phone, I can’t hide my shock. “Nell is drunk? The Nell that lives with Dylan?”

“Wasted, apparently.”

“I’m in,” I say, and when we both look at Brookes, he’s watching me. And I can tell by the look he’s giving me that he knows I’ve got something going on with Nell and doesn’t approve. I lift an eyebrow in the most casual so-what? gesture I can offer.

He nods. “Sure. I’ll come.” But the words are said to me, not to Silas, and I get the feeling what he actually means is,
Sure. I’ll come watch and make sure Torres doesn’t do anything stupid.

We tell Silas to go on ahead, and we’ll come along in a few minutes. But as soon as Brookes is in his room, I jog after Silas, and catch him as he’s getting into his truck. “You mind if I catch a ride with you?” I lie, “Brookes got a call, and he’s gonna be a bit.”

While Silas drives, he has me text Brookes and McClain the address. Brookes wants to know why I left with Silas, but I’m not about to tell him that I didn’t want to spend the car ride with him harping on me to leave Nell alone.

Because I can’t leave her alone. I just can’t.

Silas parks the truck, and I follow him up a metal and concrete staircase to a second-floor apartment. He opens the door without knocking, and that’s when I see Nell standing on the coffee table with some big red-haired dude, singing Spice Girls at the top of her lungs. We step inside just as she’s telling him what to do if he wants to be her
lover
.

I think of her list. She told me getting drunk was on it, and all of a sudden I’m furious that this guy got to help her check that task off instead of me. “Nell,” I say, before I think better of it. She twists to see me, and her socked feet slide on the coffee table, and then she’s stumbling into the ginger giant, and both of them are going down. I dart forward, but I can’t catch up to her. They hit the ground with a thud, a groan, and Nell’s too-cute giggles. She’s lying right on top of him, and he has his hands on her bare back where her shirt has ridden up from the yoga pants that fit her like a fucking miracle.

She lays her head in the crook of his neck like she’s completely forgotten that I’m here. If I stopped to think, I’d have known how crazy it would look to storm over and tear her off the guy. I would realize what my actions would mean to Silas and Dylan. But I don’t think. I just know I can’t spend one more second watching her snuggled up against this guy without losing my mind. She squeals as I pull her up into my arms, and I don’t think her feet are even touching the ground.

“You okay?” I ask, but all she does is laugh again and lay her head on my chest. I catch a whiff of alcohol, a strong one, and I realize she really is completely smashed. She probably doesn’t have a clue who she’s snuggling up against. Probably can’t even tell the difference between me and whoever the fuck is on the floor.

But even if she doesn’t realize what she’s doing . . . it feels damn good to have her wrapped around me again, and for a few seconds it dazes me. Then I look up to find everyone in the room watching us.

Damn.

I lock eyes with Dylan and say, “How did this happen?”

“I’m still working on that. As far as I can tell, she decided she wanted to invent her own cocktail, and she enlisted our friend Matt’s help.” Ah. Matt. He’s one of Dylan’s activist friends. I didn’t realize he was close to Nell, too. Nell points to him sprawled out on the floor and adds, “This is what happens when you spend all day trying lots of different mixes of alcohol.”

That seems to catch Nell’s attention enough to rouse her, because she pulls back and places both her small hands on my face.

“I figured it out. It took me a long time, but I got it. I call it Newton’s Third Law.”

“Uhh . . .”

“Get it? Yours was Bad Decision. And mine . . . is Newton’s Third Law.” She descends into giggles again, and I scan my dormant science knowledge to try and remember what she’s talking about. I’d taken a physics course last year for my kinesiology major, but I just barely scraped by. Unlike high school, where I was concerned with keeping up to impress Lina, last year I’d been mostly focused on forgetting her.

“Is that the one about actions and reactions?”

“Exactly! Every action has an equal and . . .” She pauses and swallows, and man, she’s so far gone. “Reaction. Equal and opposite reaction. So . . .
action.
” She gestures to an empty cup on the bar, then to her own drunken state.
“Reaction.”

Then she does this little move that’s halfway between a fist pump and a celebratory dance. She’s so fucking adorable, it actually hurts. Somewhere between my chest and my stomach there’s a knot that twists every time I see her. And I’m starting to enjoy it, the strange pleasure pain of wanting her.

“I don’t get it,” the dude on the floor says. “She’s been going on and on about that law for an hour, but for the life of me I don’t get what it has to do with alcohol. And somewhere around the eighth shot, I stopped trying to figure it out.”

Christ. Eight shots. I hope to God that Nell hasn’t had that much to drink.

She pushes at my arms, wrestling out of my embrace, and says, “Here. Let me make you one.”

She wobbles over to the table, where there’s half a dozen different kinds of liquor and at least that many mixers. I follow and ask, “Any idea how much she’s had to drink?” Dylan shakes her head, and the ginger guy is still lying on the ground, silent. I think he might actually have passed out.

“I’ll make sure she doesn’t drink any more. Maybe you could get started on the food, Dylan? That will help if we can get her to eat any of it.”

“Sure. Of course. You sure you’ve got her?”

The look in Dylan’s eyes as she asks tells me this is anything but a simple question. I don’t know what this is with Nell. I don’t know how long it will last. But I know I’m not handing her over to anyone else to take care of. No fucking way.

“Yeah. I’ve got her.”

Chapter 13

Nell’s To-Do List

T
orres is somehow even more handsome than I remember. And at the moment there are three of him, which adds up to a whole lot of handsome. He’s talking to Dylan, and I keep getting distracted by his mouth. By the way it so perfectly forms words. It’s a really great mouth.

Which is why I just can’t help touching it.

I rest my fingers there, wanting to feel it move as he talks, but he’s just looking at me, and when I twist my head around, I realize that Dylan and Silas have disappeared into the kitchen.

I turn back and order, “Talk.”

“What do you want me to say, sweetheart?”

His breath is hot against my fingertips, and a sudden image of him sucking my fingers into his mouth pops into my head, and holy hell . . . where did that come from? Certainly not from any personal experience I’ve had.

“I like the way your mouth moves.”

He laughs, more warm breath, and pulls my hand away to kiss the center of my palm.

“Like I said before, you are a puzzle.”

Then I remember my reason for coming over to the table. My drink! I tear my eyes away from Torres and focus on the bottles in front of me, trying to remember how I made it. I started with something clear. Gin, maybe? Or vodka? I pick the one that’s in the prettiest bottle and dump some of it into a plastic cup.

“Whoa there.” Torres lifts the bottle from my hands, and I let him have it. I was done with it anyway. “I think you’re all good on drinks right now.”

“This one is for you,” I tell him.

Then I add some orange juice, a shot of the other clear liquor just to be safe, some grapefruit juice, and a squeeze of lemon concentrate. I swish it around with my finger, and then hand the cup to Torres, sucking the liquid off my finger while I watch him. For a moment all he does is stare at my finger in my mouth, and I wonder if he’s picturing the same thing I thought of earlier.

I pop my finger out of my mouth and say, “Drink.”

He raises the cup to his mouth, taking a gulp, and then pauses for a few moments before swallowing. His eyes narrow, his nose scrunches, and his Adam’s apple bobs forcefully.

“Oh God,” he says.

“Oh God good?”

“More like oh God please don’t let my esophagus melt.”

I frown. “It’s not that bad.” I stand on my tiptoes and dunk my finger in his cup again, pulling it back to my mouth to prove it. But he catches hold of my wrist before I get there.

“Uh-uh. Not that again. I can’t take it.”

“What?”

“You know,” he begins. “Maybe it’s not the drink that tastes good, but your skin. I think I need to test that hypothesis.”

“I do like hypotheses. Did you know that’s the plural of hypothesis? Hypotheses.” I hadn’t really registered much beyond the last word of his sentence, so he catches me completely off guard when he draws my hand up close to his face and slips my forefinger into his mouth.

“Oh,” I breathe, feeling as if the world’s previous gentle swaying motion has been pushed into fast-forward, and everything in my peripheral vision is moving fast enough to blur.

Not his mouth, though. That is crystal clear. And lusciously hot around my finger, and when he sucks, it draws my mind back to things he did to my nipples the night before. God, was that only the night before? My breasts feel heavy now, full and hardened at the tip, and there’s an ache between my legs. Not a heat or a buzzing or a tingle, an actual hollow ache.