All Broke Down (Rusk University #2)(16)
Author: Cora Carmack

“You’re not going to bandage them?”

“Bandages would just be a nuisance. They’ll heal up fine as long as I keep them clean.”

She looks around the bathroom, and I can imagine she’s thinking about the fact that college guys live here alone. How clean can things really be?

“At least put something over the worst scrapes.”

“I think you’re trying to stall.”

“I am not. I just don’t think it’s a good idea to not put anything on it. Besides, our deal was that I clean up your hands, which means I decide how to treat them.”

There she goes being bossy again.

“I’m going to leave this room with my whole hands covered in gauze, aren’t I?”

Her lips twitch like she’s trying not to smile. “Possibly. Now give me your hands.”

I lay them on top of hers, our palms touching, and say, “Yes, ma’am.”

Her eyes narrow. “Can’t you ever just call me Dylan?”

I’ll call her that when I’m inside her. When she’s in my bed. When I’ve got my hands on that perfect ass. That’s when.

“Maybe,” I tell her. But I hope to God it’s not a maybe.

She rolls her eyes, and after a few moments of her standing there, holding my hands, I raise an eyebrow and ask, “Would you like to know where the bandages are? Or are you going to heal me through touch?”

If anyone’s touch could help, it would be hers.

She releases me and mumbles a quiet no. I have her open the medicine cabinet again, and this time the condoms stay where she put them.

“That little black bag on the bottom shelf should have whatever you need.”

As she searches through the bag, I take a seat on the toilet and perch my elbows on my knees. She sets aside some ointment, gauze, Band-Aids, and tape. Then carefully, she begins, “So tell me about the fight.”

She digs through the box of Band-Aids, looking at the different varieties. She looks almost uninterested. Almost.

“It was nothing.” I direct my gaze to the floor.

“You said before it was with a friend. Or someone who used to be a friend.”

“It was.”

“Your friend Carson said the name Levi. That’s the guy? Carson didn’t sound like he liked him very much, either.”

She comes to stand in front of me, but I keep my head down.

“Do you remember in the fall last year when there was a bunch of drama going on with the football team?”

“I remember people talking about it, but honestly I didn’t pay much attention to what actually happened.” I lean back to look at her, and she picks up my right hand. She’s gentle as she rubs ointment across each busted knuckle. “But I’m listening now.”

I tell her about Levi, about how we had a tendency to cause trouble together.

“He felt a little like a brother, you know? Doing stupid shit. Pissing each other off. Pissing other people off.”

“Are you an only child?”

I laugh. “No, I’m not. But I don’t really talk to my real brother anymore, either.”

I tell her about those first few days after Levi’s arrest. All the drug tests. Being questioned by the police, questioned by Coach. I don’t tell her how it reminded me of when my brother was arrested. How the police searched our granny’s house and found the stuff he stole. How I got taken in, too, because he’d given some of the stuff to me without telling me where it came from. Fuck, thinking about that shit used to feel like it was a different world I left behind. Now it feels too damn close. Like I walked right back into that world without even realizing my feet were moving.

Levi was supposed to be different. He was rich, smart, had a good family, but he ended up the same as the guys I grew up with, same as I would have ended up without football. I guess I understand better now why we worked so well as friends. Granny always said like sticks with like.

“You had no idea?” Dylan asks, switching to my other hand.

“I mean . . . he smoked on occasion, for sure. But I had no idea how far into it he was. That he was selling, too.”

“So how did you end up fighting tonight?”

“Because I’m a f**king idiot.” My tone is a little too hard. I’m still agitated about the whole situation, and that fight wasn’t enough to clear the tension out of my blood.

“You’re not.”

“I am. I shouldn’t have even gone to see him.”

“Yeah, well. We all do stupid things sometimes.”

Her brows crease, and I know she’s worrying about her own stuff now.

“That’s another thing we have different definitions of. Helping people doesn’t seem that stupid to me.”

“If only it were that simple.”

“So why’d you get arrested? You could have backed off, yeah?”

“I should have. I don’t know why I didn’t. Except that . . . it felt right.” Her eyes lift to mine on those last words, her thumb gently rubbing over my sore knuckles, and damn if that doesn’t feel right, too. “Even as I was doing it, I knew the consequences. But I just didn’t care. I wanted to do something, not because it was what I was supposed to do, but because it was what I wanted to do.”

I think I get it then. That decision I saw in her eyes back in the kitchen. That’s what this, what I’m about for her, too. I’m just another part of whatever rebellion she started earlier today. About doing what she wants, not what’s expected of her.

“We’re not talking about me, though,” she says. “So you went to meet your friend, and then what happened?”

She keeps her eyes down as she picks up the gauze and begins winding it snugly around the knuckles of one hand, and then the other.

“He said the wrong thing.”

“Which was?”

“Dylan.” Now it’s her that’s pushing too hard. I didn’t want to talk about things with my friends, and I won’t talk about them with her, either, no matter how gorgeous she is.

“I’ll guess. You were mad about what he did, and he wasn’t sorry.”

“This isn’t middle school, Pickle. He didn’t hurt my feelings. He said some shit he had no business saying, and it pissed me off. The end.”

“But you don’t think some of that anger stems from what you feel is a betrayal of your friendship?”

She finishes taping down the last of the gauze, but doesn’t let go of my hand.