All Broke Down (Rusk University #2)(30)
Author: Cora Carmack

Whatever else Silas Moore might be . . . regular, he is not.

Just the anticipation of his mouth down there puts most of the sex I had with Henry to shame. My eyes are squeezed shut, and I’m in danger of biting straight through my bottom lip when Silas jerks back and stands up.

I whimper, wondering if he’s going to just keep playing these games with me until I’m so far gone that I let him do whatever he wants to me.

And there’s a real danger I will let him do whatever he wants to me.

Then he pulls me down off the counter, and I stumble into him, my legs too numb and unprepared to stand. My skirt is up around my waist, and he’s just begun pulling it down over my rear when two guys walk in the kitchen.

For a few seconds, I don’t do anything. My mind starts screaming at me to move long before my body actually manages the action. I dive behind Silas at the same time that he steps over to cover me.

“Oh my God,” I mutter as I try to get my shaking hands to button up the shirt that had been wide open when they walked in.

One of the guys is the Hispanic guy who’d been walking around without a shirt at the party. The other is a super-tall black guy who’s staring at Silas with an expression that makes me wither, and it’s not even directed at me.

The first guy, Torres, I think, was his name, says, “Ah, man. What did we say about sex in the kitchen? Anywhere else but the kitchen, dude.”

I nearly rip the button right off my blouse. I wouldn’t have had sex with him in the kitchen. Would I? Oh God, what I was going to let him do was hardly any better.

Silas is right . . . I do feel a bit like I’ve been suffocating. I think that’s part of why the breakup with Henry didn’t upset me as much as it should have. We’d been together so long, and our families loved the idea of us together, and it started to feel like my future was already written in stone. He would propose, I’d say yes, we’d have kids, and get old, and that would just be it. The end.

Normal.

Thinking back on that now, I almost want to cry with relief that he ended things. Because I don’t want to be normal.

But just because I was feeling trapped isn’t a good enough reason to go jumping off the first cliff I see.

Silas’s other roommate speaks next, and his voice is low and reproachful. “You really think that’s the best way to deal with this?”

Silas shakes his head. “It’s not what you think it is, Zay.”

What does he think it is? And what actually is it? Because I’m not sure I know myself. We’d made some kind of weird bargain, and I knew what I was doing for him . . . sort of. But I was still a little unclear exactly what he was doing for me.

Other than turning me into a hormonal, lecherous mess.

“I told you. I f**king told you that you do this to yourself.”

Silas drops his head, and instinctively I place my hand on his back in support. They might not see it, but I know how torn up he is over this. He was so different today. I could be imagining it, but I think Silas stands up a little straighter under my touch.

“Listen—”

“No. I watched you f**k yourself over this weekend. We all watched it today at practice. I don’t know if you’ve just stopped caring or what, but you’re bad for the team.”

I peek around Silas’s back just in time to see the way those words contort his expression. And I say something. Because that’s who I am. I’m the girl who says something. Maybe not for myself, I don’t always know how to speak up for me, but for others? That’s what I do.

“This is the exact opposite of what he needs right now.”

His roommate, Zay, glances at me, and if possible his expression turns even colder.

“No offense, but I don’t think what you were giving him is what he needs, either.”

My mouth drops open, and I see Silas stepping forward out of the corner of my eye and I throw out an arm to stop him.

Then I give my best diplomatic smile and say, “No offense, but you don’t know me. And I don’t think you know your friend all that well, or you’d know that he cares a lot. And he’s already on his knees and doesn’t need you pushing him down farther.”

Torres snorts and says, “On his knees, was he?”

I skip straight over embarrassed to furious.

“No wonder he’s spiraling out of control. Clearly he doesn’t have any support from his so-called friends. One of you just wants to make jokes and the other wants to yell at him. Both of which are only going to make things worse!”

“Listen,” Zay says. “I’m sure you’re a nice girl. And you obviously mean well, but I think you’re overestimating why he brought you here. You might think you’re here to support him while he’s upset, but trust me, if we hadn’t walked in, you would have been gone the minute he was done with you.”

“Brookes.” Silas’s voice is hard, and when he lays a hand on my shoulder, I realize I’m trembling. “Lay off. This has nothing to do with you.”

“You want me to go in the other room so you can finish dragging this girl down with you?”

“Brookes. I mean it. Lay. Off.”

I know as soon as the other guy opens his mouth where this is heading. Right as Brookes says, “Fuck you,” I slide in front of Silas and place a hand on his still bare chest to stop him from barreling over there and starting his third fight in less than a week.

“Hey,” I say. His chest is pushing forward against my hand, but not enough to move me like I know he could. “Hey. Look at me. Getting angry at him won’t change the fact that you’re angry at yourself.”

He glares over my shoulder. “Maybe not. But it will take my mind off it.”

I grab his jaw and make him look at me. “We made a deal. You have to listen to me or none of this works. Getting angry at him doesn’t fix anything, so let it go.”

He lets out a harsh breath, and under my hand, he grinds his teeth together.

“Fine.” His eyes shift from me to his two roommates, and I let my hand drop away from his face. I go to move, but he rests a hand at my waist, keeping me close. Then he says to his friends, “I f**ked up today. I know that. I knew it even as it was happening. And I’m gonna figure my shit out. I promise.”

That was actually a pretty mature almost-apology.

My heart clenches for a moment because I can feel the desperation buzzing around him. He does have issues. And I don’t love that his first inclination is always to get angry, but there’s something there. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but even with the violence and the issues and the dangerous sex appeal . . . there’s something about him.