All Played Out (Rusk University #3) (25 page)

“I see that look,” he says. “I’ll be twenty in January, so don’t go thinking I’m too young for you.”

“I’m not. I just didn’t know. That’s all. I assumed you were older.”

It also occurs to me that my whole point in asking was to see if he could think clearly, but since I don’t
know
how old he is, I have no way of knowing if he’s lucid.

“Do you know what day it is?”

“Monday.”

“And do you know where you are?”

He smirks. “Your bed.” He tugs one of my legs over him until I’m straddling him. “Between your thighs.”

Well, he certainly
seems
coherent. But just for my own curiosity, I ask, “How tall are you?”

“Six two.”

Ha! I was right.

I smile and he asks, “Do I pass inspection, Nurse Nell?”

“You’ll do, I suppose.”

He smiles, and lets his eyes fall shut. I set my alarm again for two hours later and reach out to turn off the light. It’s dark in my room except for the low glow of a streetlamp outside filtering through a crack in my curtains. I try to slide off him, but his arms are still tight around me. When I start to pry his arm away, he rolls onto his side, taking me with him. One of his arms ends up under my head, and the other goes around my waist and burrows up the back of my shirt to touch my bare skin.

“Better?” he asks, his words a mumble against my forehead.

Both of my arms are curled awkwardly between us, and there’s definitely no way I can sleep like this. Even if I could find something to do with my arms, I feel like I can’t breathe this close to him. The air between us is too warm and thick, and I’ll never be able to stop thinking.

When I’ve gone several long seconds without answering, he pulls his hand away from my back and leans away a little. “Sorry.”

“No. It’s just . . . I don’t know what to do with my arms. I’ve never slept in a bed with another person. Well, except for the other night with you, but I was, um, so tired I didn’t really think about it.”

“Another first. Roll over. I’ll give you a lesson in spooning.”

I flip to my other side, and this time when he slips his arm around me, there are no awkward limbs. There’s no space between us either. His chest is pressed flat against my back and his legs curled around mine, and I can still feel him breathe like this. And not just his chest either . . . like this I can feel all of him, touching from top to toes. I can feel him half hard against my bottom, too.

“This okay?” he asks.

“Yeah. It’s okay.”

Better than okay. And with his arms around me, the fist finally eases enough that I slip into sleep.

Chapter 24

Mateo

A
miracle happens.

Nell skips all her classes the next day to sleep late with me. Even though she’d sworn last time that it would never happen again. I didn’t even have to ask. When the alarm went off, she reached over and turned it off like she’d been doing all through the night, but instead of getting up and getting ready for school, she crawled back into my arms.

She didn’t say anything. Didn’t announce what she was doing. She just turned the thing off for good and settled back in with me.

Sleeping was not how I wanted to celebrate her loosening the reins a bit, but it was my only option. And something about just lying together like this felt better anyway.

By the time we’re awake for good, my symptoms have eased to nuisance level. The sensitivity to light and sound is the worst, but still bearable. My thoughts still occasionally wander off, but it’s rare enough that most people will just think I’m distracted. I’ve skipped all my classes, though that has less to do with the concussion and more to do with Nell, but there’s no skipping my daily workout and practice.

But I’m having trouble leaving Nell’s room.

There’s no need for her to monitor me for another night, but twice now I’ve slept with her beside me. I know what it’s like to wake to her soft thighs pressed against mine, to be surrounded by the smell of her hair and skin—I can’t
un-
know something like that. And I want it again. Even though, as a general rule, I don’t spend the night with girls. I made an exception that first night because it was her first time, and I didn’t want her to feel like I was running out on her. But that was supposed to be it.
Supposed to be
.

But Nell is never easy to put into a box. Just when I think I know where she fits in my life, she rearranges things. And really, what would it hurt to break this one rule? Just every once in a while. Not all the time. I want to enjoy the feel of waking up to her again when my mind isn’t battered and foggy.

She’s sitting cross-legged on her bed with her laptop, e-mailing excuses to her professors. Her long, dark hair is twisted into this thick knot on top of her head. There’s one lock that didn’t make it in, and it falls loose and curly against her long neck. Before I really know what I’m doing, I’m climbing onto the bed behind her and reaching for those rogue strands. I settle in behind her, one of my legs on each side of hers.

“Tunnels tonight?”

She frowns, tilting her head slightly back toward me. “We can wait for all that stuff until you’re fully recovered.”

I lift my hands to her shoulders, kneading gently. “Hell no. You’re on a deadline, after all. Gotta get all your wild and crazy out before you graduate.” She opens her mouth to respond, but then closes it. And I wonder if she can hear the slight edge to my voice when I talk about her graduating. Not that I have a right to be pissed about it, but I can’t help it. I don’t like having a deadline. I don’t like not having a choice about how much time I get with her. I decide to keep talking so she doesn’t have time to dwell on it. “Besides, it’s not like the tunnels are going to be physically demanding. If I can make it through practice, I can definitely walk down some concrete tunnels. And then who knows, maybe I’ll even feel up to some more
physical exertion
afterward.”

I lean down to kiss her shoulder, but her back straightens, and she shifts to look back at me. Ignoring that last statement, she says, “You’re going to practice?”

“First I’ve gotta go lift.” And I am so not looking forward to the sound of the weight room—all clangs and thuds and scrapes. It’s going to be a nightmare. But a necessary one. “Then practice, yeah.”

Her eyebrows furrow, and I can see her debating about saying something before she finally spits it out. “So, you’re not telling your coach at all? Do you think that’s smart?”

It would be cute that she’s worried, if she weren’t voicing the thoughts I’ve done a lot of work to keep myself from thinking.

“I told you. I’ve had concussions before. This one is so mild I’ll probably feel good as new within the next few hours.”

“Yeah, but if you were to hit your head again shortly after your initial injury, it could cause serious damage. You could die. It could—”

I lower my mouth to hers, cutting her off. For a moment she resists, not quite kissing me back, but not completely immune either. After a few seconds she relaxes and one of her hands travels up to my neck. I get a little lost in her mouth. In the softness of her lips. The taste of her tongue. The quickening of her breath.

I pull back before I get carried away and give in to the urge to toss her computer to the ground and strip her naked.

“I’ll be fine, Nell. I know my limits. I promise I’ll be careful. You’ll see. You’re worrying about nothing. You and me. The tunnels. Tonight.”

Her eyes flick over mine, narrow, but then finally she nods.

D
ESPITE WHAT
I told Nell, I don’t feel good as new in a few hours. I take it easy during my workout. They’re unsupervised—at least technically—so no one will call me out for going at half strength. But even taking it easy, I’m exhausted before I get halfway through my hour. I’m worn out by trying to appear normal while my nerves feel more and more raw by the second.

When practice starts, I very nearly spill to Coach. But then I tell myself that it’s laziness talking. I’m strong enough to power through this. My reasons for staying silent are the same today as they were yesterday. So I stick to my guns and suffer through practice. I think it’s obvious to everyone that I’m not up to par, but I hope they chalk it up to a bad day rather than to the fact that I’m avoiding getting tackled as much as possible.

If you don’t catch the ball, not much point in someone taking you to the grass.

I even take a nap after practice, but it barely takes the edge off, which is why I’m exhausted when I get to Nell’s later.

I can tell by her worried look when she sees me on her porch that this isn’t going to be good.

“You ready?” I ask.

She fixes me with a silent, assessing gaze.

Maybe I should have canceled. I knew she would give me grief over “knowing my limits,” but I wanted to see her. So I figure I can take a little grief.

“Come on.” I hold out a hand to her. “I’m excited about this. Both of our first times, remember?”

“Mateo . . .”

“We’re just walking. It’s nothing strenuous. We’ll walk a ways in, explore a bit, and then we’ll leave.”

“And you’ll sleep?”

I jump at the chance to spend another night with her.

“If you’ll be my nurse again.”

Her eyes lift in a smile even though her mouth doesn’t, and I know I’ve won. In my truck, I flip my heater on to full blast. Some hint of winter is beginning to creep in, and the night air is crisp and there’s a cold breeze. She’s wearing a light jacket, but I can tell as I drive that she’s cold. So I flip the middle console up, and tell her to scoot over, and I drive onto campus with her huddled close to me. We park near the tunnel entrance by the north parking garage, and I find a Rusk sweatshirt in the backseat to pull over her head for extra warmth. It swallows her, falling all the way to her knees, but the dark red looks good against her skin, and I like seeing her in it.

Even with her jacket and my sweatshirt, she loops her arm around mine and snuggles closer. I lead her down to the mouth of the tunnel, which at first glance looks like an oversize drainage pipe. A concrete-covered ditch runs for about fifty yards before the entrance to the tunnels, and a thin line of water runs down the middle. As we stand at the entrance, the tunnel looks dark and dank. Hardly the most romantic place, but it pricks my sense of adventure, and some of my fatigue gives way to anticipation.

“You’re sure this is safe?”

“Now that you mention it, I keep thinking of that disaster movie where one of those underwater tunnels in New York collapses and there’s a huge wave of water coming down the tunnel.”

“Fantastic. Exactly what I wanted to think about.”

I laugh and pull out the flashlight I brought with me. I direct the beam down the tunnel, and it shines far enough to show that it splits into three tunnels a little ways in. As far as I can tell from here, they’re parallel, but that doesn’t mean they don’t branch off somewhere farther down.

“Let’s go, sweetheart.”

Fifty feet in, we find our first piece of graffiti on the concrete wall. In faded black spray paint, it reads “College Is Okay If You,” then the writing gets too faded to read, leaving the secret to making college “okay” forever mysterious.

When we get to the split, I have Nell choose, and she picks the middle.

We stumble upon a zombie horde painted on the wall, and I squeeze her arm. “Good choice.”

She wrinkles her nose, and I laugh. The sound echoes eerily off the walls around us and causes a twinge of pain in my head.

Nell sees it.

“We shouldn’t have done this.”

“I’m fine,” I assure her. “Let’s keep going. Maybe the Batcave is somewhere down here. Or the Chamber of Secrets.”

She doesn’t react to my Harry Potter reference even though I know she’s read the series because I saw them on a shelf in her room. Stubbornly, she says, “You’re not fine. I did some research after you left this morning. You said you’ve had concussions before. And with each one, no matter how mild, your risk for brain trauma increases. The next time you hit your head a little too hard, the symptoms might not go away for months or at all. They could be permanent. I read an article about one football player who not only can’t play anymore, but he has to have a tutor in all of his classes even though he used to be a straight-A student. He can’t concentrate. Can’t retain facts. And it’s been three years since his last concussion. He can’t play football, and football has made it so that he’ll have a hard time doing anything else.”

“I know, Nell.”

She stops abruptly, pulling her arm away from mine. “You . . .
know
?” She sounds like my knowing this is some kind of betrayal.

“Yeah, I know it’s risky. But I’m a wide receiver. Not a rough-and-tumble tackler. I don’t take frequent hits to the head.”

“Frequent enough,” she says.

“In a good game, I make maybe six catches. A great game could be eight to ten. Some of those don’t even end in a tackle. And yes, I’m tired now. And I’m still showing symptoms, but I’ve got several days before the next game.”

“And what about practice?”

“I’m taking care of that.” Though I’m not sure how long I can get away with underperforming like I did today. One bad practice is fine, but any more and I might jeopardize my chance to play this weekend even if I don’t mention the concussion.

“It only takes one hit, Mateo. Just one. I get that you’re this big, strong athlete and you think you should just tough it out, but you’re wrong. This game can’t possibly be that important.”

“It is.” We’ve both stopped walking and she’s dropped my arm to square off with me in this dark and dreary corridor.

“Football’s your dream, and I get that. And I know your coach mentioning going pro the other week has you excited, but you also have to be realistic. It’s just not smart.”

Her words stir up long-buried memories, and in an instant all the things in her that remind me of Lina come to the surface, similarities that I haven’t thought about in a long time. But I’ve had this fight before. Maybe not about a concussion, but that dig about being realistic is always the same. People think it’s the nice way to help you manage your hopes . . . that they’re doing you a favor by being honest. But that’s fucking ridiculous. It assumes that you’re stupid or naive, that you don’t have reality beating down the door to your thoughts day in and day out. It takes fucking work to dream, and I don’t need anyone else shoving the unlikelihood of success in my face, because I do that to myself enough already.