All Broke Down (Rusk University 2)

My gaze dips down to take her in, and I nod my head at the Slip ’N Slide in the yard. “Where’s your bikini?”

She rolls her eyes. “Oh please. I believe in leaving some things to the imagination. I’m not that desperate.”

I smirk. “Who needs imagination when you’ve got memories?”

She shoves me. Or tries to anyway, and I laugh. The girl is so tiny she doesn’t have a hope of moving me.

She glares at me, but her full lips are tipped up at the corners.

I nod at the T-shirt and shorts she’s wearing and say, “You’re wearing one underneath there, aren’t you?”

She looks like she wants to shove me again, but she doesn’t. Instead she huffs and says, “Fine. Yes, I am. But I’m only mildly desperate. Like a tiny, tiny amount.”

“You do realize you could have half the guys at this party with very little effort, don’t you?”

“But the effort is the fun part!”

She says it with a smile, but I think she’s dead serious. When you live a hard life, you spend years wishing for the easy stuff, but then when you get it, it never feels right. You get used to having to fight and claw for the things you want, and when you don’t have to do that anymore, everything feels a little bit muted.

At least that’s how shit usually feels for me.

I ask, “That why you keep stringing the manager along?”

The glare she turns on me now is no longer playful. It’s harder. With an edge of something I can’t identify. “I am not stringing Ryan along. We’re friends.”

“Riiight.”

“Don’t Right me, mister. Like you know anything about relationships.”

That’s twice today I’ve had that tidbit waved in front of my face. I might be offended if it weren’t entirely right.

“I know f**k buddies when I see them.”

“We’re not,” she pauses, checking her volume, before adding under her breath, “We’re not that.”

“Yet.”

“I’m going to actually kill you. I’m going to wrap my hands around your throat, and then claim I got tetanus and was incapable of relaxing my muscles.”

“I had no idea you were into erotic asphyxiation, Santos.”

She shoots back, “I had no idea you knew what asphyxiation meant.”

I turn, laughing, and lean my back against the railing. A slow smile spreads across my face. “Speaking of erotic . . . here comes your f**k buddy . . .”

A group of people streams out the front door, including Ryan Blake, the team manager and Stella’s not-quite-boyfriend.

Stella says, “We’re not . . .” then trails off, a blush forming on her cheeks as Ryan comes to stand beside her, bumping her shoulder with his. Behind him is McClain, his arm draped over Dallas’s shoulder as her eyes flick between me and Stella. I give her my most charming grin, but her eyes only narrow in response.

“You showed,” I say to McClain when he walks over.

“Yeah, well, someone has to keep an eye on you douchebags.”

Torres jogs past then, pulling his shirt off. He yells, “Keep an eye on this, McClain!” Then he dives onto the Slip ’N Slide right after a curvy brunette, and the two of them end up a tangled mess of slick skin at the other end.

Neither of them looks like they mind.

Dallas checks her watch and says, “Hey. Torres is improving. He was here a whole fifteen minutes before he took his shirt off. That’s got to be a new record.”

He must hear us laughing because he lets go of the brunette and says, “Moore! Get your ass out here!”

When I don’t move, Stella gives me a shove. “Go on. You heard the man.”

“You’re just trying to get me to take my clothes off, aren’t you?”

“Been there. Done that. So many girls have seen it, you probably should make a T-shirt.”

I shake my head and start toward the stairs. “The rest of you might as well go ahead and come. He’s going to want to play—”

I don’t finish my sentence before Torres yells at the top of his lungs, “SLIP CUP!!!”

“What the hell is slip cup?” McClain asks.

Begrudgingly, the whole group comes with me, and we crowd with the rest of the partygoers around Torres as he explains his Slip ’N Slide/flip cup relay game. Basically, you take off down the slide where you get wet and soapy, and then at the end, you have to chug a plastic cup of beer, and flip it over with one finger. When the cup lands perfectly facedown (not easy when you’re all soapy or all drunk), the next person on your team can take off down the slide.

By some miracle, Torres persuades our entire group (and about twenty other people) to play. I watch in amusement as Stella strips down to her swimsuit, locking eyes with Ryan as he does the same. I shake my head and pull off my shirt. I’m not wearing swim trunks, but the athletic shorts I have on will work just fine.

Torres splits us all into teams, and gets another punch to the arm from McClain when he lingers too long near a bikini-clad Dallas.

By the time the game starts, people are cheering, and there’s enough booze and boobs to make me completely forget that I’d ever been in a shitty mood. I’m waiting on the already tipsy girl in front of me to flip her cup before I can go. I start to lose patience somewhere between her seventh and eighth try, and I glance to the side just as a beat-up old town car pulls up next to the curb.

A girl climbs out of the driver’s side, and I don’t see her face, but she’s got white blonde hair falling down her back and tan skin, and some dude I don’t know behind me says, “Damn.”

I’m so busy looking at her that I don’t even notice when drunk and ditzy manages to finally flip her cup.

The woman rounds the back of the car, and lifts a pair of dark sunglasses off her face. The guy behind me pushes at my back, telling me it’s my turn to run, but I can’t stop staring.

Not because she’s pretty or wearing skimpy clothes or smiling right at me.

But because she’s my mother.

Chapter 2

Silas

She wears ridiculously high heels that sink into the grass when she steps up on my lawn. She raises a hand and waves at me. And I’m not sure why, but that f**king wave is what does me in.

I ignore my team yelling at me as I stalk across the lawn. She looks just like I remember her. God, what has it been? Eight f**king years? She still dresses like someone half her age and wears too much makeup, but even so she’s pretty. Beautiful maybe. The kind of face that always drew attention. Her whole life always revolved around her looks, so my brother’s and mine did, too. When Mom looked good, when she had a guy, we had a place to sleep. If she didn’t, we didn’t.