All Played Out (Rusk University #3)(22)

“I got this. You shouldn’t have to pay on the day of your very first hangover.”

I return my purse to my shoulder and smile. “Thanks.”

He leaves some money on the table and then loops his arm over my shoulder. “I’ve got some ideas for how you could thank me. Six of them, in fact.”

I laugh, and shove his arm off me, and he calls out after me the entire time I march toward the door, getting louder and more dramatic with every step. He’s making a giant scene, and everyone in the diner is watching us. Normally I would be horrified and well on my way to an unattractive magenta blush, but . . . it’s different with him.

Everything is different with him.


“I CAN’T BELIEVE I’m about to do this. I’ve gone crazy. You’ve made me crazy.”

Torres’s hand lingers at my waist for a long moment before he does what he’s supposed to and helps boost me up onto the base of the Rusk statue that we talked about at breakfast a few days ago. The base alone comes about as high as my chest, and I never could have gotten up without him. Or a ladder. The statue’s pose is reminiscent of the Lincoln Memorial, with Rusk sitting down, only his hand is open and stretched out, and that’s where I’m heading. If I can manage to climb all the way up without falling and breaking my neck. When Texas was an independent republic, Rusk served first as secretary of war and later the Supreme Court chief justice. And when Texas became a state he was elected as one of its first senators.

And now I’m honoring his memory by doing my best to climb up into his lap like he’s some giant bronze Santa Claus. I step up on his foot and try to haul myself up onto his knee, but I have a pitiful amount of upper-body strength. As in . . . basically none. I jump, hoping that might help, but I only end up clutching ridiculously at the knee, unable to pull myself up but too afraid to let myself drop for fear that I might twist my ankle landing on the statue’s foot.

“I’ve got you, sweetheart,” Torres says, having hopped up behind me with zero assistance. Then his hands are on my ass, and he’s pushing me up onto the knee.

“Did you suggest we do this just so you could grope me?” I call down to him.

“Unexpected benefits.”

Carefully, I climb to my feet, holding on to Rusk’s outstretched arm to keep me steady. Then, after one deep breath, I scramble my way onto his large bronze arm and shimmy my way down into his hand. I sit in his palm, and have to hang one leg over each side. My thighs are a bit too large to fit comfortably, so I feel like I’m wedged into his hand. And one look down at Torres’s grinning face tells me what an idiot I am.

I’m straddling the statue’s hand.

And while it’s holding my weight just fine, there’s no way I don’t look ludicrous. And probably a little lewd.

“Most people don’t actually sit in his hand, do they?”

“It’s the knee for most people, true.”

“Torres!”

“What? I figured go big or go home. Besides . . . it’s pretty fucking hot.”

“I’m going to kill you as soon as I get down from here.” I start trying to shift myself out of the hand, but my butt really is entirely too large for this thing.

“No! Wait,” he says. “Let me jump down and get a picture. You’re up there already. Might as well make the most of it.”

I try to scowl at him. But it is pretty funny when you think of it. And it will make a good picture. When my brother and I were growing up, Leo’s room had been covered in stuff like this. Photos with friends. He had a big stop sign on his wall that he and his friends had stolen God only knows how. He had souvenirs from places they’d been and things they’d done. Nothing crazy because we weren’t quite well-off enough to travel or anything. But little things that meant something to him even if they didn’t matter to anyone else.

Memories.

I had trophies. Medals. Certificates. Those were my memories. But no one takes those kinds of things to college with them. You’re supposed to pack them away in boxes because as soon as you graduate, they don’t really matter anymore.

But now . . . I have this.

While Torres descends, I look out at campus. It’s dark, but there are streetlamps dotting the sidewalk. Noble Library is a few blocks over, and is still open, but otherwise the university seems abandoned. The statue is in the middle of a grassy courtyard, surrounded by old oak trees that have probably been growing since the university was founded back in the late 1800s.

It’s peaceful and beautiful, and it occurs to me that I’ve never just sat somewhere on campus and looked. There’s always been somewhere to go or something to do, and I’ve never taken the time. I lean back on my hands and breathe in the night, and when Torres calls for me to look at him, my smile is wide and genuine.

“Come on! Get crazy,” he says.

I throw my hands up and smile even bigger. He laughs and snaps another picture on his phone.

“You’re a real wild one, Antonella De Luca.”

Then something occurs to me, and my stomach tumbles with nerves and a surprising feeling of exhilaration. Can I check two things off my list with this late-night adventure? Can I actually be a little wild for a change? I think about Torres’s words. You’re up there already. Might as well make the most of it. I take a deep breath, shift to sit on my knees, and wait for Torres to slip his phone back in his pocket.

Then I call, “Hey, Mateo!”

When he looks up, his eyes questioning, I gather my courage and the hem of my shirt and lift it up for one, two, three seconds. Then I tug it back down, keeping my eyes squeezed shut because I’m too scared to see his face.





Chapter 16

Mateo



Holy. Fuck.

I blink. And blink again.

And I’m tempted to keep my eyes closed so I can just keep picturing her. Damn. I was already halfway to obsessed with her rack, and now that I’ve seen it wrapped up in that black, lacy bra, I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to look at her without having to fight off a hard-on.

She has her eyes scrunched up tight, and her lips pressed tightly together, and for the life of me, I can’t believe she did it. This is the girl that ran away from me at that pool less than a week ago. The girl who won’t even tell me half the things on her bucket list.

That girl just flashed me.

While she still has her eyes shut, I jump, and propel myself up onto the statue’s base. She opens one eye, and then the other, and her gaze sweeps around the grass, until I climb up onto Rusk’s knee. She gives me this shy smile, and I’m undone by how she somehow manages to be adorable and sexy all at the same time.

I wish that damn hand were bigger because I want nothing more than to launch myself up there and kiss her. I wonder if I sat higher up on the arm, if it could hold the weight of both of us. Before I can decide whether or not to chance it, bright lights wash over us, and I turn to see a campus cop car pulling up on the street below. He flashes his lights once and then puts the car into park.

“Shit. Time to go, Nell.”

Her eyes meet mine, all that earlier shy sensuality replaced by panic. I reach out and grasp her hand, pulling her out of the statue’s hand and onto the knee with me. I jump down to the base below and tell her to throw her legs over the side. I hear a car door open as I wrap my arms around her legs and help lower her to the base. I do the same thing to lower her to the ground, and by then the cop is heading for us.

I grab her hand and pull her into a run.

There’s a dirt jogging path cutting through the commons area, and I drag Nell onto it. Dust kicks up around our feet, and she’s wearing flip-flops that slow her down, but she doesn’t complain.

I can imagine that for a girl like Nell the thought of getting into trouble with a cop (even a campus cop) would feel like the end of the world. Which is why I refuse to let us get caught.

“Come on, babe. Little faster.”

She lets me tug her along, but I can tell she’s struggling, so when the jogging path curves, instead of following it, I pull her to the right and into a breezeway between two buildings. We move faster on the concrete, and in less than ten seconds we’re out the other side.

I lead her across the street, and we run under the lamplit sidewalk up and over a block until we hit the library. I slow us to a walk and guide her through the front door. I’m not sure if the cop is still chasing us, but if he is, I doubt he’d follow us in here. But just in case he does, the best thing for us to do is to blend in with a crowd.

Unfortunately, the library isn’t exactly hopping at midnight on a Wednesday. And I can admit, I’ve never actually set foot in this library myself, so I have no idea where to go. I’m about to pull us over between some bookshelves because I figure that’s better than nothing when Nell takes the lead, gesturing for me to follow her over to a bank of elevators.

I keep an eye on the front doors while we wait for the elevator, and just as it dings and we step inside, the campus cop comes through the front door.

Inside the elevator, I jab at the Door Close button.

“The cop just entered the building. I don’t think he saw me get in the elevator,” I say. “But we should find someplace out of the way or somewhere with people around until he gives up and leaves.”