All Played Out (Rusk University #3) by Cora Carmack (23)

Nell’s To-Do List

It’s remarkable how even at times like this he can make a joke. I want to ask him why. Why he came here. Why he doesn’t want to tell anyone about his concussion.

Why me?

Okay, so maybe that last question is less about his concussion and more about . . . everything. We haven’t slept together since last Sunday (well, Monday morning, I guess), though the few times we’ve seen each other, he was certainly very hands-on. But I can’t help but find myself wondering why he would choose me. This, taking care of him, feels distinctly in girlfriend territory. Or am I overreacting? Didn’t I just admit the other day that we were friends above all else? Maybe this is just what friendship with him is like. Sure, he’s taught me more about my body in a few encounters than I ever could have imagined, but I can put that aside for a friendly gesture.

Oh God, who am I kidding? If this were Matty in my bed, my heart wouldn’t be trying to rearrange my rib cage.

I don’t know how to deal with these insecurities because they’re different from the fears I feel about my future or everyday worries about tests and homework and other trivial stuff. These fears are different because . . .

Because there is no correct answer. I like solving problems. I love solving problems. But not like this . . . not when there’s no guarantee I can be right.

Because Mateo Torres is loud, and I’m quiet. Because he’s reckless, and I’m cautious. Because he belongs everywhere, and I don’t.

Because I think I’m in danger of falling in love with him.

So, no . . . this is much worse than fears about classes or jobs or the future. Those things might stress me out on occasion, but when push comes to shove, I’m confident enough in myself to believe that it will all work out, that I will figure it out.

But I don’t think I’m the kind of person who can fall in love. Or at least I didn’t think I was. And even if I’m wrong about that, and I can fall in love, I feel fairly certain that I’m going to be really bad at it.

Falling in love.

I’ll be too clingy or not clingy enough. I’ll have trust issues (trusting him and being trusted by him . . . both are likely to be disastrous). I’ll say stupid things. Or I’ll say smart things that make him feel stupid. I’ll ignore him in favor of doing my work. Or I’ll ignore work for him.

So I can’t fall for Mateo Torres. There are limits to this little experiment, and that has to be one of them.

I won’t be cliché enough to fall for a guy just because he took my virginity. I am ruled by my head above all else.

As I ignore my own issues and focus on him, the pinch of pain at the back of my throat that comes from seeing him like this tells me that the danger is very real. I have to fight a tide of rising panic even though I know he’s right. His symptoms are mild, and with bed rest, he should recover just fine. But it’s just . . . I’ve never seen him this vulnerable. And I want . . .

I am ruled by my head. Nothing else.

He has this glazed look in his eyes, and even though he seems coherent enough and is making an effort to appear as normal as possible, I can tell how tired he is. My freak-out will have to wait until tomorrow. For now, I need to be practical. For his health’s sake. My brain quickly cycles through the necessary information. He needs to rest, but I’ll also need to wake him up periodically to make sure he’s still coherent, still able to be woken up. Which means he’ll be spending the night here. In room. In my bed.

Only this time, Dylan’s here. And I’ll have to tell her something.

“Okay,” I say. “Let me get you that aspirin.”

As I make my way to the door, he says, “Thank you. You’re amazing.”

“Don’t thank me yet. If I think you’re getting worse, I’m taking you to the hospital. I don’t care how ‘fine’ you are.”

His mouth twitches, an almost smile. “You think I’m fine?”

I roll my eyes, even though a part of me finds it adorable that he’s still flirting with me even after we’ve already slept together.

Ruled by your mind, Nell. Focus.

I leave to retrieve the medicine and some water. On my way to the kitchen, Dylan catches me, “Is he okay?”

“Hmm?” Crap. What do I tell her? “Oh yeah. He’s just tired from practice, I think. And . . .” Here goes nothing. “Well, I know you told me to stay away from him, but I like him. We’re . . . seeing each other.”

There. Neither of us has really talked yet about telling other people that we’re sleeping together. We’re both so busy with my classes and his football stuff that we didn’t want to have to split our limited free time by answering questions about ourselves. But this is the only explanation, besides the truth, that I have for why he’d show up here and want to go straight to my room. It will justify why we’re spending hours cooped up in my room, and keep people from disturbing us.

“That little bugger, he pulled it off.”

“What?”

“He asked me about you. Wanted to know how to talk to you. I honestly didn’t think he had a chance, or that he was serious enough to wear you down, but he did it.”

Oh, he was plenty good at wearing me down.

She asks, “And you like him? For real like him?”

I have to fight the urge to drag her onto the couch and spill everything I’m feeling, to ask her what love feels like, just so I’ll know that what I’m feeling isn’t it. And if it is . . . damn it, now is not the time.

“Yeah. I like him. Listen, he needs my help with something, can we talk about this later?”

She gives me a smirk, and I’m sure she’s thinking of a very different something that I might help him with, but she says, “Sure. I think I’ll go over to Silas’s. Spend the night there.”

I’m stunned for a moment at how supportive she is of all this. From the way she’d first talked about Mateo, I figured she would think I was crazy. That was a big part of why I hadn’t told her before even though I was dying to talk to someone. But now she’s practically throwing me into his arms, leaving us the apartment all to ourselves.

With a glass of water in hand, I make my way back to my room to find him struggling to stay awake. I close the door behind me and move to his side.

“Hey.” His smile is sleepy and soft, and it makes him look sweeter. Less intimidating. I might want to be ruled by my mind, but there’s a fist around my heart, and the poor little organ seems to struggle to beat against it, to beat against how terrifying it is to want a person this much. I shake out a few pills and hand them to him along with the water. He pops the aspirin into his mouth and then leans his head up far enough to swallow a mouthful of water.

Then I reach down to pull off his sneakers. They’re longer than the length of my forearm, and they look even bigger when I place them on the floor beside my bed.

“Nurse Nell,” he murmurs in his deep, gravelly voice.

“Do you want to be under the covers?” I ask.

“Depends. Will you be under there, too?”

I roll my eyes. “You need to rest.”

“I can multitask.”

And oh, I want him to. But we can’t. He’s ill, and I’m . . . me.

He shifts up to a sitting position, and though he could probably do it by himself, I pull back the covers when he stands. I wait for him to climb back into the bed, but instead he steps closer to me and lifts a hand to my cheek. He leans down at the same time I tip my head up, and he rests his forehead against mine. His eyes are closed, and mine are open. And this close I can see his dark long lashes, and I can see the slightest hint of stubble on his cheeks and jaw. He doesn’t say anything. Nor does he move to do anything more than touch me. He takes a deep breath, and I place a hand on his chest to feel the way it expands and then falls. He breathes again, and it feels like he’s taking a piece of me into his lungs with him, and just when I’m about to close my eyes, he pulls away and crawls into my bed.

That fist squeezes. As if it’s trying to get me to admit it. To think the words that scare me far too much to say.

Something tugs low in my belly at the sight of him there, and somehow those few seconds of being close to him, of breathing with him, feel just as intimate and huge as it felt to have him inside me for the first time.

How is that? In what universe does that make any sense?

In this one, my mind says as I watch his eyes fall closed.

And even though I should let him rest, even though I should use this time to study or read or make one epic pros and cons list, I set an alarm on my phone for two hours from now, and I round the bed to crawl in beside him.

He takes up over half of my full-size bed, so that even if I didn’t want to be touching him, it would be hard to avoid. Not that I try.

He lifts his arm, and I immediately crawl under it, to lean against him. I lay my head on his chest and press my body close to his side. His arm settles down around me, his fingertips brushing along my spine.

We’ve lain like this once before, that first night after we had sex. That was the only time he stayed the night, and it feels different now, to have him hold me like this when it’s still light outside and when we’re both fully clothed, and my mind isn’t numb from pleasure. I’d been so exhausted that night that I fell asleep almost immediately, no time to think or analyze.

“Now, this is what I call full-service medicine.”

“This is the part where I would hit you. If you weren’t already hurt.”

“Go ahead. I can take it. I like a little pain with my pleasure.”

I don’t even think before I ask, “Do you really?”

He sucks in a breath, and his chest lifts beneath my cheek.

“We can talk about what turns me on another time. When I can do something about it.”

“You could make me a list.”

He groans, and pulls me tighter against him, and my heartbeat kicks into high gear. I know nothing is going to happen. Nothing can happen. But my body recognizes his, remembers how good we were together.

“Damn, woman. You’re going to be the death of me.”

“Sorry,” I answer sheepishly. “Go to sleep. I’ll shut up.”

Please, dear Lord, let me shut up.

“We’re having this conversation again later. I like this list idea a lot. But only if we make one for you, too.”

“You already know the things that turn me on. Better than I do probably.”

“No, I don’t. Not yet. But I will. We both will. You can count on that.”

Another squeeze from that fist.

I nod against his chest, embarrassed and pleased and eager all at once.

And as he falls asleep beneath me, I get to know him in a way that friendship and flirting and sex haven’t allowed, completely undone and made honest by sleep. I learn the rhythm of his breaths, the unhurried beat of his heart when he’s completely at rest. I discover what his face looks like when it’s free of his usual charm and bravado. I study how he looks when he is entirely his own, not the entertainer, not the athlete, not the flirt. And like music stripped of its enhancements and frills, he’s somehow better in this simple form.

I’m still awake when my alarm goes off for the first time. I prop myself up on my elbow and gently but firmly shake his shoulder.

“Mateo.”

He groans and mumbles something, and I shake him a little harder. His eyelids lift, and he regards me a moment, before smiling in this brilliantly sexy, sleepy way. I lean across him to flip on the bedside lamp. He winces at the light and clamps an arm around my waist, trapping me in my prone position. With his eyes squeezed shut he says, “Turn it off.”

“Let me see your eyes first.”

He complies, but doesn’t release his grip on my waist, so I’m practically on top of him as I study his pupils. They’re still not reacting to light as much as they should, but they’re the same size, which is good.

“How old are you?” I ask.

“Nineteen.”

I blink. I hadn’t known that he was younger than me. He’s so much more experienced and confident that I assumed he was older.

“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.