Level Hands: Bend or Break, Book 4

by Amy Jo Cousins

  When Denny was completely dry, Rafi helped wrap the towel around Denny’s waist and pressed a kiss to the back of his neck before letting him out of the shower. Denny tipped his head back for a moment, and his damp hair was cool on Rafi’s shoulder. They headed back to their lockers, silent still, as if prolonging the moment.

  Maybe tonight he would go back to Denny’s room again with him. There might not be room on Denny’s bed for him yet, but they could study or watch a movie, and Rafi could sit on the chair or the floor, and they could start finding that way back to normal again.

  Voices broke into the quiet of the locker room as people entered from the workout rooms. Rafi and Denny had taken lockers at the end of the row farthest from the locker room entrance and exit. He didn’t know if they’d done it intentionally, heading back to the distant corner most often unused. But he was enjoying the privacy as Denny got dressed slowly, a seductive combination of moving carefully because he had to and because he knew Rafi was openly watching him.

  It felt like luxury, facing Denny as he dried himself off and pulled on his own street clothes again. Rafi stared and stared until he was sure he must have memorized the shadow of every muscle on Denny’s body.

  After getting them off in the shower, he was even too mellow to tense up much at the deep voices echoing across the room. They were unlikely to be noticed back here, and weren’t doing anything risky right now anyway.

  So Rafi didn’t stress at the sound of other men in the locker room. Not until he heard what the voices were saying.

  “I’m telling you, he’s coming for you.”

  “Fuck off. He can come all he wants while he’s sucking my dick.”

  Typical macho bullshit. Rafi indulged it locker room shit-giving as much as anyone.

  “He wants your seat, man.”

  Rafi only had a split second to recognize that they were probably eavesdropping on rowers before the second guy growled a reply, his voice deep and low.

  “That is not fucking going to happen.”

  He didn’t need to hear another word to know who that was. Boomer. And it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out who the other guy thought was gunning for Boomer’s spot in the varsity eight.

  Rafi was.

  “I don’t know. Did you see the time he posted last week?”

  Some rowers bragged about sprints they’d blown through in Olympic times during their off-hours practices, but the only thing that counted was the one Coach clocked during their time trials, and she wrote those suckers in red on the whiteboard. Rafi had burned with a secret pride to see how awesome his last time had been. Whether or not he made varsity in the spring, he knew Lawson was keeping a closer eye on him than ever before. She’d taken him aside after practice more than once to talk about what extra training he was doing.

  She’d noticed.

  For the last couple of days, the glow from that attention had been the one thing elevating his mood on the days when Denny’s frustrations had beaten him low.

  Boomer was angry now, his voice louder than ever. Rafi didn’t even have to listen hard to hear every word like he was sitting next to the man. “Listen, just because Winslow is a PrEP whore who pulled strings to keep his piece of island ass within reach, doesn’t mean the rest of us have to pretend he belongs here.”

  Rafi’s stomach clenched so hard air whooshed out of his mouth like he’d been punched in the gut. So much for wondering if their teammate had heard the gossip or not. Denny spun around to face him, hands lifted as if Rafi were going to go after Boomer.

  Face burning, Rafi was almost that fucking stupid.

  “Hey, Castro’s a good oar.”

  “Sure, for a charity case who started rowing a year ago, he’s fucking awesome. But you think he’s the best we could get with a new full-ride scholarship on offer? If it wasn’t for this affirmative action bullshit, we could’ve had one of the top freshmen in the country and you know it. But Winslow wanted someone to blow him in between races, so now we’re stuck with a token black guy?”

  “No way. I think they’re just friends.” But Rafi could hear it in the second voice. The guy was losing his certainty. “Besides, Denny doesn’t have that kind of pull.”

  “Maybe not. But his cousin does. My dad said Cash Carmichael’s dad put the hammer on the board. A total inside job.”

  Rafi was sick. He braced a hand against a locker and ignored Denny, who’d moved closer. Boomer’s words kept spilling onto the tile floor, the echo of his laugh now ringing in the highest corners of the locker room.

  “Listen, you like the kid. I get it. But don’t bullshit me. He’s nowhere near the best oar we could’ve gotten, and if we’re gonna start letting people fuck their way onto the team, then I vote we offer the Swedish women’s Olympic eight an audition.”

  The voices trailed away as the guys headed for the showers. Quiet fell again, but this one wasn’t sweet and intimate. It was cold and barren and the only sound was a faint buzzing in his ears.

  Denny tried to break it. “Rafi.”

  “Don’t.”

  “He’s full of shit.”

  Rafi shuddered. God, that was what made it awful. “No, he isn’t.” He shook his head and forced the words out. “He didn’t say a damn thing that wasn’t true.”

  Now Denny was pissed, jaw clenching while he bit off the words. “You’re not my piece of island ass.”

  Rafi’s voice was flat as he pulled on his clothes and emptied out his locker, shoving his shit in his backpack. The buzzing in his head was getting louder. “Close enough.”

  “No, it goddamn isn’t.”

  At the touch of a hand on his arm, Rafi swung, pushing Denny away and then freezing in horror at Denny’s yelp of pain.

  “Don’t use your fucking arm!” He’d needed a reason to yell and seized this one like it was made for him. “Are you fucking stupid?”

  “I’m not, but you are.” Denny blinked away the shininess in his eyes and didn’t flinch as he moved forward again to get in Rafi’s space. “That guy is full of shit. Don’t you listen to him.”

  “What did he say that wasn’t true, huh?” Rafi swallowed the spit that was filling his mouth. “You guys pushed for me to get this scholarship. No way I’d have even known about it without you and your family. And you know they didn’t really look for anyone else. Jesus, it was tailored for me. Diversity in rowing, my ass.”

  He stuffed his feet into his shoes, desperate to get out, to be gone, before Boomer and the other rower returned from the showers. He ignored Denny, who was arguing as if he thought words still mattered.

  “I know you think we waved a magic wand and made this happen for you, but that’s not how it works. The board was already talking about this scholarship for the last couple of years. And yeah, we talked them into a test case with someone who came with a personal recommendation. From Cash. An alumni who’d worked with you for two years. Who could speak to your character. My recommendation wouldn’t count for shit with those guys, Rafi. Jesus, I was a freshman who’d just joined the team. Even if we had been fucking, which we weren’t, that wouldn’t have done a thing for you.”

  The words kept coming and Rafi knew that Denny meant them. He meant well and believed everything he was saying. But it didn’t matter, none of it. Because Rafi had known what he was walking into, taking this scholarship he’d gotten through rigged connections, which they absolutely were. He’d known there would be people who wouldn’t like him because he was brown or gay or simply didn’t know how to fit in at an elite East Coast school.

  But he’d planned on keeping his head down and keeping some distance from Denny, determined not to be visibly relying on the guy who’d helped him get in the door in the first place.

  He’d had a fucking plan, damn it. Because he’d known exactly what the risks were.

  “Fuck.” He dug the heels of his hands
into his eye sockets. A piercing pain had taken up stabbing at the back of his right eye. “Did I even wait a week? Two? How long was it before we were fucking studying together and working out together and going to goddamn parties together?”

  “What does that matter? We weren’t doing anything wrong.” For the first time, Denny’s voice sounded young again.

  And Rafi tried to explain it, because there was no way he could let Denny’s naïve worldview continue without puncturing it with the truth. “It matters because I live in the real world, Denny, where people don’t give a shit about right or wrong. But they sure do care about what things look like.”

  Denny’s frustration was damn near a visible cloud between them. “And I don’t. I don’t give a damn what it looks like. And you shouldn’t either.”

  “You don’t give a damn that he obviously heard you take PrEP from that asshole I outed you to in the dorm?”

  Denny flinched. That one struck home. “Of course I do. But I can’t fix that. All I can do is get through. You can too. I can help you.”

  Rafi shook his head. His head was pounding now, his vision blurring. “You keep saying that, but it isn’t true. I need you to stay away from me.” He choked the words out. “I’m the one who screwed up, not you. I know that. But I can’t be around you right now.”

  “How long?” Denny asked, swallowing audibly.

  “How long what?” He knew what Denny was asking.

  “How long are you going to stay away from me this time?”

  Forever. “I don’t know.” They were most of the way through the third month of the school year and he hadn’t made any impression on his teammates other than the one he’d most wanted to avoid.

  How long would it take to fix this? To make himself his own man again?

  At the end of the school year, would he be Rafi Castro, rower and Carlisle student, or would he be Rafi Castro, Denny Winslow’s piece of island ass and token minority on the rowing team?

  “I don’t know,” he repeated. He pulled on his heavy fleece jacket and hat.

  Denny blocked him at the end of the aisle, standing on widespread feet between the bench and the wall of lockers.

  “So you’re ditching me? What happened to wanting to do anything you could to help during my rehab?”

  That one burned. Because he’d absolutely promised, over and over again, to do everything Denny needed. Rafi pictured Boomer and what it would be like to sink the edge of an oar blade into his thick neck. The violence of his anger made him shudder. He took a deep breath and banished the image.

  “I’m going back to my room,” Rafi told him. “I’m going to talk to the guys. We’ll work out a schedule to make sure you have help around the clock.”

  Denny slammed a locker door shut in his face. The sound rang like a rifle shot through the room. Anyone who hadn’t known they were there certainly did now. “Fuck you for a coward, Rafael Castro. I don’t need your help.”

  But he did. Denny needed him, and Rafi was walking away. It was unforgivable. It was almost the worst thing he could imagine. Staying, and never being able to look anyone on campus in the eye again, was the only thing that was worse than this. But he didn’t expect Denny to get it. As much as Denny had said that he understood, he never really had. He’d simply been more patient than Rafi. Had been willing to sit on the sidelines until he could wear Rafi down and get him to break his own rules. But Rafi could still be swept under by the heart behind that naïveté. So he said the only thing he’d never admitted before now. The one thing he’d known since pressing Denny up against the railing and kissing him senseless by the lake in Chicago.

  “I love you.” He couldn’t look him in the eye, though. Rafi stepped over the low bench in the middle of the aisle and walked past Denny, keeping his eyes on the floor. “I love you, Denny. But I can’t… I can’t let them be right about me.”

  He left the locker room to the sound of a fist punching metal and an animal howl of rage and frustration.

  Chapter Twelve

  Disaster struck five minutes before Rafi headed out the door for the informal indoor rowing regatta with three other local schools that was the last event before everyone headed out for Thanksgiving next week. Indoor racing on the ergs sounded weird, and this wasn’t even an official event, just a race for bragging rights. But Rafi had expected to shine so hard under Coach Lawson’s watchful eye, and it stung hard to miss it. He hadn’t hesitated to send the group text to Lawson, Ted and Austin, though.

  Family emergency. Going home. Don’t know when I’ll be back. Will call when I know more.

  He was shoving clothes in a backpack when Denny pounded through the open door of the suite and into his room. Gossip traveled like wildfire in the boathouse.

  They hadn’t spoken since Tuesday night at the gym. Avoiding each other entirely was impossible. But Rafi had been almost glad, guiltily, for the injury that kept Denny in the launch boat while the eights were on the water, doing their drills. And he’d taken to doing the rest of his indoor workouts, ergs and weights, at odd times over the rest of the week. Three days of tiptoeing around campus with his shoulders hunched and his eyes down, earbuds in to block everyone out as the cold wind swept down from Canada and scoured the campus. Rafi had been looking forward to pouring his unhappiness into the Saturday morning races.

  “What’s going on?” Denny demanded, hair sticking out crazily. Still having a hard time with the one-handed styling. Rafi stared at him hungrily for a moment before pulling his gaze away with effort. “Austin said you were going home.”

  “Yup.” He returned to his haphazard packing. No time.

  “What? You can’t.” The words ripped out of Denny’s mouth before he even asked what was wrong, which pissed Rafi off. Of course, he was already practically vibrating with pissed-offness right now, so some of that wasn’t Denny.

  “Lola is in the hospital.” Denny knew she was Rafi’s favorite, the sister he was closest to in both age and temperament.

  “Shit.” Denny’s voice softened immediately. Rafi heard him take a step. “Is she okay? What happened?”

  “She’s…” He couldn’t say them. The words Mari had spoken to him over the phone. The things that were torn and broken and bleeding on his youngest older sister made him sick to his stomach. He couldn’t get the picture out of his head of her battered body. Skin had never seemed such a pathetically weak thing to hold all of someone’s insides together. What kind of ridiculous evolutionary fuck-up was that? People should be made of plate armor or turtle shells. Anything that would bounce off pavement with barely a scratch, instead of peel away like butter under a hot knife when skidding across tarmac. “She was in a motorcycle accident.”

  “With José? Is he okay? Is she?” Rafi looked up then. Denny had taken a step back, his good hand raised as if to brace himself for another hit.

  He’d met Rafi’s sisters and Lola’s boyfriend during his months in Chicago, and had developed a visible affection for the loud, noisy family that was so unlike his own. Rafi was pretty sure their living room couch still bore the outline of Denny’s long frame from all the nights he had slept there during his last weeks in the city, when even Rafi couldn’t ignore the rising sexual tension between the two of them. He’d never been so glad in his life as the day Denny turned eighteen and Rafi could stop worrying his resolve was going to slip and he’d find himself on his knees before an underage kid.

  He zipped up one pocket and shoved his laptop into the remaining open section. Who knew if he’d even be able to concentrate enough in the hospital to finish the paper he had due before Thanksgiving break. “José’s got broken bones. He’ll be okay. He was wearing leathers.”

  Which his stupid sister would never wear. Too hot in the summer, and I’m not gonna go riding when it’s cold enough to freeze my ass off anyways. Her voice in his head was loud and sassy. Unhurt.

  He supposed he
should be grateful that José steadfastly refused to let Lola on the bike without a helmet, no matter how much she swore she wanted to ride with the wind in her hair.

  “I could fucking kill her,” he grunted out, punching a spare pair of jeans into the bottom of his bag, then shoving some clean T-shirts from the pile on his dresser on top of the jeans.

  “You’re mad, though. Does that mean she’s okay?”

  “I don’t know. The docs have her. They think it’s mostly broken bones, and a shitload of whatever you call road rash when your skin is pretty much gone. But they’re not sure yet if she’s bleeding internally.”

  “Oh shit.” He could feel Denny hovering behind him. Imagined him reaching out with a hand, wanting to touch Rafi, to reassure. All the muscles in Rafi’s back tensed, frozen. He didn’t know what he hoped for. To be touched or to be left alone.

  “They think probably not,” he said reluctantly, because every instinct in him screamed this could be bad, really, really bad, even though Mari had told him that the doctors were reassuring them. “But they want to be careful in case they’ve missed something.”

  “But they think she’s going to be okay.” Denny fumbled his way over to Rafi’s desk chair and sat on it heavily. Rafi let out a breath. “Jesus, thank God.”

  Thank God, indeed. Rafi had spent more time praying in his head since getting off the phone with Mari than he had since before he’d gotten confirmed and stopped going to church.

  “When’s your flight?” Denny asked.

  “Don’t know. Mari’s gonna text me when she finds one.”

  “Okay, I have a stupid question. Don’t get mad.” Denny stood up again. “If they’re pretty sure she’s going to be okay, then can you go straight to the airport from the race?”

  Rafi imagined the look on his face could have stopped a champion boat in its tracks on the water. “Don’t.”