Level Hands: Bend or Break, Book 4

by Amy Jo Cousins

  See how he is? Deliberately missing the point, again.

  “I’ve got open-ended tickets ready for us,” Denny said. It took a moment for the words to sink in.

  Not for Lola. “Good. You pack his shit tonight, okay? I’ll explain what’s what to my stupid, wonderful brother.”

  “I’ll give you some time alone.” The kiss Denny pressed to her forehead made Lola’s eyes shine. He whispered in her ear, loud enough for Rafi to hear every word. “Don’t worry about him. I’ve got him.”

  And Rafi could hear it in his voice, how deeply Denny meant it. I’ve got him. For once, he didn’t feel the need to fight that. Maybe it was being so scared for Lola, or overwhelmed with trying to figure out what happened next, but for the first time ever, he understood how important this was for Denny. It wasn’t showing off or taking over or whatever crap Rafi’s brain had been afraid of. Denny needed to take care of him because that was how Denny loved. Rafi remembered all the times he’d shut Denny down when Denny had tried to help him, and regret flooded him.

  “I see it. Gracias. You’re a good one, Denny.”

  After his boyfriend left the room—the boyfriend who loved him and needed to help him both—Lola wiped her eyes and turned to Rafi. “Time to go, hermanito.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You can. I gotta concentrate on figuring out how fast I can get into rehab and get my ass walking around again. Dios mio, that’s gonna suck.” For a moment, Lola looked tired, the purple shadows under her eyes like bruises. Then she lifted her chin, and her smile might have wobbled, but it held. “But I can’t focus on that stuff if I’m all worried about you and what classes you’re missing and losing your scholarship. You guys have been rock stars for a week, but you have to go.”

  “Fuck my scholarship.”

  But his sisters were a united front, and Lola definitely knew her part. “Come closer and say that again so I can smack your face.”

  He moved to the edge of her bed. She reached out with an open hand and laid it against the side of his face.

  “Go back to school, ’Lito. Imma be just fine back here. They’re gonna send me home in a couple of days, and Sofi can make her spreadsheet work without you. We both got shit to do.”

  “Yeah, but your shit’s a lot harder than mine,” he said, knowing it was true. He’d seen enough fellow student athletes with injuries over the past few years to know that recovery from an injury of any kind was a long and grueling process. And Lola’s injuries were multiple. He couldn’t imagine how much pain she was in, and how hard she was going to have to work.

  “Guess it’s lucky I’m such a tough bitch, huh?” The wobble was back in the smile, and she blinked rapidly for a minute until she could speak again.

  “Nah,” he said, and touched the tip of her nose with one finger. It was one place he was sure wouldn’t cause her pain. “That’s not luck. You worked hard for that.”

  Lola sniffled and snorted, and by the time Denny came back in the room, they were both giggling, cracking up every time they caught each other’s gazes even though there wasn’t anything to laugh about. But sometimes you had to laugh because you were done with the crying. Just done. Lola complained that he was seriously causing her pain now, clutching her side and demanding Denny get him out of her room. Rafi promised to call later that night to let her know what flight they would be taking, secretly hoping there wouldn’t be seats available on the holiday weekend.

  Denny managed to score them two seats on a late flight Saturday night, with two layovers. It would take them almost as long to fly as it would have to drive to Boston, but they’d get back to campus on Sunday with enough time to crash and catch up on sleep before Monday morning practice demanded their presence.

  Saying goodbye to everyone took most of Saturday, because Rafi broke away for a long talk with Nurse Nikki, who had found him as her shift ended on Saturday morning to say goodbye and give him one last chance to pester her with questions. Talk about a tough job. Sofi and Nita were there, stopping between shifts at work and figuring out who was going home that night to sleep in a bed. But eventually he and Denny were on the road to O’Hare, Mari coming with them so she could drive her car back to the hospital after they left.

  “I didn’t ask,” Rafi said out of the blue as he merged into the highway traffic. “When you showed up at the hospital in the middle of the night, I was so surprised. Glad to see you.” He glanced at Denny between changing lanes on the highway. Mari was out cold in the backseat, where she’d slumped in the corner almost as soon as he’d turned the key in the ignition. “I was never so glad to see anyone in my life. But why?”

  Why, when I’d told you to stay away from me… Why, when I’d said such terrible things about your family… He couldn’t finish any of the questions, not even in his head.

  Denny cocked his head to one side. “Why did I come?”

  “Yeah. I mean…” Okay, now he felt kind of stupid, because obviously Denny had come because he thought Rafi needed help. Needed someone. And he knew there was no one else at Carlisle who really knew him. But that wasn’t enough to get a guy on a plane with no notice, was it? “Did you even make it to the indoor race?”

  “Yeah. We killed ’em. The guys especially.” Rafi knew Denny meant his suitemates, although Austin wouldn’t have been coxing at an indoor race. He didn’t doubt his littlest friend had been there, screaming his head off to cheer them on, though. “Austin and Vinnie and Bob said to give your sister their best and all that. I forgot to mention.”

  “They’re good guys.” He’d been lucky as hell in the roommate lottery, and he knew it. The reminder that there were people who knew and liked him waiting back at Carlisle, not just those who scorned him, helped to ease the tension that had started rising last night while they’d packed. “I know it sucks that I let them down. And Lawson probably isn’t too pleased with me either. Puts a cramp in our plan to break me into the senior boat. I’m sorry.” He knew that had been important to Denny.

  “Don’t be. Listen, I know I said some shitty things when I found you packing. I’m sorry. My brain was still in crew space, and I was pissed you were going to miss your chance. But there’s plenty of time to show her what you can do,” Denny reassured him.

  The thing was, Rafi wasn’t sure he needed that reassurance anymore.

  “You know, I don’t think I really care about crew that much.” Confessing it felt like taking his first steps into a minefield, holding his breath.

  “Ya think?” Denny’s voice said, This is not a state secret.

  He kept his eyes on the road, too nervous to look at Denny. “I mean, I like it and all. The team is great and it’s fun to compete, but…”

  “But other things are more important to you and push it till you puke isn’t really your style?” Denny’s voice danced with the edge of humor, teasing him.

  “Yeah.” There was that relief again. He was getting too used to feeling it around Denny. Too used to looking for it, to going to him when Rafi needed that comfort of being understood and not judged.

  It made him nervous, how easy it was to be with this guy who didn’t have nearly enough in common with him to make things easy.

  Denny shrugged, shoulder brushing against Rafi’s. “I get it. Crew is awesome, but it doesn’t have to be the end all, be all for everyone on the team.”

  “But what about my scholarship?” That nagging worry never left him.

  Genuine concern flashed over Denny’s face, followed by confusion. “I don’t know. You have to be on the team, right? But it’s not like there are, I don’t know, performance goals or anything, right?”

  “I guess not.” He knew there wasn’t. He’d read that offer a hundred times. But there was a catch. “It’s only a one-year scholarship, though. I have to apply every year to renew, and there’s no guarantee. I’m not sure I’m safe if I’m not trying my best. Turning out t
o be the best.” He sounded like an afterschool special, damn it.

  “But there’s ‘try your best like a regular person’, and ‘try your best like an insanely competitive crew fanatic who’d rather die than lose his seat in the boat’. And there’s nothing that says you have to do that last one, right?”

  “I guess.” He kept repeating that. Even without being told that he needed to be the best, he’d have pushed himself to extremes. It hadn’t occurred to him that he didn’t owe the foundation extraordinary effort. They were giving him so much money—so much money, like, he couldn’t believe how much money they were giving him, or rather, the school, on his behalf—that he’d assumed he’d owed them his all.

  “It’s only a scholarship, Rafi. They didn’t buy your soul.”

  For most of his time at Carlisle, it had felt like they had.

  “You know, most kids get scholarships and they’re happy. Then they go to college and live their lives. And they try to keep up their grades, or whatever they need to do not to lose that scholarship money, but they don’t spend their every waking hour wondering how they can be the best of the best. Or how to keep the peace between their roommates, or keep them out of trouble.”

  Rafi didn’t say anything, brain churning. He didn’t think he did any of those things.

  “Is this part of your ‘I have to take care of the world’ thing?” Rafi glanced at Denny, who pulled his eyebrows together. “Yeah. I noticed your obsessive-compulsive need to play den mother to everyone within arm’s reach was on volume ten this week.”

  Rafi reared his head back. “I’m not mothering people.”

  “Would that be a bad thing?”

  “Yes!” Though his knee-jerk horror at the idea maybe wasn’t the most flattering statement about him. “I mean, not that mothering is a bad thing. Or something people, men, shouldn’t do. I just…I’m not trying to babysit anybody.” Although his behavior after Denny had been injured sure did look the tiniest bit obsessive in hindsight. Especially when followed by his push to quit school and move back home for Lola.

  “I know. My babysitters never did half the things you do to me.” Denny dragged his gaze down Rafi’s chest until it landed in his crotch.

  “Dude. Gross. My sisters babysat me.”

  “Sorry, not sorry,” Denny said, smiling lasciviously.

  Rafi shook his head. They were five minutes out from the airport. “So. You came because…”

  “You take care of people.” Now Denny was the one who turned away to focus on the road. His voice got quieter, and he shifted back to face Rafi again. His gaze was like heat on the side of Rafi’s face. “Your boyfriend would like to take care of you.”

  Rafi waited for the panic to hit. For the need to get away, to run far and fast in the opposite direction from everything Denny meant with those few simple words. A part of him expected panic even now.

  But wrapped around him like a leash was the memory of reaching for someone in the night and finding Denny there. Of peacock-blue boxer-briefs dancing the bachata and frying salami in the kitchen. Of this new moment, when it turned out that Denny knew how to screw up and apologize for having been thoughtless on the morning Rafi had first heard about Lola’s accident, which was something Rafi should probably learn from him.

  “You’re better at this than I am. Being together,” Rafi told him, needing to share this thing he was finally beginning to realize. Denny deserved to know that Rafi was figuring it out. Slowly.

  “You think?” Denny drawled, but then dropped the teasing tone and spoke to Rafi seriously. Because this mattered. “You’ve dealt with a shit ton of new and scary stuff this year. That’s hard for anyone. But I think I could make some of it easier for you, if we try to deal with it together.”

  “Okay,” he said, and looked over to find Denny watching him, biting his lip like he was trying to hold back a smile. Close enough. He turned back to the highway, nervous and happy in equal measure, feeling like they’d come to some new sort of understanding in this gap in time from his regular school life. “Okay. We can do that.”

  “It’s not going to be that easy. You know that, right? We’ve been hiding out here, but back at school, all the same shit that freaked you out before is waiting for us.”

  Rafi nodded firmly. “Yeah. I’m nowhere near figuring out how I’m going to deal. But this is it for me. The two of us. I want you to know that.” Guilt swamped him as he looked over his shoulder to merge closer to the curb in the drop-off lanes at Departures. “Man, I know this is anticlimactic as shit. Telling you in the car with my sister zonked out in the backseat. I’m sorry.”

  Denny tilted his head, looking like he wanted to be happy but wasn’t sure he trusted the feeling. Rafi knew that was his fault. He parked the car and turned in his seat to face his boyfriend.

  “Listen. I’m a fucked-up asshole sometimes. Most of the time,” he admitted at Denny’s short laugh. “But I’m not dumb enough to miss what this means. I’m in. I’m yours. If you want me, and I’m assuming you weren’t living at the hospital this week out of pity, you know?”

  Denny nodded. “I do. And you know what would make this way less anticlimactic?”

  “What?” Tell me. I’ll do anything.

  “The part where you actually say ‘I love you’, and then don’t, you know, leave.” Denny looked down at his hands in his lap, and then up at Rafi again.

  Heat flashed over Rafi as he remembered saying those words. “Holy shit. I told you I loved you in a locker room, and then I left you.” He thunked his skull against the headrest. “I am the worst. I suck. Why do you even want to be with me?”

  “Well,” Denny said lightly, but Rafi could hear the hurt running like an undercurrent in his voice. “When you’re not being the worst, you’re pretty much the best.”

  Rafi leaned forward and put his hands on Denny’s face, holding him still and looking him in the eye. “I love you. I’m not going anywhere.” He leaned back for a second, sure enough now to tease. “I mean, except for the part where we’re getting on a plane soon and actually, you know, leaving.”

  Denny smiled at him and tugged at Rafi’s jacket, pulling him close for a kiss that didn’t sizzle, but instead fired up a warm glow that burned like banked coals in his belly. Rafi didn’t even think about how loud his happy sigh was until Mari’s voice piped up from the backseat.

  “Can I wake up now, please? Or are you two gonna skip that whole plane thing to blow each other in the front seat?”

  “Oh my God. You’re my sister. Don’t say stuff like that, Mari.” Rafi stuck his fingers in his ears while Mari laughed at him and gave him more shit as she came around to the driver’s-side door.

  Her hug nearly cracked his ribs.

  “You call me or text me every day. Tell me the truth about Lola,” he commanded as he hugged her back.

  “I promise. You make sure to do some truth-telling of your own,” she said back, which meant she’d been listening to more than just today’s conversation between him and Denny.

  He kissed her goodbye and grabbed their bags while Denny got out of the car and said goodbye to Mari next. The ever-vigilant Chicago airport cops were shouting at them to move their vehicle by the time they stepped up on the curb and waved at Mari as she drove away.

  Time to head home. And this time he wasn’t confused about where home was.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Back on campus, nothing was quite as simple as that however. The pressure had started grating on him as soon as they’d set foot on campus after the taxi ride from the airport, which Denny had insisted on paying for. Ignoring the money stuff was a no-brainer for their first day back, although Rafi was annoyed by Denny dropping a hundred and twenty-five bucks on a cab ride Rafi couldn’t help pay for. Back on the quad, Rafi had carried Denny’s bag up to his room for him, not quite ready to walk across campus by himself. A tingling pain had set u
p shop between his shoulder blades somewhere between the Hartford airport and their drop-off at Denny’s dorm.

  Denny hustled him out the door in five minutes flat, however.

  “Go. Nap. We can hook up for dinner. You’ll need every hour of sleep you can make up before tomorrow morning.”

  Rafi braced himself to run into people he knew on the walk back to his dorm, but kept his head down and didn’t notice anyone. For ten whole minutes, he thought he might make it through the next month or two without a crazy amount of drama.

  The first news to greet him when he set foot back in the suite was Austin’s pre-Thanksgiving bust by the RA for smoking pot in their common room. Their cox was up before the disciplinary committee this week, and was currently hiding in the library, Vinnie said, because Austin wasn’t an idiot. There was a reason he hadn’t mentioned the incident to Rafi or Denny in any of his dozens of texts this past week.

  That news cut the happy reunion phase short.

  Real short.

  “With the fucking door unlocked,” Rafi fumed into his phone for the seventeenth time. Denny had been listening to him freak out and rage about Austin’s stupidity for half an hour already. “Bob and Vinnie already had to go in and get lectured by Coach about risking their spots on the team. I’m sure she’ll be ready to rip me a new one first thing tomorrow.”

  “You weren’t even on campus when it happened. It’s going to be okay,” Denny reminded him. Again. Then he asked a new question. “Is Austin upset?”

  “Austin?” Rafi heard his own voice rise to a shout. “I don’t know! Vinnie says he’s hiding from me. Oh, and get this. That it’s a first offense, so Austin isn’t too worried. Which means you know that fucker Boomer is going to be talking about how my ghetto ass brought drugs into our suite.” He’d been picturing it in his head ever since hearing about the bust, imagining every shitty thing Boomer was definitely going to say about him now.

  “Listen, Austin fucked up, no doubt. But you don’t have to be paranoid.”