Things move fast after that. His hands smooth over the curve of my ass, and I find my chest pressed to the door just like this whole thing started.

“This is gonna be hard and fast, babe. Can you handle that?”

My only answer is to reach one arm behind me and hook it around the back of his neck. He uses his foot to nudge mine a little farther apart. His fingers dig into my hips, and he pulls them back just a little so my back arches. Then he’s pushing inside me, and I hold my breath.

It’s different like this. Not just because we’re standing up, and I’m facing away. He hits something inside me that makes my legs go a little weak, and for a few moments, I think I won’t be able to stay standing.

But he holds me tight, and the door keeps me from falling forward. And just when I catch my breath, he moves. He slides back and then in, hard, and I cry out. I can’t help it. And each time I think I’ve got it under control, he thrusts and another noise rips from my mouth before I can even think about stopping it.

And it’s so good, I’ve forgotten how to breathe.

And I don’t even care.

TEN MINUTES LATER, we’re curled up na**d in his bed, his big body curved around mine, and my heart is still beating fast.

“So what lesson was that exactly?”

He laughs, and I feel his chest vibrate against my back.

“That particular lesson was about the fact that your ass drives me crazy.”

“Even crazier than my mouth?”

“All of you,” he whispers against the back of my neck. “Every single thing about you gets to me, digs deep.”

He slides an arm around my waist and up through the valley between my breast. His wrist presses directly over my racing heart, and his hand curls around my shoulder, holding me snug against him. It feels both strange and normal to be held against him like this. I would never have thought there would be any kind of intimacy after the kind of sex we just had, but with Silas . . . it just works.

Then I go and screw it all up.

“Can you answer my question now?”

He hums behind me, and his reply sounds groggy, like he’s about to fall asleep even though the sun’s not even down. “What’s your question?”

“The question. The very first one I asked you.”

He tenses behind me, and the arm he has looped around my body falls away. He rolls onto his back, and I miss the warmth of his skin against mine.

But I need to know this.

He seems like a completely different guy than the Silas I met a few weeks ago. He’s happy and funny and sweet, and I haven’t seen even a glimpse of the anger that got him into so much trouble.

But I’m not naive enough to think it isn’t there. And I’m not doing him any favors by pretending along with him.

“I waited,” I say. “I gave you time. But now I’m asking you again, Silas. What is it that scares you? What is it about Levi and your hometown and football that always puts you so on edge?”

I hear him sigh behind me, and I want to turn over to see his face, but I think maybe this way will be easier for him. Less pressure.

“I’m scared of failing,” he says. “That’s it. Nothing special.”

“Failing?” I do turn over then because I’m calling bullshit. “And that’s what you wouldn’t tell me the first time I asked?”

“I’m not smart, Dylan. Or rich. Or particularly talented at anything besides football. I lose my spot on the team, I lose my only shot at a decent future. I’m sorry if I didn’t want to say that to a girl I just met.” He leans close and kisses me. Short. Perfunctory. Like he’s trying to shut me up. “A girl whose ass drove me crazy even then.”

He drags his mouth down to my neck, but I know a diversionary tactic when I see one. He’s not telling me the truth. Or at least he’s not telling me all of it.

I slide away and mumble, “I have to go to the bathroom.” I pull on one of his T-shirts and my underwear, and I escape out of his bedroom and into the bathroom across the hall.

The bathroom where everything started.

That is, if you don’t count the police station.

I face myself in the mirror, and I want to be annoyed that he still won’t open up to me. I mean, I can infer the basics. He’s running from his past. I just don’t know why. The only thing in his life pre-Rusk he’s ever talked about is football. He’s not mentioned any family or friends or anything.

But even knowing that . . . I can’t muster any anger over him closing me off. Because how can I ask him to deal with his past, when I, too, am so good at pretending mine doesn’t exist?

Whatever I’m asking him to dig up is no doubt messy. It’s probably painful. And God knows, I get the appeal of trying to leave that kind of thing in your past. I’ve always told myself that it was pointless to drag up stuff like that when it can’t be changed.

But I think that’s Silas’s problem. He thinks that because it can’t be changed, the way he feels about it can’t be changed, either.

And maybe it’s time I take a little of my own medicine and face the things I can’t change. Maybe then I’ll know how to better help him.

Chapter 23

Silas

I don’t hear from Dylan for three days. She never dropped by. Never texted me about helping with some charity or nonprofit or anything. I texted her, but she never answered. By Saturday evening, two nights before we start back to school, my patience has all dried up. Life is shitty enough with football how it is, I’m not going to just let her ignore me. I decide to just show up at her apartment and make her talk to me, but the problem is I only have a vague idea of where she lives. I know the street, and I’m pretty sure about which complex it is, but I’ve got no earthly clue which apartment it is. So instead, I get a hold of her friend Matt, and he gives me her address.

When I leave the house that evening, I’m all set to storm over to her apartment and bang on her door until she talks to me, but I pull up short when I get to my truck.

She’s already here.

She’s wearing a dress that looks like an oversized men’s T-shirt, has her hair braided over one shoulder, and her face scrubbed free of makeup. Leaning against my car door with her arms crossed over her middle and her hair down, she looks so subdued. Normally, she’s sunshine. She’s light and happy and unsinkable. Today, it’s like her flame has been snuffed out.