"What are you doing?"

"This morning I had my lesson; now it's time for yours."

Her cheeks flush. "A lesson in what exactly?"

Her wide-eyed, innocent look goes straight to my dick, and she can no doubt feel it vying for her attention at her hip.

"Get your mind out of the gutter, Brenner. I'm not teaching you anything like that."

I could be imagining it, but I think for a brief moment she looks disappointed. And fuck . . . I might be making a liar out of myself very soon.

"Lesson number one. Everything wrong in the world is not your fault."

Her brows furrow.

"I know that."

"No you don't. You take everything on yourself. That protest at the shelter. When people weren't listening, you thought it was your responsibility to make them. Matt getting arrested. I was there . . . I heard you apologizing again and again to him."

"But he's my friend, and he-"

"Is an adult who makes his own decisions."

"But-"

"When I asked you about your breakup with Henry, you shared the blame. Like it was somehow your fault that he's a fucking idiot. And now you're apologizing to me, again for something I did. Not you."

"But-"

"New rule. Every time you apologize, I get to shut you up."

Her eyes widen. "And how are you going to do that?"

"I've got a few ideas."

She presses her lips together tightly, like she's worried she might just spontaneously apologize. I grin, enjoying the emotions playing across her face. Nerves. Curiosity. Indignation. Embarrassment.

For the first time in my life, I want to ask her questions, want to dig until I find the thoughts responsible for each of those expressions. Normally, I steer clear of questions. Getting to know a girl just complicates the whole exchange.

I promised Dylan simple. I convinced her that was what she needed, and now I'm starting to think it's not at all what I want.

Chapter 16.

Dylan Needing a break from the intensity of being this close to him, I awkwardly climb off his lap and say, "I'm going to grab some pillows for you. Is it okay if I go in your room?"

"Go ahead," he calls back.

I take in a calming breath and scale the stairs. My eyes flick to the restroom door where we kissed for the first time, and the back of my neck flashes with heat. I remember the way his hand had curled there, holding me against him, even though nothing could have made me move away in that moment. He'd done the same thing on the couch downstairs, and part of me had really hoped that was where he was going with that lesson. I blink and shake off the memory. But I can't get the nerves to flee as I open his bedroom door. I don't know what I expected to find . . . drug paraphernalia, condom wrappers, dirty clothes.

There's none of that. The room is clean and neat. Even his bed is made. It's simple, sparsely furnished with no real decorations, unless you count sports equipment, and a few Rusk mementos. He's got four pillows on his bed, two on each side, and I grab them all. With them held tight to my chest, I breathe in the scent they carry, clean and masculine with just a little spice.

I take one last look around his room, and imagine how things might have gone differently if I'd followed him in here during the party. Would I ever have seen him again? Would that have been it? Or would that have just been the first of several times, like he's implied?

I shake my head because I'm being stupid. While I'm up here imagining things that can't be changed, he's down there in pain and uncomfortable. I rush down the stairs and back into the living room to find him with his eyes closed. He's removed the Rusk T-shirt he was wearing earlier, leaving him in just a white, fitted undershirt and his black boxer briefs. I swallow, square my shoulders, and walk up beside him. I drop all of the pillows on the ground but one, and then touch my fingers to his shoulders.

He looks exhausted and I say quietly, "Lean up."

He plants his hands beside him on the couch and pulls himself a few inches forward. I settle the pillow behind him. I'm still adjusting it when he leans back onto it, so I end up leaning over him, one arm on either side of his head, trying to straighten it so he's comfortable. I try not to think about how his head is even with my chest, but who am I kidding? It's all I'm thinking about.

"Now for your legs," I say. I remove the ice packs and place them on the coffee table. He lifts his feet for me, but only a couple of inches. I hook an arm under his calves to lift them higher so I can fit all three pillows under his knees. I hear him wince, and I pause for a second to look at the swelling before I replace the ice. His thighs are thick and muscled, and his knees are so inflamed that they're only a little narrower than the rest of his leg. I make sure the hand towels are wrapped neatly around the cold packs, and then place them back where they were.

I look for something, anything else to do. "Blanket?" I ask. I glance around the room and see one tossed on the floor beside a recliner. I pick it up and shake it out as he says, "I'm fine."

I bring the blanket back over with me, but he turns it down. I hug it closer to me and sink down onto the floor beside him. I lean back against the couch and stare straight ahead.

"I really am sorry. I promise I won't make you-"

I don't get the rest of my thought out because he sits up on one elbow, grips the back of my neck, and bends over to cover my mouth with his. His lips are warm, and when I don't immediately open my mouth, he nips my bottom lip. I suck in a breath, and his tongue sweeps past my lips. My whole body braces for the onslaught that is kissing Silas Moore, but this time, he's soft and sweet and patient, like we have all the time in the world. When I follow his tongue back into his mouth, he groans. The sound vibrates against me, and the sensation echoes out over the rest of my body. I shiver, and he pulls back until I feel only his breath against me.

"I told you I would shut you up the next time you apologized."

He slides his hand around to cup my jaw and kisses me again. Once. Twice. And a third time. Hard. Then soft. Just my bottom lip. The corner of my mouth. His lips play over mine like he's trying to uncover every possible way to kiss me and check them off the list one by one. I open my mouth immediately when his tongue flicks out, but I taste him for only a second before he pulls away, wincing. He falls back against his pillow, and I notice for the first time that one of his cold packs has fallen on the floor, and the other is lost somewhere in the couch.

"Why didn't you tell me you were hurting?"

"Because then I would have had to stop."

My heart is a spinning top in my chest, and now that he's not kissing me and things are slowing down, I can feel myself about to topple out of control. I shake my head and get the ice packs back where they belong.

Now I just need to get everything else back where it belongs, too.

Except I'm starting to think that the idea of "belonging" anywhere is false. We go through our whole lives thinking that we belong in one place and not in another. We think certain ideas and actions have to be relegated to the tiny little boxes we place them in. What if we just react instead? What if we take whatever the world gives us and instead of focusing on what it isn't, we enjoy what it is?

I lean back against the couch and don't think as I begin to talk. I tell him about my journalism major, and how social media is changing the way news happens, changing the way the world interacts and reacts. He tells me about football, and how it's been the only thing he's wanted since a coach plucked him out of a standard PE class his freshman year. He pulls the rubber band from my hair, and I lay my head back as he spreads the long strands out over his chest. He combs his fingers through the waves carefully while he tells me about going to the state championship with his high school team and then losing.

"Before that . . . the world felt so damn small. Like a pair of shoes that didn't fit right. We lost and there were all these guys on my team, some I liked and some I didn't, and they were all crying and falling to their knees, and I was just standing there staring at the stadium around us, and all the people that came out to see these two tiny schools duke it out. And it didn't feel like I lost. Instead it was like I kicked open some door, and crawled out of my cage, and could stand up straight for the first time in my life."

"So that's how you knew I was suffocating. That had been you, too."

He picks up a lock of hair and twists it, and I shiver again.

"I think we were suffocating in different ways, but yeah. I guess that was it."

His hand in my hair has me so relaxed that I could fall asleep right there beside him on the floor. I close my eyes and turn my head to the side to rest against the cushion. Quietly, I ask, "You don't feel that way anymore?"

"I didn't. But lately the world is starting to feel pretty fucking small again."

"So kick open another door."

He continues playing with my hair with his left hand, but his right slips down to drag a knuckle over my cheek.

"I'm trying."

I WAKE UP when his roommates come home, but Silas sleeps right through it. I take them both in the kitchen to explain what happened.

"Hold up," Torres says. "Silas is doing community service? Is this because of the whole arrest thing? Or the fight with Keyon? Is Coach making him do it?"

"No. He's doing it because he's trying to get better."

The other roommate, Isaiah, is more serious, more intimidating. "Better from what?"

"I don't know. Something has him all stressed-out, though. And now he's hurt on top of that, so I'd appreciate it if you didn't add to that."

Torres cracks the knuckles of one hand against his other palm. "We got this. Silas is our boy. You don't need to worry about us, Captain Planet."

I roll my eyes, and go back out to find my keys where I left them on the coffee table. Silas looks younger when he's asleep. I mean, he's still beautiful and powerful, but that dangerous quality that had both repelled and attracted me from the very beginning is missing.

Or maybe it's just because I'm beginning to understand him. When I look at him now I don't see the sexy stranger with bloodied knuckles. I just see Silas.

I remove the cold packs from his knees that have melted and gone soft. I take them back into the kitchen and return them to the freezer. Torres is gone, but Isaiah is there watching me.

"Why are you doing this?" he asks.

"Because he's my friend."

That's what I say. I'm nowhere naive enough to believe things are as simple as that.

"Silas doesn't know how to be friends with girls. Either he'll break your heart or you'll break his."

I don't have an answer to that because it's the fear in the back of my mind that I haven't allowed myself to voice. But I'm not sure that's a good enough reason to stay away anymore. If I let all my fears become locked doors, then it will be exactly as Silas said. My life will get smaller and smaller until nothing else fits except me and the empty space from all the things I've let pass me by.

I'm figuring out what I want by trial and error, and maybe that's not the best way, but it's all I've got. All I know is that I need to be my own person, someone shaped by my desire, not fear of disappointing the people who are supposed to love me.

I just have to stay realistic, and I won't get hurt. From the very beginning, Silas has told me to keep things simple. That's the only reason I can do any of this. Because as long as we're just having fun, I've not made any irreversible decisions.

I'm just . . . exploring. Whatever is happening between Silas and me is a stepping-stone between the old me and the new me I'm working to find. It's meant to be temporary. As long as I remember that, we'll be fine.

I'll be fine.

I say goodbye to Torres and Brookes, and then make my way home still thinking about the things that Silas and I talked about. He's different than I expected him to be. So different. His tidy room. The gentle way he touched my hair. The hurt and the hope in his voice as he talked about football.

Silas might be less refined than Henry. Less traditional. Less open.

But even so . . . he feels like more.

And that's how I know I'm on the right path. It's not what's on the surface that matters-not in other people or myself.

Chapter 17.

Dylan Maybe we could do a letter-writing campaign?" I ask.

Javier steeples his fingers down at the head of the table and looks at me. His accented voice is soft when he replies, "They didn't listen to the petition, so I doubt they'll listen to letters."

"So we just do nothing?" I look around at the rest of our student activism group, and I can tell I'm the only one who wants to keep pushing the subject, and it makes me angry. "These are people's lives at stake. If this shelter closes, the one at St. Mary's only has thirty beds a night available. What about all the other people who don't fit? What about them?"

"Dylan." I can see Javier is trying to be kind, but he's done with this conversation. Matt places a hand on my knee beneath the table, but I keep going.

"There are whole families that need help. Children who do poorly in school because they didn't get a good night's sleep or any food the night before."

"You're preaching to the choir, kid," Matt murmurs to me.

"No, I'm preaching to a group that's given up."

"We do not give up," Javier answers sharply. I forget sometimes that he's been doing this a lot longer than any of the rest of us. He and his parents immigrated to the United States from Argentina when he was twelve after his brother was killed during a political riot. He's a quiet, thoughtful kind of guy, but he can be pretty damn serious when he wants to. "We stop, rethink, reevaluate. And we face facts. Nothing will change if we are the only ones fighting. So we find support from more prominent members of the community. We wait for classes to start back in two weeks and come back at it then."

"But the shelter is closed now. What do those people do in the meantime? While we're waiting?"

"I don't have that answer. But we must be smart about this. We cannot effect change with sheer force of will."

He's right. I know he is, but that doesn't make it any easier to hear. We could spend every day protesting outside that shelter or City Hall or wherever, and it wouldn't change a thing.

Because the world isn't fair. It just fucking isn't.

So I stay silent when Javier asks, "Any other business before we adjourn?"

A senior named Alana passes out stacks of flyers for a lecture at one of the local libraries about religious awareness and tolerance. I take a handful and promise to drop them off at a few businesses around my apartment and my parents' house. Javier lets us know that at the next meeting, we'll begin talking about state legislature elections, and what kind of stuff we can do on campus to get more students to vote. Then he calls the meeting to a close.

While the others say their goodbyes, I take off. Matt is hot on my heels.

"Hold up there, spicy pickle."

"Don't start, Matt, not if you want your organs to remain in their correct locations."