Free Level Hands: Bend or Break, Book 4 by Amy Jo Cousins Page A

him up until he almost laughed with little-kid enthusiasm.
    Then he’d tried to go for a bike ride.
    He couldn’t get off campus.
    The Midwest prairie hadn’t prepared him for the challenge of dealing with hills, even in low gear. He’d ended up circling the campus boundaries and feeling like an idiot. Then he’d somehow angled off onto the wrong street at a curve in the road and had ended up in the middle of a residential neighborhood of two-story houses with wraparound front porches and shutters on all the windows. By the time he finally made it back to his dorm, he was tired and cranky and in desperate need of a cool shower.
    Maybe the “getting lost on the way to practice” paranoia wasn’t entirely ridiculous, okay?
    So even though it stung, that he’d barely made it through forty-eight hours before needing Denny’s help again, he pulled out his cell phone at the dorm reception desk that night and texted him. Can I head down to practice with…
    Delete. Delete. Delete. Sounded like begging.
    Head down to practice together?
    More deleting. Together had a weird vibration in his head when used in communication with Denny.
    Pick me up on your way to practice?
    Swinging by Rafi’s dorm on the way to the river was a little bit out of Denny’s way as far as Rafi could tell by staring at the campus map, but he didn’t think Denny would mind. Denny hadn’t lost his cheerfulness the entire week, even when Rafi had been cranky and no fun to be around.
    The answering text from Denny pinged back in less than a minute.
    Cool. See you right around 5.
    No fuss, no muss. Maybe this would be okay. For some reason, he always expected drama from Denny—maybe because of that kiss, that “I turned eighteen and now I’m leaving town, so kiss me or lose your chance forever” kiss—but it never came. Even when Denny was pissed, like he had been that first day, he always kept his cool.
    It was kind of irritating, actually.
    Rafi was used to being the one who held it together. Who was never flustered no matter how strange the situation he found himself in. But Carlisle College was four hundred and thirty-seven times more peculiar than any situation he’d ever found himself in back home in Chicago. He was off-balance and he didn’t like it. The feeling wasn’t bringing out the best of his personality either, he was pretty sure.
    He would try to be less of a prick. He could start by being ready to head out the door before Denny arrived to pick him up the next morning.
    The pounding noise beat on and on, thumping beneath the bass beat in the club. The flashing, multicolored strobes made Rafi’s eyeballs ache and he couldn’t get the beat, somehow, dancing too slow, arms and legs heavy like he was trying to slide them through honey.
    “Dude!”
    He turned his back on whoever was shouting at him on the dance floor. God, why did there always have to be one asshole in the club?
    “Rafi! Wake up, man. We’re gonna be late.”
    Rafi’s eyes snapped open in the dark, the sudden shock of adrenaline flooding his system so fast his toes ached.
    “Shit.” He lurched out of bed, heading to where Denny must have been rapping steadily on the suite door the entire time his dream self had been bitching about assholes in the dance club.
    He yanked the door open to find Denny in the hall in loose shorts and a T-shirt, backpack over his shoulders. Denny stared at Rafi in his sleep pants and said, “Dude. What the hell? I texted. I called.”
    “Sorry. I didn’t get to bed until…” He didn’t remember. The person who was supposed to cover the desk after him hadn’t showed for their shift, and it had taken him a while to figure out whether or not to wake up the HRs. Yes, he’d finally decided, and by the time that whole transition was worked out, it was almost one o’clock and he’d set his alarm clock with a wish and a prayer. “Late. Fuck.”
    He shucked off his sleep pants and pulled on the skintight workout trunks he wore