And more important . . . he’s so not my type. At all. So, I’m not sure why I’m still staring at his swollen lip, wondering if he’d flinch if I touched it.
I rein in my thoughts. “Sorry. That’s none of my business, I—”
“I got in a bar fight with a friend.” He pauses and looks away. “Or someone who used to be my friend. Or something. I don’t know. I wasn’t really thinking.”
I laugh. “Me either. Must be something in the water.”
I want to ask what he fought over with his friend. Or his former friend. I want to know what makes a guy like him tick, what he cares enough about to bleed for. Because it sounds personal, not just the mindless, Neanderthal slugfest that I’d been picturing.
“Are you hurt?” I ask.
A flash of a smile has a field of goose bumps sprouting along my arms. “You worried about me, Pickle?”
I throw my head back and groan.
“I’m going to kill him.”
Officer Tribble returns then with Matt, and she gives me a look at overhearing my last words.
I lift my hands and say, “Hyperbole. I promise. No actual plans to kill anyone.”
As she lets Matt back into the men’s holding cell, he raises an eyebrow.
“Who are we killing?”
“You,” Silas answers.
Matt holds a hand to his heart and gives me a pathetic look. “I thought we promised to look out for each other on the inside? And now you turn on me for the first pretty face.” Silas frowns at the assessment of him as a pretty face, and I wonder what expression he’d make if he knew Matt really did find him attractive. Though I’m willing to bet if you go through life every day looking the way Silas does, you probably get used to all kinds of people finding you attractive. “You’re a hardened criminal already, Pickle.”
Silas’s frown is swept away by a low laugh at the name, and I drop my feet off the bench and stand. I’m getting restless, and maybe walking around again will help me.
“Since you’re already going to kill me, I guess it doesn’t hurt to tell you that I couldn’t get a hold of Javi. You can only call landlines, and I guess he hasn’t gotten back to the dorm yet. I left a message, but I bet he’s already working on getting us out.”
Javier is the president of our student activism group, Voice for Tomorrow. And Matt is right that he’s likely to be pissed with me. Today was supposed to be a preliminary protest just to raise awareness. We were hoping that it combined with the petition we’re compiling might be enough to at least get them to postpone the closing. Now I’ve made us look reckless and impulsive. Like troublemakers instead of informed citizens.
Maybe Javi is already working to get us out. Or maybe he’s pissed enough to let us stew for a little while. I wouldn’t be surprised.
I sigh. “I could leave a message for Antonella at the apartment, but I don’t think she gets off work until midnight.” I’m not exactly sure what time it is, but a ways off from midnight for sure.
“What about Henry?” Matt asks. “He’d come if you asked.”
“I am not calling my ex, Matt. That’s almost worse than calling my father.”
“Then we might be in here until morning because if we have to wait for Antonella to come after midnight, I’m betting they won’t get us processed until daytime.”
I was almost willing to risk staying overnight. If it were just me, I would have, but I’d caused Matt enough hassle for the night. For the whole year actually.
Officer Tribble returns about twenty minutes later, and I move toward the cell door, expecting it’s time for my phone call, resigned to contacting my father, but instead she turns her back to me and addresses Silas.
“Mr. Moore, you’re good to go. Mr. Abrams has declined to press assault charges, and he’s offering to cover the damages at the bar, so they’re willing to let it go, too.”
Silas scowls. “And what if I want to press charges? I told you guys that I didn’t start it.”
Officer Tribble fixes him with a no-nonsense look. “Both witnesses and Mr. Abrams say you threw the first punch.”
“Well, yeah, but—”
“And you can choose to press charges, but then Mr. Abrams is likely to consider doing the same to you.”
“This is ridiculous,” he says, but he looks relieved when she opens the cell and ushers him out.
Matt pouts as he watches his eye candy removed from the cell, and there might be a similar expression on my face. I sigh and lean into the bars, and the events of the day swallow me again. I don’t know what worries me more—the consequences or the cause. As Silas exits, he comes within a few feet of me where I’m standing at the cell door, and I get my first up-close look at him.
I don’t feel like all the breath is knocked out of me. I absolutely don’t.
He runs a hand through his shaggy hair, and his eyes dip down, starting at my feet and sliding up my legs. He lingers on my h*ps and waist and br**sts for what feels like eternity, but in reality must be only the few seconds it takes for Officer Tribble to lock the cell door.
He still looks dangerous, but not nearly as dangerous as the effect his gaze has on me.
He turns away, hesitates, and then faces me again. His expression is inscrutable, but he leans a little closer and says, “Don’t call your dad. I’ll figure something out.”
And then he’s gone, and I’m so shocked that I wonder if I imagined his words, if it’s just another symptom of whatever meltdown I’m having.