Page 4 of The Grumpy Roommate Gamble

Maybe he’d think it was funny. I did.

I took another minute to calm myself. I had no idea he was supposed to be back yet from his deployment. Had Dorothy known and just forgotten to tell me?

Blowing out a breath, I went downstairs.

He stood in the kitchen, staring at the bromeliad I’d placed in the center of the table in the breakfast nook. With my glasses on and my eyes adjusted, I finally got a good look at him. Exhaustion seemed carved into the lines of his body. How long had he traveled to get here?

“Can I make you something to eat?” It was perhaps a foolish thing to say. It was his house. I was hardly the real hostess. But I found myself wanting to take care of him and lessen the imposition.

Gabe turned toward me, shaking his head. “No, I just want to know what you’re doing here.”

I saw him read the sweatshirt, but there wasn’t even a flicker of a smile.

“A pipe burst in my house, and your grandmothermoved me in here while it’s being repaired. I gather she didn’t tell you?”

He closed his eyes and sighed. “No. No, she did not.”

Crap.“I’m so sorry. I wouldn’t have accepted this if I’d known that you weren’t aware.”

“How long have you been here?”

“About six weeks.”

His frown deepened. “How bad was the pipe?”

“Bad. There was an issue getting the water turned off at all, and then she’s had a lot of trouble with getting anyone to deal with the aftermath.”

Those thick, dark brows drew together into a scowl that would’ve had me running for the next county if it had been directed at me. Clearly, this was something else Dorothy hadn’t told him.

Heaving a world-weary sigh, Gabe scrubbed a hand down his face. His stubble rasped like sandpaper against his palm, and for one ridiculous moment, I wondered what it would feel like against my skin.

“I’ll get up with Nana tomorrow and get this sorted. I’m too fucking tired to think about it tonight.”

I tried to ignore the disappointment. Getting it sorted would no doubt mean getting rid of me. I had no idea where I’d go, but he had every right to evict me. This was his house.

As he moved toward the stairs, I called out after him. “Gabe?”

Without a word, he looked back at me, a question in his gray eyes.

“I’m glad you made it home safe.”

Something flickered over his face at that, but he nodded and headed on upstairs.

Then I was left alone in the quiet house that no longer felt spacious and comfortable because hispresence filled up every nook and cranny. I needed to find some way to chill out enough to actually sleep, knowing he’d be just down the hall.

Falling back on the chamomile tea that always reminded me of my mom, I carried a mug upstairs, drinking it down as I tried to lose myself in the latest dystopian romance I’d picked up from Plot Twist.

But I couldn’t focus on the story. Not when I felt my own hope withering. Everything was going to change tomorrow, and I had to brace myself for yet more upheaval in my life. I wished that got easier with practice, but the reality was that each time was a little bit harder.

How many homes was I going to lose?

THREE

GABE

The notion that I’d sleep straight through the night when I was accustomed to dozing in snatches and being braced to roll straight into action against insurgents was laughably ambitious. That eighteen straight hours was more like a fitful nine. But at least I’d been in my own bed, and my dreams had been full of a very different sort of homecoming, where Felicity had been waiting for me and dropped that towel so I could explore every delicious, touchably soft inch of her. That potent image was a damned sight better than the nightmares about our camp being attacked again. I’d woken hard and aching more than once in the middle of the night.

It wasn’t the first such fantasy I’d had about Felicity Harmon. She’d held a starring role in my dreams from the moment she’d offered me a pen shaped like a daisy on my first day at Huckleberry Creek High School in tenth grade, when I realized I’d forgotten to bring anything to write with. She’d looked fresh-faced as a daisy herself and just as sweet. Given my own attitude was dialed permanently to surly in the wake of losing both my parents, I’d mostly kept my distance rather than do anything to bruise that petal-soft heart of hers that she woreon her sleeve. But I’d admired her from a distance, existing on the edges of the same friend groups for all these years. She’d stayed sweet. Stayed kinder than anybody deserved. And her body had filled out to the lush curves of a silver-screen goddess to add a little naughty to those girl-next-door fantasies.

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