Page 11 of Always a Roommate
5
RAE
I’d once thought Shane was my happy ending. That he’d look up one day and realize I’d been there the whole time, right in front of him.
And he thought I was cold.
As I’d unbuttoned his shirt in that bathroom, every feeling I thought I’d buried fifteen years ago came roaring back. It was the second time I’d actually gotten to feel his skin. The first was when I was fifteen and he was home from college. We’d gone to the beach, and he’d been tumbled in a wave, hitting his leg on a rock. With his brothers and Finley out in the water, I was the only person nearby to help him bandage it.
He’d probably forgotten that day, but to a fifteen-year-old Rae, it had been everything.
But I was the cold one. The unfeeling one.
It wasn’t until I was halfway home that I realized leaving dinner early had no point because Shane and I were going to the same place. I couldn’t avoid him, even if I could have gotten his voice out of my head.
The front door was already unlocked when I got home, but the house was dark. Thank the Lord above. Shane must have gone right to bed.
I entered my room and kicked off my shoes. It had been a long day, and all I wanted was to curl up with my e-reader and sink into a ridiculously happy romance book.
Despite my perpetual singlehood, I wasn’t opposed to romance. My mom hurt my dad, she wrecked us, and still, I knew happy endings existed. I just didn’t believe there was one out there for me.
So, I worked my hardest to make other people’s romantic dreams come true, to make sure their weddings were everything they’d always wanted.
I wasn’t someone who got lonely. My dad had always told me that someone didn’t need to be in love to be happy, and I knew that was true. Marriage wasn’t the only way to live a life.
Unless someone desperately wanted kids.
That was my downfall.
I wanted a baby but knew I’d probably never have one.
And it hurt.
I wasn’t cold, as Shane said. I struggled with other people, yes, but I’d love a child with everything I had.
Angrily, I yanked on my pajamas and brushed my hair, Shane’s words running on a loop through my head.
Footsteps sounded outside my door, but they didn’t stop. I wasn’t sure what I was doing when I got to my feet and cracked open my door. The only light came in through the partially open door to the backyard.
I walked on bare feet across the house to peek outside. Shane lay on the patio, not bothering with one of the chairs and opting to rest directly against the bricks, his eyes lifted to the heavens.
He looked more peaceful than I’d ever seen him, none of the usual tension in his posture.
“You can come out,” he said, not looking at me. He shifted so his hands were behind his head. He still wore the stained shirt, and it rose up, revealing a small sliver of skin. I’d seen much more than that tonight, and still, it made my mouth run dry.
Stepping out onto the pale brick, still heated from the day’s sun, I approached him. “What are you doing?”
“Sometimes, I come out here to look at the stars.”
He did? I was starting to realize just how much I’d actively tried not to notice about Shane. Maybe he was right and I had been cold to him.
When I didn’t say anything, he spoke. “I made you coffee.”
“What?”
He kept his eyes on the stars. “The morning of your first meeting with Drew. You accused me of not helping you, but I made you coffee. You left before I could tell you.”
I didn’t drink coffee, but I didn’t tell him that. Now, I felt horrible. Maybe I was horrible. “Can I sit?”
