Page 50 of Always a Roommate
He smelled like a combination of cedar and dog soap, not exactly normal, but maybe we weren’t normal.
His hands tangled in my hair, pressing my face closer to his as he backed me up against the door and closed the distance between our bodies—his dry and warm, mine wet and freezing cold.
But we didn’t care.
“This time,” I whispered against his lips, “you can’t pretend it didn’t happen.” He couldn’t ignore me.
With that, I pushed him away, turned to open the door, and fled like I’d just stolen something valuable from him.
Maybe I had.
20
SHANE
“Are you okay, Shane?” Finley asked, sipping her milkshake.
The two of us sat at the diner, waiting for Tanner and Johnny to get here. My brothers would shrug off my mood as me being me, but Finley had always seen me better than them.
“Fine.” I didn’t want to talk about it, about the fact that her best friend now plagued my every thought.
Rae had left early this morning for a run, and I’d had to get to work before she returned. My last view of her had been when she left my room the night before, after stealing any last bit of peace I’d had.
When she kissed me, nothing else had mattered. Not the kid in my class, who obviously needed my help. Not Tanner, who hadn’t texted any of his siblings in two days, something that was definitely not normal.
And not the fact that this was Rae, the girl I’d watched grow up right alongside my sister, the one who’d never let me quite see who she really was.
Her laughter had always been reserved for Finley or Tanner or her clients. She spent hours making sure her appearance was perfect when perfection was just a mask.
But when she let that mask slip… my own words came back to me. “You look real, Rae.” I hadn’t truly meant her appearance, though I loved how adorable she looked wrestling a dog while soaking wet.
No, she’d been smiling, having fun, not trying to make anyone see her a certain way. It had just been her.
Finley waved a hand in front of my face. “I lost you again. Something is up. I know it.”
I sighed and dipped a fry in Emma’s secret sauce. The cook at Emma’s, Jasper, made things that I couldn’t even guess what the ingredients were, but I’d eat them until the end of my days.
As I chewed the fry, I wondered if telling Finley would actually do any good. I watched her relationship with Tanner, how the two of them shared all their secrets and it brought them closer. I’d never had that with anyone in my family.
I pictured her face if I told her right now I was thinking about how good Rae looked with swollen lips and flushed cheeks, and I almost laughed.
“I was engaged.” The words just kind of came out, and I wasn’t sure what my point was in telling Finley now, especially when it was Rae in my thoughts, not Diana.
Finley’s mouth popped open, and she set her tall milkshake down. “Excuse me? You were engaged?”
I nodded. I was in it now. “To Diana.”
Her face scrunched. “That awful woman you lived with?”
“You thought she was awful?”
Finley laughed. “We all did. You should have seen the lengths Tanner went to to avoid going to your place when she was home.”
My lips tugged down into a frown. “So, let me get this straight. My entire family hated the woman I lived with, and no one felt the need to tell me?”
“It wouldn’t have done anything except make you mad at us.” That was where she was wrong. My family meant everything to me. I’d have listened to them, and maybe it would’ve opened my eyes to the truth before I got hurt.
“Well, I almost married her, so you’d have been stuck with her.”
