ROOMIES (Strangers-To-Lovers Romance Novel) Read online

  I pulled her hand away from my cock and got out of bed. I stood up too abruptly because I became dizzy and a pain from hell started as a dull ache before it caused my head to throb. I groaned and reached for the night table to steady myself.

  “Are you okay?” my companion asked. “You look shitty.”

  “Thanks. I feel shitty and I need to get to work. You should get dressed.”

  “What time is it?” she asked on a yawn.

  I reached for my phone on the night table and told her the time. It was almost eight. She jackknifed off the bed and started throwing the bedsheets onto the bed, trying to find the missing pieces of her clothing from last night—which was everything, since she was naked.

  “Oh, shit, I’ve got to get to work too!” she exclaimed. “And I have to be there at eight. Oh, shit, if I stop at home to take a shower, I will be late. Will you help me find my things?”

  Would I? Gladly. Thank God for work, which meant I didn’t have to fight her to leave after all. I searched through the bed covers and found a red thong with a split in the crotch. I held it up to my eyes, wondering why a woman would wear something like that. It was sexy as hell and I could understand wearing it around the house for a man, but it sure wasn’t practical to wear for anything else. I could imagine how a woman’s clit would peek through the slit.

  Before I could finish my contemplation, she grabbed the thong from me with a glare. “You’re acting like you’ve never seen panties before,” she muttered, as she slipped the underwear on under her short skirt. “Now help me find my top. Please! I can’t be late and lose this job.”

  I stopped gawking at her and helped her look for her top, even though I was quite sluggish and didn’t put in much of a search. She cried out in triumph when she bent and saw it under the bed. As I stared at her, I got a far better view looking up her skirt. Damn! I needed to move out of my parents’ house and get an apartment.

  As she fixed her top, I located her stilettos and passed them to her. I would need to put on some clothes to walk her out, and pulled out a drawer to select a t-shirt. She was already headed for the stairs leading from the basement by the time I had my head through the hole.

  “Wait!” I told her. “I’ll walk you out.”

  The last thing I needed was for my mom or dad to see a half-dressed woman—she wore her full outfit but I still considered her half-dressed—parading through their house.

  “I can’t wait for you!” she shouted and headed for the stairs, her stilettos clicking against the wooden staircase and adding to the pounding in my head. I winced at the damage the points must be doing to the old wood.

  Quickly, I pulled on the jeans I had worn to the club and headed barefooted up the stairs after her. I ran into my mother in the hall. She stared at the redhead who clacked out through the front door, her skirt so short I could see the underside of her butt cheeks. If I could see it, I’m sure my mother—who had the aid of spectacles—could also see it just fine.

  “Mom!” I exclaimed in embarrassment I wouldn’t be feeling if I was in my own apartment and not in her house.

  “What are you doing?” she asked in horror. Her face showed disappointment, an emotion I was used to evoking in her. Yes, I, Liam Henderson, was the disappointing second child.

  I scrubbed my hand over my face and groaned. “I don’t know how she got here.”

  “You don’t know!” she cried. “You brought her here! We agreed when you moved back in that we wouldn’t allow women coming in and out of this house as though we are running a brothel!”

  Before I could say anything in response, my dad walked into the hall. He and my mom were quite a pair and had been together for thirty odd years. They were so alike in personality, even though they were different physically. Mom was a little on the short side, her brown hair cut short. She had eyes the same hazel-color as mine. Dad was tall, a couple inches shorter than my six feet, two inches. He had black hair and blue eyes, and a face lined with frown and laugh lines. The latter, I supposed, were given to my brother, while the former was all on me.

  “What’s going on here?” Dad asked my mom, but he stared at me, his gaze full of disapproval. Nothing new there.

  “You should have seen her, Michael,” Mom told him, her tone bordering on hysterical. The way she acted, it was as if I had brought the devil himself into her home instead of a woman. “She barely had anything on, and he brought her here.” The he was punctuated with an angry finger stabbing the air in my direction.

  “You brought a woman into our home?” Dad demanded, his jaw clenched in anger. “How dare you defile our home like that? This is a Christian home.”

  They were right. I hated that I was always screwing up. “I’m sorry,” I apologized, the words sounding very shallow even to my ears. “If it’s any consolation, I had no plans to bring her back here. I don’t even remember getting home last night. Despite what you think of me, I would never bring a woman into your home without your consent.”

  “What kind of consolation do you think that is?” Mom asked. “Look at you—so early in the morning and the stench of sin on you. Why can’t you get your life together? Stop drinking, stop cavorting with all these women, and settle down with one woman, for God’s sake. You’re twenty-five, not eighteen. You dropped out of college—that we were paying for. All our money and everything down the drain, wasted on you. Why can’t you be more like Kyle!”

  And there it was. The name that haunted me, a mistake I would never live down because they never allowed me to forget. Like they didn’t think I beat myself up about it every single day. Like I didn’t wish Kyle was here and I was buried at Highland Memorial Gardens instead.

  “I am not Kyle and I can’t be like him!” I cried in anger at her. I burned with resentment every time they brought him up or even hinted at what had happened. “I’m sorry you lost the son you loved better. I’m sorry he’s not the one here instead of me, but I can’t bring him back. Yes, it was my carelessness that made him die, but I can’t bring him back!”

  With a cry, my mother buried her face against my father’s chest, sobs wracking her body. After seven years, one would have believed the wound would hurt less, but I understood because the image of Kyle’s bloody face, his neck twisted at an odd angle that left no doubt it was broken, haunted me.

  “Son, I think it’s best you leave,” Dad informed me. Unshed tears made his eyes bright, but the pain he was going through was evident in his words and his face. “You’re tearing your mother and me apart. We can’t have you here anymore, disregarding our rules, and believing you can live your life any way you want and still walk through that front door. We’ll give you a week to find an apartment. We’ll give you good references so you can find somewhere to live and have David write you one as well. You just need to go.”

  I rubbed the tears from my own eyes, bitterness clamping at my heart so bad it hurt. I nodded my understanding. “I’ll find somewhere to go.” I turned to head back downstairs to the basement, the tears I had been too ashamed to cry streaming down my face.

  “Son.”

  I paused but kept my back turned at the sound of my father’s voice. A flicker of hope brimmed in me. I wanted them to accept me for who I was. Being their minister son wasn’t going to happen. I couldn’t be like Kyle. Hell, I didn’t want to be like Kyle. I didn’t even know if I believed God existed. If there was a God, He would have never allowed someone as good as my brother to die while I was still breathing.

  “It’s best for you to stay away for a while.” My dad’s words dashed my hopes of believing they could ever forgive me for that night and any hopes of reconciliation. “I hope you understand, but we still need time to heal.”

  It’s been seven years! I wanted to scream at him. Seven years of mourning a son you lost while ignoring the one you still have.

  I nodded silently and continued down the stairs. If they didn’t want anything to do with me, I would leave as they suggested, but I couldn’t deny the hole in my heart.
How would I gain their forgiveness if I moved out? I needed their forgiveness before I could move on and feel like my life was worth something, because if your own parents didn’t believe in you, who would?

  3

  Emily

  About to take my lunch for the day, Miranda barely caught me when she walked into Hollister, the store I worked in at Riverchase Galleria in Hoover. Today, she wore capris with a cropped top, which bared her midriff and showed off her pierced belly button. She wore dark sunglasses perched on top of her head and a pair of boots with killer heels. She looked fabulous, as always, a contrast to me, I was sure. I was dressed in jeans and a white top, as was the customary dress code for work.

  “Hey, girlfriend!” she waved at me. “I was looking around and it’s almost time for lunch so I stopped by to check on you. You haven’t called me since the club.”

  Her look said she knew well whose fault that was. She was partly right. I’d decided to let things cool down for a bit between Jake and I before I hung out with Miranda again. For the past week and a half, he had been cool and wasn’t acting like a stalker, which had calmed me down some. I was looking for apartments of my own to rent, though. I began to believe I had moved in with Jake too soon and maybe we had a better chance of surviving as a couple if I moved out. I wasn’t necessarily trying to end our relationship, but I was convinced we needed to slow down and figure out if we were compatible.

  “Hey, Miranda, just give me a minute. Let me tell my supervisor I’m going.”

  Another girl worked at the cashier desk with me, a newbie who had started Monday. Before that, I had been ringing up all the sales, which had been hectic, especially on a weekend and with all the sales Hollister kept having. It was one of the more popular stores at the mall.

  My supervisor, Reggie, was in the back, chatting with a customer instead of stacking jeans as he had claimed he would be doing. Reggie was a people-person and born for this job. In his late thirties, he still had a pleasant enough disposition to work at the mall at his age. The job was okay for someone who liked to greet people and be nice to them. For me, it didn’t come naturally. I was what my mother called a ‘frowner.’ I frowned even when I didn’t mean to. Since working at Hollister, I’d learned how to smile until it appeared before I realized it.

  I politely interrupted Reggie and informed him of my plans to go for lunch. He gave me his okay, and I found Miranda sorting through jeans. Technically, I was due thirty minutes of lunch and two fifteen-minute breaks, but I didn’t get to decide when to take them. On more than one occasion, I’d had to ring up sales when I was starving simply because the store was full. It was my lucky day that few people were at the mall today.

  “Come on, Miranda, I have exactly thirty minutes,” I reminded her, taking the pair of butt-lifting skinny jeans she was looking at and replacing them on the shelf. “You know you don’t need anything in here. You’ve got more clothes than you know what to do with.”

  Miranda’s mother was a fashion designer, so she owned a copy of almost everything her mother designed. Her mother catered to the young crowd, so pretty much her all her designs were exactly what we wore as young adults.

  “You can never have too many clothes,” Miranda stated as if it was fact, but she allowed me to drag her out of the store. Even though we were so different—I was more conservative and she was so flamboyant and personable—I loved hanging out with her. She reminded me life consisted of much more than work and school and all the hard stuff—that moments also existed for doing nothing and simply having fun.

  We decided to eat at Chick-fil-A, which was my choice since I opted to spend as little as possible on food. I was all about saving and putting something aside for a rainy day. My parents had taught me it wasn’t about how much I made but how much I saved, and that was a principle I’d grown up with. I stuck by it. Most of the time, at least.

  “We could have eaten at the Italian restaurant,” Miranda grumbled when we got our orders and found twin seats at a small table in the mall. “You know I don’t mind paying.”

  “I can pay for my own meal, thank you very much,” I retorted before biting into my salad. I had twenty minutes to eat and wouldn’t waste it thinking about someplace more expensive.

  Miranda rolled her eyes before biting into her grilled chicken wrap. “This is actually good,” she mumbled.

  “Yup, I know it. You don’t need to spend all that money to enjoy food.”

  We chewed quietly for a while. Miranda was able to eat all the fat she wanted without adding an extra pound to her slim frame. It had taken me all through high school to shed my baby fat, and now, I was at the weight I wanted to maintain. I wasn’t too skinny. To be honest, I didn’t want to be skinny, but neither did I want to be fat. I was stuck in the middle with curvy hips. Dieting and eating healthy kept the extra fat at bay. When I had the chance, I went for workouts at the gym at UAB, which was free for the students. My slightly jiggly tummy had become flat and my ass firmer than ever.

  “Let me cut the pleasantries,” Miranda announced. “The real reason I am here. You and Jake. How long do you plan to keep that up?”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, taking a sip of my lemonade, which tasted like watered-down Kool-Aid.

  “Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about. The man’s a nut. Aren’t you scared of him, the way he follows you around and keeps tabs on you?”

  I frowned at her, thinking she was taking it way too far. I said as much to her. “Jake wouldn’t do anything to hurt me, so why would I be afraid of him? He’s a little possessive, that’s all.”

  “Mark my words, Em. That’s the way it starts.”

  “I’ve been looking for apartments,” I confessed slowly. “Mind you, I still don’t think he is as bad as you say, but I believe we would benefit from being apart for a while. It’s hard, though, to find an affordable apartment without a roommate.”

  “I’d love to have you over,” Miranda suggested.

  I made a face at her. “Last time I spent a weekend with you, you and Alexander kept me up all night. Like, seriously, I didn’t need to hear how deep he was inside of you!”

  She looked chagrined. Alexander was her boyfriend, and they shared a house in Gardendale. They’d been together for almost three years and had a healthy relationship based on the ‘three Ls,’ according to Miranda—lust, love, and leave me alone. Miranda insisted all three had to be present in a relationship for it to work. The latter was missing in my relationship with Jake. He had no idea what it meant to leave me alone temporarily. One would think I was moving out each time I went somewhere without him.

  “That was my bad,” she admitted. “But I can hardly say no to him when he’s giving me the good stuff. Doesn’t Jake make you holler like that?”

  I thought about my sex life with Jake. I could definitely say in a heartbeat that I’d never carried on the way Miranda had that night. Our sex, I guessed, was okay. I had nothing to compare it to, so I wasn’t missing anything I knew about.

  “My sex life is not up for discussion,” I said primly and got to my feet. “Come on, walk me back to the store. I’ve five minutes left of lunch.”

  “Boy, I’ll sure be glad when you get your degree,” Miranda announced, clearing away her wrap and disposing of the trash in the receptacle as I did. “Working that job’s got to suck.”

  “Yeah, well, it pays the bills.”

  She walked me back to the store and spent some time digging through the selection of jeans and tops. She bought three pairs of jeans, the third at half price, and two cute tops before she waved goodbye.

  My phone went off in my pocket, reminding me to activate the ringtone to vibrate. Since no customer stood in line, I got it out to change the ring option. I frowned when I saw the message that had caused my phone to ring in the first place. It was an email from Facebook that my account was logged into on another device—an iPhone.

  I was outraged. Jake used an iPhone and had no idea that when I’d caught
him logging into my Facebook account and scrolling through my newsfeed and messages, I’d activated the option for alerts each time I logged in from a new device. I checked my messages and saw conversations had been started between ‘me’ and random men from my Facebook profile who I had no connections with other than they were recorded as friends.

  I couldn’t read the messages given that I was at work, so I hurriedly changed my password to effectively lock him out before he could erase the evidence he had been checking my page. When I’d confronted him about it before, he’d denied it and I’d had no proof since he’d wiped the browser history of his computer clean. Now, I’d caught him red-handed.

  For the rest of my shift at work, I couldn’t muster a smile for my customers even if I’d tried. My mind kept returning to what Miranda had said about Jake being a nutcase. I still didn’t think he would ever do anything to harm me, but again, he’d proven he wasn’t going to change. This wasn’t the relationship I wanted, especially when his distrust wasn’t warranted. If he’d asked me to show him my Facebook, Twitter, and other social media pages, I would gladly have done so. I had nothing to hide from him. He already knew I spent most of my days at work, and when I left work three days of the week, from Tuesdays to Thursdays, I went to UAB for classes. Seldom did I go anywhere except those two places, and if I had a hankering to go somewhere else, I always called or texted to inform him—not because I felt obligated but simply because I believed it to be common courtesy.

  The more I thought about what he’d done, the angrier I became. When my shift ended at three, I got my phone out and read through the messages he’d sent, pretending to be me. He had chosen three men and sent them random messages in an effort to find out if I’d ever had a conversation or met up with them before. With one, he had gone so far as propose us meeting—no doubt to find out if the guy would agree. Jake got upset if he thought I found another man to be attractive, but worse, he didn’t like the idea of other men finding me beautiful or sexy. As if I had any control over that!