Roommate, a new M/M standalone from
Sarina Bowen
is coming your way on Tuesday! I've got a little teaser to wet your appetite
before Roderick and Kieran set your Kindle on fire!
Knuckles rap on the front windshield, and my heart crawls into my mouth.
“Hey, Roderick?” says a low voice. “You in there?”
I let out a gasp. Who’s this intruder who knows my name?
“Roderick,” he repeats. “Come on, man. Show me that you’re alive.”
I’m startled to realize that the voice belongs to Kieran Shipley.
“Dude.” He knocks again. “You’re in the back, right? Come on. It’s cold out here.”
“You’re cold?” I sputter, throwing off the sleeping bag. “Don’t let me inconvenience you.”
“Hey.” He tries the door handle, but of course it’s locked. “I wasn’t talking about me. I mean it’s too cold to sleep out here.”
Isn’t this just mortifying? “I’ll be fine. Move along now. There’s nothing to see here.”
I
hear a loud thunk, and wonder for a moment if Kieran punched my car.
But then I sit up and realize that sound was his forehead hitting the
roof. His big farm-boy body has knocked the snow off one window, and is
now bent into a defeated posture against my car.
“Get
out,” he says. “Come on. Take this address, okay? I have an extra room
to rent. And I have enough on my conscience already. If you croak out
here, I will lose my shit.”
With
a groan, I open the door and climb out, wrapping my stolen sleeping bag
around me. “Let me get this straight. You want me to come home with you
because it’ll help you sleep better.”
The
moonlight reflects off the light carpet of snow. He blinks, his
handsome brow wrinkled with tension. “Something like that. But you’ll
sleep better, too, right? Win-win.”
“I don’t like owing people. You don’t even like me.”
“Don’t
even know you,” he growls in that abrupt way that Kieran says so many
things. He squints at me. “What’s wrong? Did something happen?”
“No!
Nothing!” I bark, swatting at my face. I must look like I’ve been
crying. I have never been more embarrassed than I am right now. “Go
home, Kieran. You don’t want me for a roommate. You don’t even want me
in the same area code.”
He flinches. “Wasn’t ever about you, though.”
“It
never is,” I hiss, because I’m so tired of men who can’t sort out their
shit. I was an excellent companion to Brian, who wanted me desperately
about half the time and then couldn’t stand the sight of me the other
half.
“Look, you should have just told one of us you were sleeping in your car.”
“It’s not your problem,” I argue.
Kieran blinks. “Doesn’t mean we wouldn’t care.”
And
now I feel like a heel. “It’s embarrassing, okay? I didn’t plan on
leaving Nashville as quickly as I did. And I drove up here hoping to
crash at my parents’ place. But they shut the door in my face. It’s not
the kind of story that’s fun to tell.”
His big eyebrows furrow. “Why’d they do that?”
“It’s
the gay thing.” I make sure to keep eye contact while I say it, because
I never let anyone know how much it bothers me. “They’re not into it.”
“Oh.” He sighs. “Parents are the worst.”
“Yeah.” An awkward silence falls between us. I shiver against the snow falling in my face.
“Here,”
Kieran says. He pulls an old business card out of his pocket and hands
it to me. It’s from a barbershop, but he’s scrawled an address on the
back. “It’s the white house right on the Colebury green. You can’t miss
it. I’ll leave the side door open. Take the downstairs bedroom. There’s
nothing in it, but it’s heated.”
“You can’t leave your door unlocked.”
He rolls his eyes. “Better lock it after you come in, then.”
At that, he walks across the lot, climbs into a pickup that’s almost as old as my car, and drives away.
I
let out a shout of frustration that dies quickly in the nighttime void
and then get back in my car. There’s snow in my hair now. I sit for a
moment, stubborn and shivering.
He probably hopes I won’t actually show up. He did his part, right? He gave me the option, so now he can feel okay about it.
Then again, he drove over here at eleven at night to offer me a room in his house.
I
ponder my choices for a little while longer. I can either sit here
feeling cold and miserable all night. Or I can go someplace I’m not
wanted.
It’s
really freaking cold in my car, so in the end, it’s an easy decision.
I’m clinging to the bottom rung of my own life, and Kieran Shipley—Lord
knows why—just offered me a hand up.
I’d be an idiot not to take it.
Even
so, it takes me another half hour to get up the courage to drive into
the center of town and pull into the driveway of a pretty white house
right on the town green. I double and then triple check the address
before I walk up to the side door and try the knob.
It’s unlocked.
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