Page 27 of Dear Roomie (Classic City Romance #1)

“I didn’t want anyone to see them.” I hate showing this weakness to others, and now everybody knows just how broken I am. Fuck . With any luck, they will think this was a one-off. Tanner’s actions were bad enough to warrant it.

“Where are we going?”

Thankfully, he lets the subject drop, but there’s a hit of disapproval written on his face.

“We decided it was best to get you out of there. We are on the way to your hotel now.”

“What about Tanner?” My heart rate jumps again. “I-I don’t want to see him tonight. I can’t. I-I—”

“Shh, don’t worry about him.” He rubs small circles on my back. “We are going back to Chelsea and Evelyn’s room. Gage was calming Tanner down when we left, but you don’t need to worry about him tonight.”

“Okay.” The tension flees my body, and I melt against him. His arms wrap around me, holding me close. I should move to the seat beside him, but the comfort of his embrace is too enticing, so I stay like that the entire ride to the hotel.

We are both flung forward as Karis slams her foot on the brake in front of our destination. Morgan’s arms tighten around me, which keeps my face from hitting the back of the seat.

“All right, Blondie, this is your stop,” Karis says. She turns around in her seat and holds out her hand. “I take cash, credit, or firstborns as payment.”

“Thanks for the ride,” Morgan tells her, rolling his eyes. He opens the car door, and I crawl out of his protective hold.

“Call me if you need anything,” she yells as he follows me out. The car is moving before Morgan takes his first step away .

He shakes his head and mumbles something under his breath before leading me into the hotel and through the maze of identical hallways.

It’s all a convoluted blur around me, and if it wasn’t for the warm fingers threaded through mine, I would get lost in the monotony of it all.

Those tiny sparks of tingling heat are my lifeline, keeping me grounded until we stop in front of the room that must be the girls’.

He fishes the borrowed key card out of his pocket and opens the door.

The room is generic—nothing more than two beds and a midsized TV.

The only thing that sets it apart from any other hotel room is the art on the walls having a vaguely beachy theme.

The door swings closed behind us with a resounding click , and he drops my hand.

He peers around the room, looking at everything but my face.

With a sigh, he runs his hand through his hair and tugs on his bottom lip with his teeth.

Blood pools as the barely healed cut reopens under the tension and drips down his chin in a steady stream.

“Morgan, your face…”

He tries to palm away the blood but only succeeds in smearing it across his face.

“Crap,” he mutters, gazing at the fresh red streaks on his hands. He goes into the bathroom, inspecting the damage in the mirror, and I follow him.

“Let me look.” I nudge him to sit on the closed toilet seat, and I’m hit with a sense of déjà vu; it wasn’t too many months ago we were strangers in the same position.

If someone had told me then that the random person I found online to be my roommate would weasel his way past my walls so quickly, I would have laughed in their face, but in only three months, he has done exactly that.

This man has carved out a place in my heart for himself as my friend, my defender, and under different circumstances, maybe something more.

I shake my head, trying to fling that thought from existence. There is no use dwelling on what-ifs.

“We don’t have a first aid kit here, but at least let me clean it up,” I tell him, kneeling to inspect the small wound.

Seeing it makes my throat tighten. It’s my fault he got hurt, being it was my boyfriend who acted like a fucking Neanderthal.

As an array of emotions slams into my chest, I wet a washcloth and use it to clean the blood from his chin—it’s the least I can do to make up for what happened.

“You don’t have to—” he starts to say, pulling away from my touch.

“Please, let me do this,” I cut him off with a plea. He nods, and I continue my work, moving from his face to his hands. “I’m really fucking sorry he did this.”

“It’s not your fault,” he reassures me, but the words do nothing to soothe the gnawing guilt. “Tanner should be the one apologizing. He’s the jerk who sucker punched me.”

“This isn’t like him. He would normally never do something like this.

” I rush to his defense on instinct, but the words feel wrong, causing my gut to twist. My mind flashes to all the moments over the past few months where I’ve thought the same thing.

A bitter laugh bubbles past my lips; maybe I don’t know him at all anymore.

“Actually, fuck that. I’m done making excuses for him.

He hasn’t been the man I grew up with for a while now.

I think he was high. A baggie of cocaine fell out of his pocket before you walked up.

Drugs are a hard limit for me. He knows this, but he did it anyway.

” My voice cracks as the competing emotions war within me.

I didn’t know it was possible to be this sad, angry, and guilty all at once.

“Are you okay?” Morgan catches my hand between his, stilling the mindless wiping. He stares at me, his eyes so bright that the hazel shines like gold.

“No,” I choke out. He stands, guiding me up with him, and pulls me into a bone-crushing hug. I bury my face into his neck and squeeze him back, soaking in his warmth.

“What can I do to make things better?”

“Is there any way we could watch your nerd shows here?” I ask, my words muffled by the embrace. He lets out a small chuckle, and his chest vibrates, erupting chills across my skin.

“I think I can figure something out. ”

He releases me and guides me toward one of the beds, clearing away the mess of clothes and cosmetics that the girls left in a sprawling heap.

The white sheets are rumpled, clearly having been slept in.

I cringe internally at the disheveled state of things, but he starts reorganizing the bedding without me saying a word.

Seeming satisfied with his work, he flops down on top of the freshly made bed and pulls out his phone.

“We will have to make this work,” he says, waving the device in his hand.

I crawl onto the bed next to him and lie down, leaving several inches of space between our bodies.

That gap feels charged, the air electrified, and the hairs on my arm stand on end.

I’m acutely aware of where we are and what Morgan is to me—or, more accurately, what he isn’t—but only part of me cares.

I know I’m crossing lines, but they are lines that might not exist come morning, and that thought only feeds the other part of me—the one that wants nothing more than to crawl back into the comfort of his embrace.

He holds out his phone so we can both see the screen, but the picture is so tiny that I still have to inch closer.

And then I do it again. Currents of tingly shock waves erupt across my skin as my arm brushes up against his.

He looks at me, his face flush and eyes dilated, and his tongue darts out to wet his lips.

My breath catches and my heart rate picks up again, but for the first time today, it isn’t panic that drives the spike.

“Come here.” He opens his arms, inviting me to move closer.

His words break the growing tension, and heat rises in my cheeks. I take him up on his offer and try to ignore the feeling of rightness that comes as my head meets his chest and his free arm wraps around me.

Episode after episode passes by in a blur, but I’m too focused on the distracting touch for the stories of knights and wizards to draw me in.

Sure fingers trace small circles on my back, drawing me deeper into his warmth with each deliberate path.

Shadows envelop the room as sunlight fades from the window, and my eyelids start to sink as well.

I do everything I can to fight sleep, but, as always, sleep wins.

The last thought that passes through my head as I drift into unconsciousness is that I never want this moment to end.

***

Morgan is gone when I wake up.

My stomach sinks as I feel around the cold bed, looking for any remnants of the comfort from the night before, but find nothing.

Disappointed, I sit up and look around the room.

At some point in the night, Chelsea and Evelyn stumbled back to the hotel room and passed out in the bed beside mine.

Did Morgan leave before they got back, or was their arrival what drove him away?

They weren’t supposed to have to share a bed this year, but I had to go and ruin that for them.

A surge of nausea twists in my gut, urging me out of the bed.

Cursed fragments of yesterday’s events bombard me, and without my knight in shining armor here to ground me, the churning grows.

I flee toward the door, keeping my steps quiet, but freeze when a piece of hotel stationary wedged in the frame catches my attention. The note is my lifeline. With desperate hands, I snatch the paper and read over the words, and like magic, the heaviness in my gut evaporates.

Taking a deep breath, I clutch the note to my chest. Somehow, he always manages to say the exact right thing, or maybe it’s the right thing because it’s coming from him.

Maybe he didn’t go too far. He needs to know how much yesterday meant to me.

I push open the door to find him, but the familiar sight of my boyfriend— ex-boyfriend?

—sitting in the hallway stops me in my tracks.

Tanner is curled in on himself, with his head tucked in on top of his knees, still wearing his stupid costume from yesterday. To be fair, so am I, but his American-flag swim trunks and suit jacket look even more ridiculous when he’s moping on the floor.

As the door swings shut behind me with a loud thud , his head snaps up, and he stares at me with red-rimmed eyes. He looks wrecked; his hair is flat and greasy, and dark bags have made themselves at home under puffy eyelids.

“Ophie…” His voice cracks as he scrambles to his feet .

“What the fuck are you doing here?” I spit the words at him, the protective armor of rage slipping into place.

“Ophelia…baby…please talk to me. I’m so fucking sorry.” He reaches for my wrist, and I pull away before he can touch me. The bruises on my arm are still too fresh for me to trust his fingers. He flinches but doesn’t make any moves to touch me again.

“Baby…” he rasps out. “Please don’t leave me over this. I can’t lose you.” His eyes grow glassy with unshed tears.

“You know what happened to my mom. You know how I feel about drugs. Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t walk away right now,” I say through clenched teeth.

“Because you would be throwing ten years down the drain over one mistake. Fifteen, if you count the years before I got up the nerve to finally ask you out.” He chokes on his words as tears start to spill over.

“You wouldn’t just be giving up on me, but my whole family.

The twins don’t even know what life is like without you in it.

Please, please just talk to me before throwing it all away. ”

His pleas break through my defenses, and my anger starts to deflate.

“Fine. Answer me honestly, and we will see.”

He nods, so I ask the question , even though I already know the answer.

“Were you high yesterday?”

“Yes.” His head hangs with his solemn answer.

“Was it cocaine?”

“Yes.”

“How long?” When he doesn’t respond, I ask again, my anger springing back in full force. “How fucking long have you been using, Tanner?”

“I don’t know,” he mumbles, “a few months? Around the time I started working at the campaign office.”

Fuck . That’s almost a year .

How the fuck did I not see it. I feel like the rug has been pulled out from under me, but it took the ground with it, and now I’m hurtling down into an endless abyss.

“Why?” I ask, my voice coming across calmer than I feel, too calm for the storm raging in me.

“I don’t know. The guys at the office had it one night when we went for drinks after work, and I tried it.”

“Was it worth it?” I ask with that same steely calm. Fury whips inside me, begging to be let free, but I don’t lash out. I can’t even look at him without feeling my stomach roll.

“Not if I lose you,” he says, his voice wavering as the tears start to fall in earnest. “Please say I didn’t ruin us.” He falls to his knees in front of me. “Baby, I’m begging you. I promise I won’t touch the stuff again. I will do anything as long as you stay mine.”

Looking down at him, I feel nothing but disgust, but he’s right about a few things.

I would be throwing away way too much if I ended it now.

His family, his sisters: they are too important for me to give up on.

If he is serious about never using again, I think I can forgive him, in time.

I have to. I can’t let a few months of mistakes overshadow a decade of good.

“Fine, but if you touch that shit again, it’s over.”

His arms wrap around my waist, constricting me as he buries his face into my stomach.

“Thank you. Thank you. I love you, Ophie. I’m so sorry.

” Tanner utters the phrases like a mantra as he clings to me.

Prickles of unease crawl across my skin, but I don’t pull away.

Instead, I clutch the crumbled note to my chest like a lifeline as my throat grows thick with tears of my own.