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CHAPTER THREE

brENNEN

I knew Ellie thought I was making an impulsive decision, but I wasn’t.

I knew what I was doing when I made the offer.

The room was empty, so there was no reason he couldn’t use it.

Shortening Ellis to Ellie? Yeah, that part was a surprise to me.

But he did work with the hockey team, which meant he needed a nickname.

It was our fault for not giving him one yet.

When it came out of my mouth, it felt right.

“I thought I heard you say you had a roommate?” When Ellie was confused, his brows knitted together, and if I wasn’t actively trying to avoid thinking of him as cute, it would’ve been adorable.

“He moved out last week because he’s doing a semester abroad in Vancouver.”

“It’s the middle of the term…” Ellie offered hesitantly.

“Yeah, he was about to fail all his classes, so he withdrew early, and he’s going to go hang out up there until the new semester starts.”

“Can you do that?”

“I don’t know if you can, but he is.”

My phone buzzed in my pocket as my teammates responded to my text.

There was one from Coach too. I turned away from Ellie so I could go through them all without him seeing my expression.

The coaches agreed to cut practice a little short and let me skip out on it today if I made up for it later.

They knew I was good for it. Our record might suck, but we never slacked on our workouts.

My teammates agreed to come help us after practice.

If we hurried, between Ellie and me, there was a decent chance we could have everything packed up by the time practice was over and the guys got there.

“Look, I truly appreciate you offering to let me move in, but I can’t pay rent and my food is covered by my housing. I need to figure out how to talk to my roommate and come up with a schedule. It’ll be fine.” Ellie’s words came out in a rush, and he looked panicked. I didn’t fucking like it.

“You have more faith in our housing department than I do, but about rent, when Dean, my roommate, left, his dad paid the balance of the lease. Rent is handled. As for food, you aren’t technically moving out of the dorm, so you can still eat here, and I don’t mind sharing my groceries.

There’s no way you eat more than I do.” If Dean heard me, he’d fall over himself calling me a fucking liar.

I hated sharing my food, but when I said it to Ellie, I absolutely meant it. It’s not like I’d let the kiddo starve.

“It doesn’t seem fair to live rent-free in your apartment.

Like I said, I appreciate you trying to help, but I’m not a damsel in distress who needs charity.

” Ellie sounded so defiant, and it would’ve hit better if I couldn’t see how his hands shook the entire time.

It pissed me off that his roommate had put his need to get off over Ellie’s need for some fucking sleep in his own damn bed.

Shit . I brought people home myself, but I had my own room, so it hadn’t been a factor.

And I could just put on the Manhole app that I wasn’t down to host anymore.

It wasn’t that big of a deal, but if I brought a bunch of people home, Ellie probably would think it was a big deal, given the reason he had to move.

“I’m not asking you to accept charity and I don’t think you’re incompetent.”

“I didn’t say I was incompetent. I said damsel in distress. I’m no princess.”

“You sure about that, Ellie?” From the way his eyes narrowed at me, I could tell he wanted to unload but was making an active effort not to do it.

Too fucking cute. “How about this? You can help me around the apartment, like room and board or something?” What I thought would be an out for Ellie to say yes had him looking more worried than before.

“Oh. I’m not sure I can do that.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m messy.”

“Then you’ll have plenty to clean up. Problem solved.” I began moving Ellie’s scattered books from the table into his bag. “C’mon, we need to get the boxes and start packing up all your stuff.” Once again, Ellie looked concerned.

“Where do you get boxes from? Because…” Ellie looked down at the ground and mumbled in the direction of his feet. “I can’t really afford to buy boxes. Things are tight for me until the first.”

“No worries. We can go to the liquor store next to campus. They always have a bunch of empty ones stacked in the back. We can take those and make more than one trip if needed. It’s not a big deal.

” Something was bugging me, and then I snapped my fingers when I remembered.

“And Dean left some in our garage too. Do you have a lot of stuff?”

“No, I mean, not really. Average, I guess.”

“Then it’s gonna be fine. You’re moving in with me, right?”

“It kind of feels like I don’t have a choice.”

“Oh, you always have a choice. I just don’t think the alternative of staying and dealing with your roommate… What’s his name?”

“Landon.”

“Yeah, I don’t think you wanna deal with Landon, so I’m offering you a fix. You don’t have to, but it’s not gonna cost you anything. I get some help around my house, plus I’d have company at night. I don’t like to be alone.”

“Stop, now you’re just lying to me.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. You’re gonna have to move in and find out.”

“Does that line ever actually work for you?”

“You’d be surprised how well that line works.”

“I’m ashamed of my generation.”

“All right, boxes and tape are here,” I announced as I walked into Ellie’s dorm room. To save time, I’d dropped him off at the dorm for him to start sorting out his stuff. What I walked into was a tornado in progress.

Tornado was being kind. A bomb cyclone was a better description of the chaos.

As best I could tell, he’d started off with stacks of clothes and books.

At some point, they got all jumbled together and were now haphazardly spread out.

For whatever reason, Ellie had decided to throw his desk items into the mix, so they were spread out too.

He’d stripped the bed, but now the blanket and sheets were a messy pile on the bed, along with some towels.

At some point in the confusion, a plant had gotten knocked over.

The grainy dirt was now scattered across the desk and spilled onto the floor.

In the middle of it all was Ellie, looking defeated.

“Do I want to ask what happened?”

“Ugh. This is what always happens. I start one thing, but then I think of something else. When I go back to the other thing, I forget what I was doing, and then it’s just a mess. I’m not sure where to even start.” Ellie rambled on while he flapped his hands helplessly around the room.

“That’s what the boxes are for. We’ll set them up, and then we can sort everything into them. It’ll be easier than trying to sort it all on the floor. Did the plant get knocked over or something?”

“Yeah, I was about to clean it up, and in a shock to no one, I got distracted.

“No worries. We can get it cleaned up before the guys get here.”

Ellie and I spent the next hour sorting and packing up his stuff. Compared to how much crap had been in my first dorm room, it really wasn’t that much. Unfortunately, Ellie kept getting distracted, which made it a little more difficult.

Asking, “Do you want to go through this pile?” left me with an unsorted mess that Ellie flitted around without actually addressing.

On the other hand, “Ellie, please go through this pile,” got the job completed.

I set aside everything I’d learned about how to talk to people and went with the version that got it done the quickest. Short, direct orders was the winner on that score by a mile.

“Ellie, have we gone through this box?” I pulled a plastic tote from under the bed and unlatched the lid. When Ellie glanced over to look at the box in question, he dove for the container.

“No! Everything in there is a keep.” He snatched it out of my hands and twisted so I couldn’t reach it anymore. He snapped the side locks back in place.

“This one too?” I pulled a second container out but made sure he saw the latches were still locked.

“Yeah, it’s just my stuff from home.” I smiled and nodded, but I didn’t believe for one fucking second that whatever was in that first box was just whatever. Unfortunately, that meant it would bug me until I figured it out. I hated being out of the loop, and Ellie was endlessly fascinating to me.

His reactions when he found something he’d lost forced me to hide my grin in case he thought I was laughing at him.

His huzzah with every finished pile and box was adorable.

Best of all was how he puffed and preened when I told him he was doing a good job.

He’d blush, but he also looked away so I wouldn’t see his proud grin.

“It kinda seemed like it was important,” I prodded because I couldn’t help myself. “I don’t mind helping you go through it.”

“No one needs to go through the boxes because I know exactly what’s in there.” Ellie looked a little panicked, and I wasn’t going for that.

“Hey, it’s cool. I’m just going to spend my whole life wondering and being disappointed that I don’t know. I kinda think you might be an art thief. You know, like the people in the movies who dress in black and sneak into windows… What are they called?”

“Cat burglars?”

“Yeah,” I said and snapped my fingers. “You’ve probably got like some stolen artifacts in there from a book vault heist. You’re going to forge them, sell the fakes, and keep the originals.”

“You have an active imagination.”

“Is it books? Like all your favorite ones that you hoard like a dragon does gold… How close am I?”

“Closer than you were with art.”

“So it’s books?”

“There are books in there, yes.”

“But it’s not all books?”

“Not comple—” Unfortunately, before I could tease more information from Ellie, pounding on his door interrupted his answer.

Shit . The team was here.