Page 1 of Same Thing

Chapter One

Nory Hunter checked over her shoulder for the third time, hopeful he wouldn’t be there.

Her neighbor, Jackson, always ended up at the mailboxes at the same time as her, no matter when she showed up.

Her apartment complex wasn’t huge, so there weren’t a lot of people checking the mailboxes at the same time. Jackson liked to show up and ask her out. Daily.

This time, she’d gotten away with a peaceful mailbox check, and with a sigh of relief, she turned to leave but froze. Jackson was approaching.

“Shoot,” she huffed under her breath. She’d been trying to cuss less lately on account of her mother assuring her high-quality men didn’t like sailor-mouthed women.

“I thought that was you,” Jackson murmured with a greeting smile.

“Yeah, what a coincidence meeting here. Again.”

“Yeah, it’s fate or something, right?” Jackson asked. He was a nice enough guy, but there was just something about him that had always lifted the hairs on the back of Nory’s neck. Mostly, it bothered her that he didn’t take no for an answer.

Jackson was blocking the narrow exit to the outdoor mailboxes, which were set in a rectangle shape. She tried to get around him with an, “I’ll see you later,” but he stepped in front of her and rested his forearm on the side of the first mailbox.

Drats. Blocked.

He started telling her about something that happened at his work with some guy named Don, and Nory stood on her tiptoes looking past him. To her eternal relief, Layla, the apartmentmanager, was doing a tour with a new tenant. Geez, the potential tenant was a giant. And a gym rat. Wow.

She waved. “Hi, Layla! Excuse me,” she interrupted Jackson. “I need to talk to her about something.”

“Oh, she’s on a tour. She’s busy. You can talk to her when she’s done,” Jackson said.

Nory flinched back, and assured him, “No, I can talk to her whenever I want.” She didn’t like him telling her what she could and couldn’t do. She didn’t like it at all. It was the boldest thing she’d ever said to anyone. She was always polite, and truth-be-told, was cripplingly shy, so sticking up for herself felt impossible most days.

Jackson frowned, and she felt immediate guilt for being rude.

“Anyways, I got two tickets for the game this week, and I was thinking—”

“Hey,” a gravelly voice said from behind him.

Jackson turned around, and Nory froze. It was the tall guy who was touring the complex with Layla. He wore sunglasses, but that didn’t cover up the deep frown on his face.

“Move aside,” he gritted out.

“What did you say to me?” Jackson asked, standing to his full height.

“I didn’t stutter.”

“Who the fuck are you?” Jackson asked.

The tall man cocked his head and seemed to study Jackson. “I’ll be your neighbor, looks like.”

“Yeah, well dibs on this one. We’ve been talking for a while.”

“Excuse me. I really want to go home,” she murmured, and sidled around Jackson.

The new guy didn’t even grace her with a look as she passed, but he did say, “Have a good day.”

“Okay,” she whispered, her skin crawling with what had just happened with Jackson.

He was getting more forceful. Dibs? They were talking? She’d told him no to dates at least a dozen times by now.

“I’ll pick you up tomorrow at seven,” Jackson called from behind her, and she hunched her shoulders up to her ears and kept walking.