Quarterback Sneak (Red Zone Rivals #3)(3)

The front door burst open, and I glanced up at the frazzled girl who stumbled through the entryway, arms loaded with shopping bags.

She paused at the sight of me, her dark sunglasses sliding down her nose a bit. She arched a brow over them, taking in the length of me as I did the same to her.

I knew without asking who she was — Mary Silver, my new roommate.

We’d found each other through an app that reminded me of a dating app, except it matched you with potential roommates in the Boston area, instead. We’d both “swiped right” on each other, and after a couple nights of conversing, decided we could tolerate each other enough to live together. That was maybe what I’d liked most about her — she wasn’t bubbly and annoying, she wasn’t trying to be my best friend, she wasn’t expecting anything other than for me to pay my bills on time.

I felt the same.

My first impression of her in person was that she was gorgeous. That much I ascertained within seconds.

Her long blonde hair was styled in waves over her shoulders, her makeup immaculate, blush-painted lips and cat-lined eyes that made me wonder if she did it professionally. She wore a forest green dress covered in delicate flowers, her lush hips and thick thighs straining the fabric and calling attention to her curves I was already envious of. She paired that dress with a leather jacket it was far too hot to be wearing and black combat boots, and I noted the tattoos visible on her legs, her sternum, the piercings through the septum of her nose, and lining both her ears.

A subtle tilt of her chin was her first greeting. “Hey.”

“Hey,” I said back.

Dad paused where he was unpacking in the kitchen, and though he looked pleasant enough on the outside, I knew as his daughter what he was thinking as he eyeballed my new roommate.

Mary’s eyes drifted to the half-built pole in the middle of the floor.

“You dance?”

I shrugged. “Tricks and combos mostly, but I dance sometimes, too.”

She nodded, bottom lip poking out like she was impressed and maybe a little surprised. “Cool. Just don’t break anything. I want to get our deposit back.”

With that, she slid past me and Dad both, on her way down the back hallway toward the stairs that led to our rooms. She glanced into the kitchen as she passed. “’Sup, Pops.”

I actually felt the corners of my mouth tilt up at that, at how my dad’s eyebrow slid into his hairline with the greeting.

Once Mary climbed the stairs and shut her bedroom door, Dad looked at me.

“She seems nice,” I said.

He blinked but refrained from saying anything else and went back to unpacking.

Bending, I heaved the box I’d been sifting through into my arms and carried it up the stairs, too — to my own bedroom. The house Mary and I were renting together was ancient, the wood floors creaking with every step and the plumbing a delicate situation I was sure would give us trouble more than once. I was pretty sure we’d be haunted at night by a ghost from the Revolution era. But I loved the natural light that streamed through the large bay window in my room, loved the idea of filling my space with plants and all my favorite yard sale finds.

I finally had a space of my own.

I couldn’t blame my father for worrying about me. I had given him every right to after the way I’d completely lost control of my life when Abby died. Between the partying, the alcohol, the drugs, and the numbness with which I gave myself to any boy who wanted me… I had turned into someone no one recognized, most of all me.

I would have done anything to feel something, even though it never worked.

My mother gave up on me. I didn’t hate her for it, mostly because I was too busy hating myself. But it surprised me, the ease with which she seemed to dismiss me after the third or fourth time I showed up at their house in the middle of the night and puked on the lawn. I was lucky that my actions didn’t end my parents’ marriage. But somehow, they managed to hold on to each other even when I tested every last nerve they had.

But while Dad and I had moved here for his new job, she’d stayed back home in Alabama.

She claimed it was because she loved our house too much to leave it, that the church wouldn’t be able to go on without her, that the yoga studios wouldn’t be the same in New England.

I knew it was because she was happy for the chance to get away from me.

Dad, on the other hand, had never lost hope. He’d never lost faith in me. And somehow, that was worse.

I’d never forget the night my father broke down in tears at my feet, begging me to get straight, to go to college, to find a will to live again.

“I can’t lose you, too.”

Those words would haunt me for the rest of my life.

And so here I was, a sports medicine major who only drank a glass or two of wine a week, trying to do whatever it was that would make him happy. Because there wasn’t a shot in hell that I’d ever find that state of being again.

The least I could do with my miserable life was make his a little less hard to bear.

Rock music started blasting from Mary’s room as I got to unpacking, pulling out a hollow golden Buddha statue I’d picked up at an estate sale a few years ago and setting it on the floor next to my bedside table. Piece by piece, I filled my new bedroom with the vases and paintings and stained mirrors and tchotchkes and whatever else I’d thrifted over the years. The space became more and more eclectic as I did so, and each new addition made me feel a little less dead inside.