Page 18 of Mastered By Desire

I really don’t want to impose on their parents again. As kind as Mr. and Mrs. Montrose are, they downsized and moved to Fair Heights after Dmitri and Danica moved out. While they do have a small spare room, it’s a thirty-minute commute to San Esteban—more when there’s traffic. I meet a lot of students and my schedule is all over the place. Living in Fair Heights would be very inconvenient.

Danica points at him. “That’s a shit solution and you know it. What’s your problem? This is Leah we’re talking about.”

Leah, who is me. Who is standing right here. Feeling awkward as fuck.

“It’s okay,” I say. “If I could store some of my stuff for a week or two, I can stay at a hotel or something until I find an apartment.”

I have all that money from the auction, first of all. It isn’t enough to live on for long, but it’s a great opportunity to getstarted—first and last months’ rent, security deposit, and a few extra months taken care of. The problem is after it runs out. My tutoring gig won’t keep me afloat as a single renter in San Esteban.

“You guys,” Danica says. “Stop it. Leah’s staying with you, Dmitri. It won’t be for long. The three of us should get a place together, anyway. I’m pissed at Elias—heknewI had that room marked for you, Leah.”

Before the auction, finding a place to rent with Danica and Dmitri would’ve been fine. Fun, even. But now?

Nightmare fodder.

“Last thing I want to do, sis, is live with you again,” Dmitri says. “But Leah, yeah. You can stay for a bit while you find a place.”

There’s so much unspoken between us.

I’m not sure what we’ll end up saying. But I guess that’s a problem for Future Leah.

I worry about Future Leah. She has some hard times coming.

7

Dmitri

“So, you know your way around already,” I say.

All of Leah’s stuff has either been crammed into my garage or is stacked in boxes in my living room. It’s not a big place, so the difference is pretty obvious. There are a few houses like mine in the neighborhood. They were built in the seventies and eighties, smashed in between the larger, more established homes. They have tiny square footage and they were made for a single resident, maybe a couple. This style of home is popular in San Esteban because it’s a college town, but it’s inconvenient for two people who aren’t a couple.

And now it’s just Leah and me in my small house, facing each other.

It was awkward as fuck working alongside Danica, but now she’s gone. Leah and I don’t have her as a buffer between us.

I don’t know how to act or what to say.

It’s early evening, with light filtering through the windows and glinting off my hand-me-down coffee table. Most of this furniture came from my parents when they moved to FairHeights. The coffee table, the dining set, the dark gray couch, the TV that’s way too big for this room.

When I steal a glance at Leah, I notice the light makes her brown hair shine with golden streaks.

“Chill, Dmitri,” she says with a smile and sparkling blue eyes. “I gave you a BJ, not a broken leg. You can stop panicking, you’re not going to get hurt.”

I’m already hurting. As soon as the word “BJ” left her mouth, my dick stiffened with hope.

To hide the awkwardness, I turn around and grab a slice of room-temperature pizza from the box on my coffee table.

“I’m beat.” She stretches and yawns to emphasize the point. I try not to look at how her long-sleeved T-shirt rides up on her stomach. “Let’s finish up the pizza and watch a movie. I’ll unpack everything tomorrow.”

“Sounds good.” I throw myself onto my usual side of the couch.

When Leah and Danica come over, I always sit here. Leah sits in the opposite corner of the couch. Danica curls up in the recliner I took from our parents’ place when they moved.

“Beer?” Leah asks.

“Yeah, there’s some in the fridge. Bring me one?”

“Sure.”

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