Page 10 of Deceiving Grier

I wouldn’t do any of those things, of course, for all the reasons I’d been listing in my head all afternoon—we had to live together for the rest of the school year, and I wanted to interview him on the record. But that image was tough to ignore.

“How’d your roommate take it when you told him you were leaving?” Jett asked, breaking the silence.

I snorted. “He managed not to do a happy dance, but just barely, and Kelly actually smiled. Until then, I didn’t know she had teeth.”

“You didn’t bring much with you,” Grier said.

“The room is furnished.” I shrugged and shot Grier a smirk. “And I prefer to travel light.”

Grier didn’t look away, and I wondered if he was forcing himself to hold my gaze. “So, did you put your things in storage then?”

I shook my head. “I just left it all with Sean. They can do what they want with everything.” Not that there was much—a second-hand double bed, dresser and desk. “I would have sold everything or donated it at the end of the school year. There was nothing really worth taking.”

“You’re not staying in Oregon when school finishes?” Jett asked, around a mouthful of pizza.

“I’m going to go to New York.”And you boys are my ticket.Clearly, I kept the thought to myself.

“Grier won’t be staying, either. When he finishes school, he’ll go back to Wisconsin to run his family’s business.”

Of course, he had a family business waiting for him to take over. A perfect future for the golden boy. Some things just made sense.

“What kind of business?”

“We manufacture work gloves,” Grier said.

“That’s cool,” I lied.

He shot me a pointed look that clearly saidfuck-off, and I barked out a laugh, catching myself off guard. Grier looked back down at his pizza, but not before I caught sight of the faint grin pulling at his mouth.

“What about you?” I asked Jett. “What will you do when school finishes?”

Jett shrugged. “Probably stay. I like it here.”

“Do you think Mackenzie will let you keep living here?” I asked, carefully steering the conversation to our landlord while trying not to appear too interested.

Jett shrugged. “Probably not. He wanted to sell this place before, and he only agreed to let us live here until we finished school.”

“What’s Mackenzie like?”

Jett snorted, and Grier shrugged, then said, “We’ve never met him. Finn handles anything to do with the property.”

“I think Alistair met him,” Jett added. “Finn and Greyson Mackenzie are good friends, apparently.”

Alistair was the former roommate. I recognized his name, but I’d never heard of Finn.

“Who’s Finn?” I asked.

“He works for Mackenzie, managing some of the properties he owns,” Grier explained.

“He’s kind of the reason you’re even here,” Jett said, leaning forward to set his empty plate on the coffee table and pick up his beer. “He and Alistair hooked up over the summer, and Alistair moved in with him after the fire. They bought a place a little way up the street.”

“I heard about the fire at your last place,” I said, jumping on the chance to talk about it now that Jett had brought it up. “That it was arson.”

“You heard right,” Grier said, setting his plate on top of Jett’s.

“Do the police have any idea who started it or why?”

Grier shook his head. “No one saw anything. Investigators know there was an accelerant used around the front door, but not much else.”

---