Page 9 of Fair Play
This whole situation is my doing.
If I hadn’t been so fed up with Bodi’s rules at the townhouse, this wouldn’t have happened.
But what’s done is done.
I’m already dreading the lecture that’s coming, but what choice do I have? I certainly don’t want to stay here. I’m stubborn, not stupid, and this situation was bad from the get-go. I thought I could handle it. Obviously, I can’t.
“Can I help?” Rome asks quietly.
“Uh, grab the books on my desk and put them in the box Bodi’s getting,” I say. “And by the way, how do you know my brother?”
“We play together.”
I freeze, staring at him. “You’re on the Phantoms?”
He nods. “Got traded here a few days before that night at the club.”
Holy crap.
It’s really a small world sometimes.
“This?” Bodi comes in with the box.
“Yes. Everything on my desk.” I point.
Bodi and Rome start filling it as I stuff my things into my two suitcases. I’m already keeping a couple of boxes of things in Bodi’s garage, so that part of this mess works out okay. The rest… well, not so much.
Fuck.
Living with my brother again is going to be a nightmare.
But it’s a lot more affordable than living anywhere else.
I’m just not sure the headache is a fair tradeoff.
“Are you seriously leaving?” One of our other roommates, Trina, stands in front of me as I shove a suitcase at my brother. “Over Ben’s prank? Come on, you can’t be serious.”
“I didn’t think it was funny,” I say.
Trina wrinkles her nose. “He wasn’t trying to havesexwith you—it was meant to be a joke. Something we could all get a laugh over.”
“Did I sound like I thought it was funny?” I meet her gaze steadily. How can they not see what he did was wrong? The situational blindness is mind-boggling to me.
“I think we can get the desk in the back of the SUV,” Rome says to Bodi, who nods.
“Yeah, and her chair.”
I’ve been sleeping on an air mattress, so that’s deflated now and I stuff it into its carry case. I look around at what was my room thirty minutes ago and it’s kind of sad that almost everything I own can fit in my brother’s SUV.
“What else?” Rome asks quietly, looking around.
The two crates I used as nightstands can stay and the shade on the window came with the apartment.
“Just my toiletries, and we’re out of here,” I say. I hurry to the bathroom, stuff everything into my toiletry bag and look around.
I never really wanted to live here—I just needed to get away from Bodi.
Obviously, they aren’t my kind of people.
