by Jenna Reed
Copyright © 2020 by Beck & Hallman LLC
Editing by Kelly Allenby
Cover photo by Regina Wamba
Cover design by T.E. Black Designs
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Contents
1. Nina
2. Travis
3. Nina
4. Travis
5. Travis
6. Nina
7. Travis
8. Nina
9. Travis
10. Nina
11. Travis
12. Nina
13. Travis
14. Nina
15. Travis
16. Nina
17. Travis
18. Nina
19. Travis
20. Nina
21. Nina
22. Travis
23. Nina
24. Travis
25. Nina
26. Nina
Epilogue
About the Author
Also by the Authors
Cruel Obsession Preview
Sinful Secrets
1
Nina
Lifting my hair up, I lie down on the living room floor. My brown locks fan out around me as I stare at the ceiling. The carpet feels good as it scratches at the back of my neck, and I pretend that each carpet fiber is a tiny masseuse, giving me a relaxing massage. It would be nice if that were the case, if I was on some tropical island somewhere or that what I came home to was a dream, but it isn’t. My small apartment has never felt less like home than it does right now.
“She had to have help,” my brother says as he moves into my line of vision. His worn-out red baseball cap blocks out the light on the fan. “There’s no way that tiny girl took everything that she did without help.” His gaze flicks around the room like it might toss him a bone of knowledge.
“Everything.” My lip curls into a frown. “She took everything.”
I’ve been lying on the floor in denial for the last hour, but there’s only so much suppressing of reality I can do. My shitty roommate Vicki moved out and took, or should I say, stole everything from me. She could’ve taken anything, the can-opener, extra toilet paper, my undies but no... she took all the furniture, my laptop, and whatever else she could throw into that garbage pail she called a van.
Sighing, Grady rolls his eyes. “Okay, look, don’t have a meltdown, let’s think about this. I’m pretty sure I have a loveseat in the garage that you can use. It might have a few stains on it, but it’s only temporary…”
I can’t help but cringe. I don’t even want to know what kinds of stains might be on my brother’s loveseat. The thought alone is enough to skeeve me out. Not that I would even know if Grady was in a relationship. He’s pretty private about his love life. I do know that at one point, he was in love with a girl, and then she wasn’t in the picture anymore, and he never talked about her again. I do know he has dates though, lots of them, and dates usually mean sex so…
Drowning in my own depression, I tell him, “It’s not just the furniture, G.” I get up only to realize there is nothing to dramatically flop down on, which only reminds me all over again how crappy Vicki is. So instead, I sit my butt back down on the carpet.
Grady exhales and then sucks in a deep breath before crossing the room. “Okay,” he replies softly, sitting across from me on the floor. “What’s it about then?” Like a good brother, he’s listening intently, prepared to handle all of my crazy. Which if I’m honest, is a lot, and something he should be familiar with by now. I have unloaded my problems to my brother more than once in the past year. I’ve told him he can return the favor, but he’s not taken me up on the offer yet. Grady is a private person, whereas I’m an open book sometimes.
I try not to pout about the situation. After all, I am a grown woman, but it’s hard. I let out an exasperated sigh and press the tips of my fingers to my temple, moving them in slow, gentle circles. “I’m already struggling to pay my bills, not to mention my rent is due very soon. I’ve called my landlord already giving him a heads up, thinking that he would give me a little bit of a break since I’ve always been a good renter, and ya know, I don’t even have a damn couch to sit on.”
“How’d that go?” Grady asks as if he’s truly interested in hearing what my crap landlord had to say.
Snorting, I roll my eyes. “It went about as good as I expected it to. He told me it wasn’t his problem that my roommate was a shitty human being and that my name is on the lease, so I’m the one responsible for the full rent amount.” I continue after releasing a huff of frustration, “Now, I have to come up with the full rent, which is going to be nearly impossible considering the other bills I have.”
Grady drums his fingers against his chin. “Well, you could always stand on the street corner.”
“I’m not even going to respond to that, you dork,” I say, shaking my head.
I’m trying to prevent myself from feeling so completely overwhelmed, but keeping a positive attitude during all of this shit is making it nearly impossible. All I want to do is go into my room, crawl into my bed, and pretend this was nothing but a nightmare.
My brother shrugs casually. “I mean, I can always lend you the money,” he offers.
“No.” I shake my head and look down at the carpet. It’s the only thing I have left. “Besides, you don’t have it either.” Not that I would ever take money from my brother and he knows that. Grady’s currently paying back an insane amount in student loans. While he has a good-paying job at a local graphic design place, anything extra goes to paying off that debt. He doesn’t have the money I need right now, not when he barely has the money he needs.
“You’re right, but I’d be a shit brother if I didn’t offer.” He gives me a soft smile that normally would make me feel better but doesn’t in this instance.
“Don’t worry about it. I’m just going to post an ad on Craigslist and hope a serial killer doesn’t answer it.” I choke on a bubble of laughter. “Hell, at this point, I’d be okay with a serial killer as long as he or she paid their half of the bills,” I say dryly.
Grady frowns at me. “You know that’s not funny, right?”
“Oh, come on. It’s a little funny.”
He adamantly shakes his head. “No, you’ll get someone weirder than Vicki was.” He laughs as if that would even be possible. “You obviously haven’t been watching Investigation Discovery as often as I have. There are some really insane people in this world, they wouldn’t just kill you, they’d keep you in the basement and cut you every day.”
Blinking slowly, I give him a disbelieving look. “I don’t have a basement. And you need to stop watching that crap. I highly doubt I could find someone weirder than Vicki.”
Vicki was unique. We hadn’t known each other when we started living together. I’d been introduced to her at a party for a guy I was sort of dating a year earlier. She seemed a lot more normal before I moved in with her. But behind closed doors, that’s when she truly let her freak flag fly.
She was an odd bird, and at one point, she had people call her, Juniper Moon, her spiritual name, she explained to me. She liked to live her life open-minded, free, and easy. Unfortunately for me, that meant a lot of awkward a
nd sometimes unbearable encounters. She was all about free love and expressing herself sexually. Vomit. Every day that she lived here, I didn’t know if I would be walking into burning incenses and guitar music or a full-blown orgy taking place in the living room. Yes, I did say an orgy, which was basically a bunch of long-haired hippies humping each other. They also enjoyed late-night drum circles after giving themselves to each other in drug-fueled sex parties.
Gagging, I remember vividly the night I had walked in on the nakedness and smell of sex. Forcing myself to focus on the now, I push the picture of a hairy ass thrusting in my face away and think about the present. Like, what I’m going to do now?
Who just moves out and takes everything? I mean, I paid for half of our furniture. My emotions are boarding on a volcanic eruption. That part bothers me the most. My purple wrap-around couch was the thrift-store find of the century. It was clean and in perfect condition without a single stain or tear. It tied the room together so well, and that little wench took it. Like, how in the hell did she even fit it in that damn van anyway?
Huffing out an annoyed breath, I pick at the carpet fibers on the floor. “I don’t think I can find any worse of a roommate than what I already had,” I tell Grady without even looking up at him.
“No, it could be worse,” he insists. “You could get someone who likes to dress up like a squirrel and hump people in town… or you in your sleep.”
Instantly, the picture of a middle-aged man in a squirrel costume, humping people at the park, pops into my head. On any ordinary day, I would have found that hilarious, but today is not that day. As dramatic as it sounds, today is the worst day of my life.
“Why a squirrel of all animals?”
“It’s the first animal that came to mind, but it’s no less true,” Grady says.
“I don’t have a choice, G,” I mumble, feeling really sorry for myself, “maybe I’ll call mom and talk to her.”
“We both know you don’t want to ask her and Glenn for help,” Grady shoots back. The disdain in his voice over our stepfather would be funny if the man weren’t such a tool.
“You’re right, again.” I sigh. “I can just hear him saying, now Barbara, when are you going to get Nina off your tit? She’s a grown woman, and it’s time to cut the umbilical cord.” I do my best nasally impersonation of Glenn.
Grady gives me a pity laugh. He holds his stomach and does fake shoulder shakes and everything. Impressions are not my strongest suit.
“Quit being an ass,” I tell him.
After a long moment of silence passes, he opens his mouth to talk again.
“I think I may have an option for you,” Grady ponders. “It’s not going to be your top choice when it comes to a roommate selection, but I think it’ll work. At the very least, we can get your rent paid.”
I don’t even want to know who he’s considering calling. My brother is great but his friends… some of them are stranger than Vicki, and that’s me being nice. His roommate, Owen is the exception. He’s a surfer dude in the wrong climate and the most laidback person I’ve ever met.
“Too bad we can’t share Owen.” I don’t even try to hide my smirk.
“Yeah, I did win the roommate lottery.” He smiles back. “I’ll call someone for you, don’t you worry.”
“No, I don’t want you to call in a favor with anyone. I’ll find a roommate on my own. I’ll just hang a sign around my neck and go to the coffee shop.” I stare up at the ceiling waiting for an answer to all my problems to appear there.
“Are you gonna wear a squirrel costume too?”
“If it gets me a roommate, yes.”
“Maybe if you wear one of those fur tail butt plugs with the costume.” He snickers.
“Ewe!” I turn and slap his arm playfully. Rubbing at the spot, he pretends like it actually hurts him, but I know otherwise. Grady spends every morning in the gym lifting and has ridiculous muscles hiding beneath his shirt. No way did a small slap hurt him.
“Let me call my guy, and we can just see what happens. I’ve got to go anyway. I’ll call him on the way home,” he insists and pushes up off the floor. I come to stand with him and walk him to the door. He’s about six-two, and my five-foot-seven frame is dwarfed by him. I look like a gnome standing beside him.
“No, Grady. I can do this,” I insist once we reach the door. “What would Glenn say if he knew you were helping me with my grown-up responsibilities?”
Grady rolls his eyes, and then does his much better impersonation of Glenn, “She’s never going to learn anything if you keep bailing her out, son.” He puts a hand on his hip, mocking him further. “Tough love, that’s all she needs.”
“Yeah, yeah. Get out.” I laugh and shove him out the apartment, closing the door and locking it behind him. It’s a sad state of affairs at the moment, but what am I going to do? Cry? I mean, I really want to but again that seems overly dramatic. Especially since crying won’t change the fact that this is a nightmare, and my purple couch is gone.
I can’t watch the television because she took my TV. All I have left is watching YouTube videos on my phone when I get bored. I already miss my late-night binge sessions of some ridiculous reality TV show.
I go into the kitchen and trudge to the freezer to pull out the large box of carb-free ice cream I’d hidden Ben and Jerry’s pints in. My roommate and her dumb men took all my food. I’d found they didn’t like healthy stuff, so it was a win when I could disguise my good ice cream.
Finding the silverware drawer, I pull it open and reach inside, but instead of a spoon, I find a fork. In fact, there is nothing but forks in the spoon space.
What. The. Hell? Pulling the drawer completely open, I inspect its contents and find there are no spoons at all.
What kind of person steals someone’s spoons?
Shoving the drawer closed, I take my fork and ice cream and walk into my room. Sinking the fork into the frozen goodness, I almost laugh. She stole everything... including my spoons.
Forkful after forkful of ice cream soothes my soul, that and the fact she didn’t steal my bed is the only thing that is keeping me from stabbing the fork into my ear right now.
Finishing off as much of the ice cream as I can, I cuddle under the blankets and fall into a restless sleep. Nightmares about people trying to kill me after answering the Craigslist ad plague me. During one dream, someone brought in a bunch of pet squirrels that try to eat me. The whole thing is weird.
At three o’clock in the morning, I wake up in a cold sweat with my heart racing. That was one of those dreams that felt far too real.
Defeated and desperate, I reach for my phone and send a text to Grady, okay call your friend. Pulling the covers up and over my head, I force myself to go back to sleep, wishing for a dreamless rest.
When I wake up in the morning, I see his reply. You got it, squirrel girl.
I really hope that isn’t going to become a thing. Squirrels have officially become terrifying beasts.
My eyes flick to the time, and I realize that I’m going to be late to work, and I still have to take a shower. Ugh. Walking into the bathroom, I open the cabinet that holds the towels and see that the only thing left is one lonely old washrag that’s covered in stains. I don’t even remember ever seeing this thing. The stains could literally be from anything. Gross.
She took all the towels. Like seriously? First, the couch, then the spoons, and now the towels. It’s like she’s trying to torture me.
Sighing, I stare at the cabinet like towels might reappear, and when they don’t, I realize I’m either going to dry off with a 10x10 inch washcloth or drip dry until I can put my clothes on without soaking them. Which leads me to wonder…
What in the world did I do to deserve this?
2
Travis
Pinching the bridge of my nose, I try to make sense of what Sydney is saying. Holding the phone away from my ear, I can still make out every word she’s screaming at me.
“It’s just a plant,�
�� I claim when she finally lets me get a word in, “I don’t understand why you’re freaking out.”
“Because it’s not just a plant, Travis. Cinnamon got me through some hard nights when you were being a complete ass,” she starts to yell again. “You don’t care about anything, only yourself, and getting your rocks off.”
I fight the urge to say something terrible to her about her desire to name things without feelings. I’m a dick, but not that big of a dick.
“You’re seriously going to tell me that you’re mad at me because I didn’t water your plants while you were getting your ‘plants’ watered by somebody else.”
“Oooh,” she says mockingly, “really good analogy, Travis, and way to change the subject. We were on a break! A break, Travis!” My eyes roll without me even thinking about it. She always wanted a break, but then God forbid, I even looked at another girl during this so-called break.
Sydney and I have been together off and on for the past three years. Ever since leaving my hometown, Cedar Falls, I’ve been in a string of toxic relationships with crazy girls, but Sydney, crazy doesn’t even begin to describe her. Insane, now that would be a more fitting word. I really need to stop fishing for dates in the looney bin.
Don’t get me wrong, she’s hot... crazy hot. We are just bad for each other in every way, except the bedroom. So usually, we have amazing sex, fight like wild animals, and then take a break. After that, we repeat the cycle. A vicious cycle. One I need to get out of.
This time we took a break because we’ve been fighting nonstop for weeks. While we were on a break, she slept with some guy from work, and he stayed in our apartment for three days while I crashed with a buddy. Then they went out of town together, which she doesn’t think I know about.