by Jamie Knight
Cramped Quarters
Love Under Lockdown, Book 20
A series of standalone quarantine romance books.
Copyright © 2020 Jamie Knight Romance.
All rights reserved.
Jamie Knight –
Your Dirty Little Secret Romance Author
Love Under Lockdown series:
1): Under Lock & Key
2): Under Lockdown
3): Under Strict Orders
4): Stuck Together
5): Under His Roof
6): Under the Hawaiian Sun
7): Under Wraps
8): Under His Care
9): Under the Sheets
10): Dating During Lockdown
11): Under His Protection
12): Locked Down with Mr. Right
13): Under His Watchful Eye
14): Below Deck
15): Under the Rancher’s Firm Hand
16): Under His Suit
17): Who Wants to Lockdown a Billionaire
18): Under His Discipline
19): Under the Wants Ads
20): Cramped Quarters
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Table of Contents
Chapter One - Rachel
Chapter Two - Augustus
Chapter Three - Rachel
Chapter Four - Augustus
Chapter Five - Rachel
Chapter Six - Augustus
Chapter Seven - Rachel
Chapter Eight - Augustus
Chapter Nine - Rachel
Chapter Ten - Augustus
Chapter Eleven - Rachel
Chapter Twelve - Augustus
Chapter Thirteen - Rachel
Chapter Fourteen - Augustus
Chapter Fifteen - Rachel
Epilogue
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Books in the Love Under Lockdown Series
Chapter One - Rachel
I couldn’t believe it was finally my first day of college. It seemed as if this day would never arrive, and yet, here it was.
The scent of fresh cut grass blended with the wafting aromas from the food trucks, which formed a daisy chain on the circle drive around the Student Union Building. Both the groomed lawns and the culinary extravaganza were acts in the show. It was as if the administration was showing off how much money it could extract from freshmen to pour into unnecessary displays.
This was a strange contrast when you considered the fact that this university embodied the best theology school in the state. This was the site of the type of scholastics I’d dreamed about since I’d discovered such institutions existed. I just didn’t realize that they’d be so showy in their wealth.
While other girls my age were hanging pictures of Bieber and his ilk on their bedroom walls, I, as a young teenager, had a glossy photograph of these hallowed halls on my wall. Right next to the oil rendering of our Lord and Savior.
“Are you sure you’ll be okay?” Dad asked, the wheels of my last suitcase touching down on the asphalt.
“Yes, Daddy,” I lied.
I wanted to slap myself.
I was eighteen, about to start university, and I was still talking to him like I was a little kid. But the truth was, I had always been scared of him, and this level of childhood fear was still ingrained in me.
There was something about my father that had always scared me, and I was glad to finally be getting away. He fought like hell against me even being able to go to college, but was glad that it was at least seminary school and not something like medicine or science, which he felt were areas of study better reserved for men.
In our strict religion, women couldn’t become pastors. But he assumed I was just getting further educated in the Bible so that I would be able to teach my children. What he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.
Like the fact that I yearned to be able to date. To be able to kiss a guy. Even to have my virginity taken, at some point, although I wanted to wait for marriage for that.
“I’ll go up with you, just to be certain,” my dad said.
From what he needed to protect me, I couldn’t fathom, but I never argued with my father. Particularly when he insisted on paying through the nose for my tuition and carrying my bags up to my dorm room, leaving me to unload just a small backpack. He was a man of extremities, my dad. Both in terms of love and hate.
Part of the deal the university had made for hosting the theology school was that the students had to live in general housing. The administration was far too tightfisted to splurge on a whole new dorm building.
Once we got inside, it was like a paint-ball game exploded. The corridor of the residence was a riot of bright colors and shapes. I thought my dad might swoon right then and there, but he plucked up his Irish courage and forged ahead, his steely blue eyes set on an imagined Calvary.
The administration had saved money by “letting” the students decorate the dorms. For no pay, of course. They were no doubt expecting the results of letting a pack of young adults, free from the confines of their parents’ home for the first time, loose with decorating supplies. One brave soul even got away with painting a depiction of an orgy on their door.
“I am really having second thoughts about this school,” Dad mused out loud.
I was supposed to be sharing my room with another girl named Jinx Devlin. But when we arrived at room 113, there was only one name on the whiteboard screwed into the powder blue door. Mine.
“No roommate? That’s different,” Dad commented.
It was, but I wasn’t about to say so. Not least of all because when he said ‘different,’ I got the strong sense he had meant ‘wonderful.’ He had been rather insistent that I get a big room on a floor ‘with no boys.’
The housing office couldn’t promise the lack of males on our floor, but they said they could be sure they roomed me with a girl. Now I wouldn’t even have that. It gave me the opportunity to be cloistered away and focus exclusively on my studies. And to eat occasionally.
I suspected Dad would have sent me to a nunnery if that was still legal. Though my previous twelve years of convent school had been close enough. I suppose it said it all that our headmistress had been appropriately nicknamed ‘The Wrecking-Ball.’
“In fact, it’s wonderful!” Dad exalted, finally saying what he meant as always, consequences be damned.
I couldn’t disagree with him there. The dorm was massive. It was closer to a two-bedroom condo with a huge open-concept living area, separate kitchen with a pass-through area, and one of the biggest bathrooms I’d ever seen, with a tub so deep I worried that I might drown in it.
“Glad to know my money is going to good use,” Dad said, then added, “See you later, kitten.”
Giving me a goodbye kiss on the cheek, he all but jigged out of the apartment, leaving my luggage sitting under the pass through.
Sometimes I wondered how he could be so sweet to me, while also having done horrible things to me in the past, emotionally abusive and even physically abusive things. But I tried not to dwell on that, because it was too confusing. The Bible said to obey my parents, so I did.
As the door closed, my heart stopped. Or at least that was what it felt like.
It was real. I was alone. In a strange place with no one to talk to or ask for h
elp. I fell to my knees, trying not to cry as the shock and fear washed over me. Pulling myself together enough to move, I pulled my backpack off and dug through one of the pockets until I found it.
Moving the small, smooth beads between my fingers, the prayers and petitions came to me as naturally as breathing. I prayed for courage and focus, to serve Him to the best of my potential in his holy name, as the beads of the rosary made their rounds. I’d been using the same one since I was ten and knew every last bead on it.
Equilibrium slowly coming back, my breathing went from deep gulps to something more closely resembling regular intervals. I tried to focus my mind. There was work to be done.
Returning the rosary to the backpack, I got out my laptop and looked at the reading list for the semester. There were a lot of books I needed to buy, some of them with prices coming close to my food budget for the month. Steeling myself against the forces of darkness, I copied the list to my phone and headed out to look for the bookstore.
The campus wasn’t as big as some others. In the suburbs, it combined the steely exterior of a big city campus like NYU with the size and scenery of a smaller, more pastoral institution like the University of Oregon.
I had to struggle to keep my mind on the task at hand, because I was continually distracted by the splendor of it all. Controversial as it was in some circles, I thought Newton was certainly onto something when he used the beauty of nature to argue for the existence of a benevolent creator.
One thing I truly had to give the administration credit for were the small, British-style signposts. Each one was spiked with arrow shapes pointing in the general direction of the most important locations on campus. It was pretty easy to find my way around here, at least.
Within minutes, I was ascending the steep stone stairs to the new library building. I held down the back of my skirt just in case there was anyone close behind me. I’d considered wearing pants to avoid such situations, but I could never get used to them. I had what Dad called ‘princess skin,’ which, while it sounds nice, could be annoying sometimes.
The bookstore was packed. Dozens of students were coming and going at any given time, adding to the unfathomable line stretching from the checkouts, through a maze of spectators taking up most of the western half of the floor space and back out the door again.
The actual shelves weren’t so bad. The class readings were kept separate from the general fiction and non-fiction the store also carried. I had to get a basket for all my weighty tomes. Some of them stood out as rather unusual. Not least of which was the volume concerning St. Francis of Assisi, a friar I got the impression was something of a heretic. As attested to by the fact that he was de-canonized and reinstated no fewer than three times, depending on who was wearing the Pope’s hat.
His ideas were admittedly radical. He held notions such as religious enlightenment coming from within and not adhering to an outside institution. Slightly less controversial was the assertion that because God was a creator, creativity was the highest form of human endeavor, following the example of the Lord.
Hauling my cargo the length of the floor plan, I found the end of the line, which started roughly where I had come in. I migrated forward just enough so that I was actually in the building.
“Wow, that’s a load!” someone exclaimed.
“Wha-?” I asked, turning in the direction of the voice.
“The books. How many courses are you taking?”
“Six,” I said, after counting them.
“Holy shit!”
I blushed at her blasphemy. I didn’t mean to. I wanted nothing more than to fit in to my new surroundings, yet I still felt the heat rising in my cheeks, like it did during confession.
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay. I’m just not used to talk like that.”
“Convent school?” she asked.
“Exactly. How did you know?”
“You have the look. I went to St. Andrews.”
“You’re a Presbyterian.”
“Very much fallen away. I’m Jenna.”
“Rachel O’Flanagan,” I said, taking her offered hand.
“Quite the handle. Limerick, right?”
“You’ve been there?”
“Every summer for six years straight. We were actually going to Edinburgh, but I would take the train down, see what was what. This was well after the nastiness, of course. I’m only twenty, so I was still in a stroller when the Good Friday Agreement was signed. You’re Frosh, yeah?”
“Um, yeah.”
My mind was still spinning. I had an idea what she was talking about, but only a vague one. I was born and raised in America. Any Irish accent I had was purely accidental, picked up from my neighborhood, church and elders. Yet Jenna had known where my family was from, down to the city.
I also couldn’t yet fathom the idea of someone losing their faith. Believing and then not believing. It was all a lot to take in.
“I’m third year, due for parole soon! Kidding, I love my classes. I’m doing Poli Sci. Judging from your books, I’d guess you’re over at the Bible Building. That’s our own term for the theology school, among the poli sci kids. It’s not very original but it makes us laugh.”
As subtly as I could, I checked her pupils. It didn’t seem like she was high, but you could never be too careful.
“Good one,” I fibbed, deciding she was just excited about life in general.
We kept chatting, with Jenna mostly talking and me mostly listening, so that our time in the line seemed to just fly by. Before I knew it, I was at the checkout, punching in the numbers to charge nearly a thousand dollars to dad’s credit card.
And I had made a friend. My very first one here on campus, as eccentric as she was.
Chapter Two - Augustus
The dorms didn’t look like much on the outside. Just one-floor structures like townhouses. Though inside was an innovation of architectural engineering. A central room, combining living room and kitchen, surrounded by sight small bedrooms, encircling it in a roughly orthogonal shape.
There was one main door, leading to seven separate spaces. At least that was how it had looked on the website. I could only hope the reality would live up to the image in my head.
I could see the campus like a glowing city on the hill as our ancient transit van chugged its way along. Only rolling back a little on the ascent. For a while there was a question whether I would get there at all. Though my dad was crafty and devised a way, so he could afford to drive me himself.
Sending my little sister onto the message boards, they’d found a student at my university, a rich prep brat with a double-barreled last name who was looking for someone to drive the rest of their stuff from their hometown.
The job paid $1,000 plus gas. It was a good thing I’d packed fairly light. Otherwise, we would never have gotten all five of us into the van with the load.
It felt weird being a scholarship kid. I was the first one in my family to make it to university, the tradition being more along the lines of construction work. My uncle Dave went to community college and the rest of the family acted like he was a huge deal.
Me going to university on scholarship to study film was like a peasant-farmer’s son getting appointed to the House of Lords. The overall reaction from my beloved blood-relations was a healthy mix of pride and good-natured teasing.
The van coughed its way into a parking spot before sputtering to a halt. How Dad kept the old beast going was a mystery for the ages. But it probably involved a combination of like-new used parts from his mechanic friends, a smattering of black magic as well as a touch of iron will. They didn’t call us Graves because we gave up easily.
Breaking up into teams, my sister and I took my possessions to the cluster housing as my mom, dad and brother went to deliver the stuff and get paid the other $500 and get reimbursed for the gas. It was amazing how carefully Dad had kept and organized each and every gas receipt, like a stamp collector with OCD.
Outside, continuing t
he theme of their internal design, the cluster housing was divided between eight buildings surrounding a central courtyard in an octagon. The courtyard itself featured an octagonal bench at its center. If I didn’t know better, I would swear that the architect was an adherent of numerology, using eight as a holy number. Things were already looking up.
“Nice,” my sister said, as we walked through the courtyard.
The main door locked automatically. So, every resident was given two keys. One for the main door and the other for their own room in the cluster unit. I had been offered a double. It was within the power of the housing office to give it to me for the same price as the cluster housing, but it wasn’t about the money. Not entirely, anyway.
Even with a double dorm, there was a chance of my potential roommate not showing up. Then I would be all alone in a big apartment-like room.
I’d grown up the middle child of five with a brother and sister on either end. The older ones had already left home but for a large part of my life, there were six other people constantly surrounding me.
They were loving, crazy, wonderful people and I didn’t see how I could go from that to no one at all. I might not get along with everyone in cluster housing, and I certainly knew I didn’t get along with my siblings all the time, but a bit of conflict was still preferable to isolation.
It was hard for me to make friends, due not only to my strange personality and upbringing but also due to the obvious scar on my eye. People thought I was some kind of freak sometimes.
The door unlatched with a happy pop, opening the first few inches of its own accord on tight new hinges. The housing had only been built in the last few years, apparently under some duress on the part of the administration, so everything still had that new building feel. It even extended to the bedroom, with the mattress actually crinkling under me, still covered with protective plastic.
“Up and at ‘em, bro,” Amelia said, smacking my boot.
“I’m still the older one, you know.”