by Roxie Rivera
As I left the laundry room to check my mail, I could hear Hagen’s voice in my head, telling me to use his washer and dryer. If he had his way, I would have moved in with him by now. He didn’t see the point in me paying rent when he had a perfectly good house where I was always welcome.
There were so many times when I wanted to cave and accept his offer. The thought of having more than seven hundred square feet of space and access to a nicer kitchen with actual pantry storage was tempting. Too tempting.
He liked to take care of me and wanted to give me an easier life. I liked standing on my own two feet and supporting myself. It was the only disagreement in our relationship, and I worried it would cause strain as things grew even more serious between us. Hagen was older than me and ready for that next stage of life—a shared house, kids, HOA meetings and retirement plans. I was just getting started and on the cusp of making a huge decision about my future. In a few months, I would be choosing a grad school and moving far away from Houston.
And away from Hagen.
The thought of leaving him made my heart ache and my stomach clench painfully. I had considered staying at Rice or looking at other in-state options, but the very best graduate programs were in California or Massachusetts. I had the education, the grades and the GRE scores to get into the very best universities. I couldn’t give up the chance to realize my dreams of working in astronautics and space engineering to stay close to Hagen.
Not that he would ever ask me to do that. I believed him when he told me how proud he was of me or how excited he was for my future. I believed that he wanted the absolute best for me. I wanted the best for him. I wanted him to have an equally as promising future.
But how the hell did we meld our two lives together to make sure we were both happy? I couldn’t imagine asking him to sell his home, his businesses, sever his ties and pack up to move with me. He had established himself here, and he had earned his place in the business community. He deserved to stay here where his future was the most predictable and steady.
Troubled by those thoughts, I jammed my mailbox key into the rusty slot and fought with the door until it creaked open and dropped with a clang. Like everything else at the complex, the mail station needed some serious maintenance. For the rent I paid, I couldn’t complain even if I was bothered and frustrated by the ongoing problems—like the cracked sidewalk I stumbled over as I flicked through my mail on my walk back to the laundry room.
A sealed envelope from the apartment complex caught my eye. I had a bad feeling as I stared at it. They never sent out mailed notices. Whatever it was must have been important and probably bad news. Not wanting to deal with it, I tucked it into the middle of the pile of mail.
When I walked into the laundry room, I noticed the last two people I wanted to see. My footsteps faltered, and I honestly considered turning and running before they spotted me. Janine and her boyfriend Travis had no love for me. I didn’t blame them. Travis had been Ronnie’s weed dealer and had later introduced him to the local underground gambling scene. When Ronnie had left Houston on Hagen’s dime, he had left behind a few unsettled debts. The biggest ones Hagen had graciously settled, sparing my brother from certain death, but the smaller ones, the ones to men like Travis and the dice and card game hosts he hung out with had gone unpaid.
From the nasty looks I got from Travis and the angry vitriol Janine often spewed at me, I knew they had both suffered because of the unpaid debts. I had wanted to pay them, but Hagen forbid it. His reasons made sense—that I would be opening myself up to more debt claims or that I could end up paying an undercover cop and put my future at risk—but they didn’t make it any easier to bear Janine and Travis’s ire.
Steeling myself for the inevitable nastiness, I strode toward the washer and dryer I had been using. I noticed Janine’s smug smirk, and my stomach dropped. A few more steps, and I saw why she was so pleased with herself. My half-washed clothing was in the trashcan. I could only assume that my laundry from the dryer was in the same place.
Refusing to let them know they had upset me, I calmly bent down to grab my laundry baskets she had thrown into the corner. At the last second, I stopped and managed to not touch the absolutely disgusting droplets of urine on the plastic. Someone—Travis, probably—had pissed all over my laundry baskets. Appalled, I glanced back at Janine and she shot me the finger before mouthing, “Fuck you.”
“Hey, let me help,” Kyle said, startling me as he appeared suddenly behind me. He had his own small basket of laundry on his hip, and I smile gratefully at him. When he noticed the urine puddles in my baskets, he wrinkled his nose and snarled, “Those fucking assholes.”
“What did you say?” Travis asked from across the laundry room.
Kyle straightened up and turned toward him. “You two are lowlife fucking scum.”
“Real tough words from you, soy boy,” Travis snapped.
Kyle rolled his eyes. “Soy boy? Yeah. That’s real fucking original. You read that in your 4Chan circle jerk?”
“You prefer cuck?” Travis glanced at me before adding, “Everyone sees the way you keep chasing her around, but she’s only got eyes for that big-dicked loan shark.”
“You are so gross,” I said, disgusted with him. Touching Kyle’s arm, I pleaded, “Let’s just get out of here.”
Kyle’s eyes were narrowed with anger, but he nodded and helped me gather up my wet clothing. I didn’t waste time picking off the trash and lint sticking to my soggy laundry. I grabbed one armful, and Kyle took another, dropping it on top of his basket. We left my baskets there, neither of us wanting to touch them. He followed me out of the laundry room, down the sidewalk to the building where we both lived.
“You need to report them to the management,” Kyle urged.
“So they can retaliate even more?”
“Call the police then,” he said.
“And say what? That my brother ran out on some drug and gambling debts and I’m being harassed because I won’t pay them?” I shook my head. “That’s more trouble than I need.”
“Is it a lot?” Kyle adjusted his grip on the heavy basket. “What Ronnie owes?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I don’t want to know.”
“Why can’t you ask Hagen for the money?”
“He’s not an ATM,” I replied with a frown. “And, anyway, he’s already done so much to help my brother. I’m not going to ask him to open his wallet again.”
“You shouldn’t have to ask. He should volunteer to help you, if he loves you.”
“He does love me. It’s not his job to ride in like my knight in shining armor and save me every time I have problems.”
“Yes, it is,” Kyle insisted. “That’s the whole point of a relationship. The man is supposed to take care of his woman. Doesn’t he want you to be safe?”
“Of course, he does,” I replied, more harshly than intended. “He would do anything for me.”
“Except pay these debts?”
“Pay what debts?” Hagen’s voice startled both of us. He had been leaning against my door, waiting for me. He pushed off of it and removed his aviators. His gaze moved from my face to the wet clothing, and his jaw clenched. “What happened?”
“Just a little disagreement in the laundry room,” I said airily, not wanting him to go full-blown knee breaking loan shark on Janine and Travis.
“They took her clothes out of the machines, threw them in the trash and used the money in the machines to wash their own laundry,” Kyle said, ratting me out to Hagen. “They also pissed on her laundry baskets.”
Hagen’s nostrils flared. “Stay here.”
“Hagen,” I pleaded, “don’t.”
He ignored my plea and stormed down the sidewalk, his long strides purposeful and strong. In his jeans and grey Henley with those black boots, he looked tough and mean. I wanted to chase after him, to tell him not to make trouble, but I stayed put. Some part of me, a part of me I hated to acknowledge, liked his alpha protectiveness.
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“We should probably get inside,” Kyle suggested, his arms straining under the weight of the wet laundry stacked on top of his.
“Right,” I said, tearing my gaze away from Hagen’s back. Arms full of wet clothing, I realized I couldn’t reach my keys. “Can you grab my keyring out of my pocket? It’s on this side.”
“Sure.” Kyle braced the heavy basket of clothes against the wall and plucked the keys from the thigh pocket on my leggings. I ignored the touch of his fingers a little too high on my thigh, certain it had been an accident as he tried to hold up the basket and find the keys. “Got ’em.”
I stepped to the side so he could unlock my door. He followed me inside to the kitchen where we dumped my wet clothes in the, thankfully, empty sink. He pulled my mail from the back of his jeans where he had tucked it earlier and handed it over to me. “Looks like you got a rent increase, too.”
“Is it bad?” My budget was tight, and I wasn’t even sure where I would start to make cuts if I had to pay higher rent.
“Twenty percent.”
“Shit.”
“It’s only a problem for you if you’re staying to do your graduate work here,” he reasoned. “Your lease is June to June, right?”
“No, it’s month to month. Before Ronnie left, I had been thinking about switching complexes to a place closer to the university. They only had two-bedroom units available which was perfect because he could share the rent with me, but then he had to leave and I missed my lease re-up deadline.”
“And they put you on month-to-month,” he finished for me.
“Yeah.”
“Well. Shit. That sucks.” With a shrug, Kyle said, “Listen, if push comes to shove and you can’t afford it, I’ve got an empty bedroom right across the hall.”
“I can’t push you out of your office.” It was the easiest way to turn down his offer without looking rude. Even though we were friends, I wouldn’t be comfortable sharing a living space with him. Not to mention, Hagen would lose his shit if I moved in with another man.
“I can shift it. No problem,” he added with a smile. “Anything I can do to help, I will.”
Not for the first time, I suspected Kyle had more than just friendly feelings for me. I hadn’t done anything to encourage him to think we would ever be anything more than friends, and I was open about how much I loved Hagen and how happy he made me. Even so, it seemed as if Kyle may have been harboring hopes.
Before I could try to make things clear, Hagen returned, his footsteps heavy as he walked toward the kitchen. His gaze darted from Kyle to me, lingering on the short distance between us, and his eyes narrowed briefly. I rolled my eyes at his obvious flare of jealousy.
“Think about it,” Kyle said before patting my shoulder and leaving my apartment.
After the door closed, Hagen asked, “Think about what?”
“Moving in with him.”
“Like fucking hell,” Hagen growled. “If you’re moving anywhere, it’s in with me. Which I’ve been asking you to do for weeks,” he reminded me with a pointed look. “Why would you need to move in with Kyle anyway?”
“Apparently, my rent is going up,” I said, reaching for my mail. As I opened the envelope, I asked, “Did you punch Travis?”
He frowned down at me. “No.”
“Did you threaten him?”
“A little,” he admitted, moving closer to me. His big hand cupped my face, and he brushed his thumb over my cheek. “He’s buying new laundry baskets, and he’s not going to bother you anymore about Ronnie’s bullshit.”
“Please tell me you did not just pay more of my brother’s debts. You have already done too much.”
“I didn’t pay that lowlife anything. After all the work I’ve done to keep my earnings and my business clean, I’m not about to risk it by handing money over to someone like that meth head. I have a pretty good idea where he gets his product and where he was taking Ronnie to gamble. I’m not putting my money anywhere near that.”
“Good.” Glad that he hadn’t extended himself even more for my brother, I pulled the notice out of the envelope and scanned it. I grimaced at the new amount due on the first of the next month. “Shit.”
Hagen moved behind me so he could read the letter. “You are not paying that much for this place.”
“I don’t have that much to pay for it,” I admitted, feeling embarrassed by just how tight my budget was these days. With all the fees for my GRE prep courses, the exam, the fees for submitting applications to different schools—I was tapped out.
“Cassie,” Hagen said tenderly, his hands settling on my waist as he bent down to nuzzle my neck, “move in with me. This place is a nightmare, and you have so much stress in your life. Let me take some of that stress away for you. Come live with me. Save your money for grad school.”
For weeks, I had been fighting against my desire to be closer to him, to share his living space and merge our lives. It came from a place of pride and fear. There was always the what-if in the back of my mind. What if we realized we weren’t compatible? What if our hopes and dreams for the future didn’t mesh? What if he stopped loving me? Where would I go then? A hotel? My car? A friend’s couch?
Turning in his arms, I gazed up at him and all of those worries fled. “Okay.”
He grinned. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” I rose on tiptoes, signaling I wanted a kiss, and he happily met me more than halfway.
Like a little kid on Christmas morning, he vibrated with excitement. “Let’s get you packed.”
“Right now?” I laughed. “We don’t have any boxes.”
“Right,” he said, abashed. “Pack a suitcase. We’ll take your laundry with us. We can figure out the logistics of your move later.”
“Sounds good,” I agreed, filled with a sudden rush of relief and happiness. After another kiss, both of us smiling like fools, I hurried to my bedroom closet and grabbed my suitcase. It didn’t take long to pack for a few days. When I came back to the kitchen, Hagen stood over my sink, wringing out my wet clothing. The muscles in his arms rippled with his twisting movements, and I was struck by how incredibly powerful he was. It wasn’t hard to imagine how easily he could use those hands of his to hurt someone. Yet, when his hands were on me, they were always gentle and loving.
“You enjoying your front row seat to the gun show?” he asked with a playful smirk.
I snorted and rolled my eyes. “I’ve seen better.”
“Uh-huh,” he said, wringing out the last pair of jeans. “Not from that pencil-dicked creep across the hall.”
“He’s not a creep,” I admonished. “He’s a good guy.”
Hagen grunted and pulled a trash bag from the box under the sink. “A good guy who is waiting for me to stumble so he can swoop in and steal you.”
“Like Amber?” I asked, letting the accusatory question slip out before I could stop it.
Frowning, Hagen stopped stuffing my wet clothes into the trash bag and leveled a strange look my way. “I don’t think she’s strong enough to pick me up and steal me.”
“Be serious, John.”
He set aside the bag and closed the distance between us. He put his hands on my shoulders and gazed down at me, his stare unwavering as he said, “I’m serious about you. I’m serious about us. I assume you saw that text message she sent last night.”
He wasn’t asking but I nodded. “I was plugging in our phones to charge when it popped up on the screen.”
“I told her not to contact me again. She was way out of line using my contact info to proposition me.” His hands moved from my shoulders to my neck and up to cup my face. “Cassie, you’re the only one I want.”
Closing my eyes, I stepped into him and rested my cheek against his chest. I slid my arms around his waist and held tight. His hand stroked down the length of my ponytail and then followed the curve of my back. It felt so good to lean on him, to be held in his arms. It felt right. It felt like home.
He kissed the top of my head. “
Let’s get out of here, Tiny.”
Smiling at his silly nickname for me, I waited for him to gather up my laundry in one hand and my suitcase in the other. I slipped into my backpack, glanced around my apartment for any necessities I might have forgotten and trailed him out to the breezeway. After I locked the door, we made our way to our vehicles.
“We should do takeout tonight,” Hagen decided as I reached for my keys.
“Put the laundry in my car. I’ll drive it over and get it started while you grab something for dinner.”
“Sure.” He accepted my suggestion with a nod. “Chinese? Thai? Pho?”
“Something spicy,” I said, craving the bite and burn.
He boxed me in against my car and dipped down to brush his mouth over mine. “Drive safe. Text me when you get home.”
A frisson of excitement raced through me. Home. Our home. Together.
Traffic was light, for once, and I made it to Hagen’s house in record time. I pulled into the garage space he had given me and carried my laundry and suitcase inside. I separated my laundry into two loads and stuffed the first one into his gleaming front-loading washer, pressing the buttons on the dashboard that looked like something from a spaceship. Using his expensive, name brand detergent was an absolute luxury after years of buying the cheapest generic I could find.
I carried my suitcase upstairs to Hagen’s room. I wasn’t sure where to put my things so I decided to leave them in the suitcase for now. Later, after dinner, he could tell me which spaces were mine.
Back downstairs, I walked back into the garage and retrieved my backpack. I placed it on one of the stools in the kitchen and took out my plasma physics textbook, notebook and pouch filled with colored pens and highlighters. I opened the book to my last bookmark and neatly printed a title on the clean page of my notebook before I started reading. The upcoming lecture on electromagnetic waves in plasmas was one I had been looking forward to, and I wanted to make sure I had the reading done with enough time to work out any confusing bits before Dr. Symonds started teaching.