“Okay, don’t worry,” Matteo said. “I’ll ask around. Try to find you a lead on a new roommate. Can you put off your landlord for a few days?”
“Don’t have much choice, do I?”
Matteo nodded. “Don’t leave without a formal eviction. They have to give you some time to find another place.”
Oh, great. Just what I needed. An eviction to go along with my fucking felony.
Matteo patted my arm. “I’m sure it won’t come to that, Knight. We’ll get you sorted out.”
He hadn’t let me down yet, so I nodded. He couldn’t do any worse than me. I’d had weeks to find a new roommate, and I’d struck out until Tex offered to move in.
For some reason, people weren’t jumping at the chance to live with a felon in a rundown trailer park.
Go figure.
CHAPTER 3
AIDEN
I satat the breakfast bar in my brother’s little two-bedroom cottage, laptop open in front of me, and tried to ignore the noises coming from the shower down the hall. Flynn and Bailey weregetting readyfor a night out, which apparently involved showering together.
They wanted me to go out for drinks with Bailey’s brothers, but I wasn’t really feeling it.
Better to use my time productively. I’d be starting my job soon, and I needed to find a place to live before I got sucked into the glamorous life of medical research.
The rental ads weren’t encouraging. I’d found a three-bedroom house for $2,500 a month, but my tiny hospital stipend wouldn’t cover it, even with two roommates to share costs. And I didn’t know anybody in town, so how would I find these mystery roommates?
I might be a doctor, but I wouldn’t be making a doctor’s salary until I got through my residency.
A studio over a garage for 600 a month caught my eye, but it didn’t have a kitchen, laundry, or central air or heat. I might be willing to go without one of those, but all three?
Maybe I should give up and just stay with Flynn and Bailey.
Another moan drifted down the hall. I hurriedly stuffed my earbuds in. Yeah, no. I couldn’t deal with this. I was happy for Flynn, but I didn’t want tohearhow happy Bailey was making him in the shower or the bedroom or—once—the backyard.
I shook my head, trying to forget the scene I’d walked into during my spring break visit. I shuddered. There was no amount of brain bleach that would erase it.
I refocused on the rental ads. Maybe I could live without AC or laundry or a kitchen. I could eat at the hospital, right? The rest of the ads were a wash. Either too expensive or too crappy. Besides one mobile home in a sketchy part of town, I wasn’t seeing much that would even be worth looking at.
A tap on my shoulder startled me, and I pulled out my earbuds.
“Hey,” Bailey said, all smiles and a rosy flush to his skin that was probably from more than just the shower. “You ready to head out?”
I wrinkled my nose. “I don’t know. I thought I might just get a head start on my research for the hospital. I want to be ready Monday, and?—”
“Come on, all you’ve done is stare at that computer since you got here,” Bailey said. “Please come out. My brothers really want to give you a proper welcome to Riverton.”
“That’s nice…”
Nice but weird. They barely knew me, but they seemed determined to adopt me, anyway. I wasn’t sure what to make of that. I’d been on my own for a long time.
Flynn walked in, his hair still damp and curling around his ears. “Aiden’s work is really important. If he’s too busy tospend a night out with us, then that’s okay. He’s going to be an amazing surgeon, and that means sacrifices.”
Oh, damn. Brother guilt incoming. No one had sacrificed like Flynn.
I sighed and closed the laptop. “I’m not too busy. There’s only so much research I can do until I have access to the hospital database.”
“How goes the rental search?” Bailey asked. “I saw you were on the Riverton housing site.”