Chapter Eight
The weekend flew by in a haze of work and sleep. Finally, with the apartment to myself I could relax completely. I didn’t have to worry about Tara’s extremely loud 90’s punk blaring late into the night and her weird early morning routines that left messy breakfasts, she never cleaned up or meeting up with her stoner friends so they could wake and bake in community. Not that I would judge them or condemn 90’s punk. Both had their place in this world probably, it just wasn’t supposed to be in my apartment, at inconvenient hours, while Tara stole money from me I didn’t even have and chipped away at my dignity.
Still, as nice as the solitude was, I knew I wouldn’t be able to maintain it. Even though she was months behind on her rent, shehadbeen helping me with the utilities, which now fell solely to me. And I could barely cover her share of the rent. Pretty soon I would have to decide between keeping water or electricity. Which, let’s face it, was a terrible situation to be in.
Finding another roommate freaked me out though. I couldn’t handle another taker like Tara. Literally I couldn’t afford to lose any more possessions. And what if I got someone worse than her? I needed an online vetting site for roommates.
Too bad one of my brothers wasn’t a cop. I would have totally made them do background checks on all potential candidates.
Ugh. Plus, there was still the whole matter of Fin Hunter expecting me to fork over seven thousand dollars in four weeks and two days.
With the little free time I had over the weekend I tried really hard to hunt down Tara. I called her cell phone which was now disconnected. I Facebook stalked the begeezus out of her, but she hadn’t had any activity since before she abandoned me. Same with Twitter, Instagram and her blog.Really, Tara? A blog?
Next I tried to hack into her old voicemail and email account, but she surprisingly used complicated passwords, or just not obvious ones, like her birthdate and address, because I could not figure out anything. And since her cell phone was no longer in service, apparently her voicemail wasn’t either.
This girl was gone, and never coming back. Whichsucked.
Plus, other than the missing furniture, and really, it’s not like she broke in, she had akey,she didn’t actually steal real money from me. She didn’t hack into my bank account, or use my debit card unauthorized. All she’d done was sign an illegal contract illegally.
Not really something I could prove.
I trudged up the stairs to Fin’s apartment, precisely on time for our scheduled workday. By my calculations, and if I worked some overtime, by the deadline I would only owe six thousand five hundred dollars.
And best case scenario right now, was if he let me work the entire debt off doing this whole free slavery thing. If I did that I only had to give up my life and free time, and live penniless and destitute for the next…. two years.
Totally feasible.
My family would eventually get involved in this. There would be no way I could hide this amount of time spent with Fin and glide under Grayson and Beckett’s radar. They would ultimately find out. And the only thing more embarrassing than them thinking I was dating Fin, would be them finding out I owed him an insane amount of money and was trying to work it off through free services. Although those did not include prostitution, so at least I had that.
I knocked on the door to Fin’s apartment and had the strongest urge to bang my head against the cold metal instead. I was in a bad place and Fin was trying to be my friend? His texting hadn’t stopped over the weekend, although I only replied when I absolutely had to. Jameson befriending me in one of my classes? Meeting Britte and introducing his friends to us? This…. whatever we had going on had an expiration date not five weeks from today, at which point he would be forced to break my kneecaps with a baseball bat. Or at least that’s what they did in movies when they couldn’t pay.
“It’s about time,” Fin grunted when he opened the door for me. His expression was drawn and his eyes glared into me, pinning me in place in the hallway.
“What?” I fumbled for my cell phone, rechecking the time. Holding it up for him, I said, “I’m right on time.”
He grunted at that and then stepped out of my way. He closed the door behind me and then while I spun around wondering why he wasn’t leading the way to our work station he leaned back against the door. His arms were crossed, his eyebrows still pulled together. I fidgeted with my backpack but he made no move from the door.
“You told me four, it’s four,” I held up my phone again.
“It is four,” he allowed quietly. It was a dangerous quiet, a soft but menacing quiet. Our gazes locked from the few feet apart we were standing and he held me there unmoving. His eyes were sparkling dark chocolate, alive with some intensity I didn’t understand. The muscles in his neck and shoulders were corded tight and his jaw was clenched together as if he were physically stopping himself from doing something. I swallowed against the lump in my throat, knowing he wanted something from me, but having no idea what it was. Eventually he released me from his hold. Rubbing to rough hands over his face, he sighed heavily. “You’re not like any girl I know.”
I didn’t know what to say. “Thank you?”
“It’s not a compliment,” he scowled at me. He shoved off the door and stalked to his computer. Adjusting my chair heavily next to him, he motioned for me to sit down.
I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Had he really just insulted me? We were back to angry-Fin, the one that scared me to death the first time I met him.
“Sit,” he motioned with his hand while keeping his eyes glued to his computer screen.
“No,” I said simply. I was pretending bravado, especially after his shoulders tensed even more and he shot me a scathing look. Inside I was a tremulous mess.
“Why not?”
“You just insulted me,” I pointed out. “And you’re being rude.” He looked stunned at that, like he was completely unaware of how he was treating me. “I don’t know what the other girls you know-“
He cut me off with a fast, “They think I’m charming. They show up early when I ask them to come over. They respond to my text messages.”
“Oh, I see,” I nodded, working to hide a smug smile. I decided that I would oblige him then by sitting in the chair he rudely offered.
