Falling for his roommate gives ex footballer Micah the second chance he deserves, and what could be better than loving your best friend?
Micah
I’m a broke ex-football player with a bum leg and PTSD. Last summer, I had two choices: the streets, or find a cheap room to rent in the city. I chose the second option, which landed me with a brand-new problem, cos I hadn’t banked on my roommate becoming my best friend. Or that before long I’d find myself head over heels in love with him. Trouble is, even if Sam likes me back, I ain’t fit to be no one’s boyfriend. I don’t know how. All I do is wade through every precious moment and hope that he doesn’t regret the day he ever met me.
Sam
I’m a gay book nerd with no business falling in love with hunky athletes. Micah is the dictionary definition of beautiful, inside and out, he just doesn’t know it. And he definitely doesn’t know I’m ridiculously in love with him. The embarrassing kind of love.
He’s all I can think about.
But it’s not as simple as loving someone who doesn’t love me back. Micah is damaged goods—at least, that’s how he’d put it. The world has chewed him up and spat him out, and he thinks he deserved it. That he’s still the battered mess he was a year ago.
I want to shake him, and shout in his face that he’s not. To force the truth on him and make him believe in himself the way I do. But I can’t save Micah. One day, perhaps he’ll realise that he already saved himself.
My fingers were tangled in his hair. I left them there as I came awake and took stock of the fact that he was really in my bed and what I was seeing wasn’t the remnants of a fucked-up dream. It had been years since I’d slept with anyone, in the literal sense. Before Sam, spending the night with someone had involved a pocketful of coke and faceless sex. With him, we’d kissed for hours and then fallen asleep in our clothes, and I wouldn’t change a fucking thing.
Except maybe that my leg was so stiff and sore it felt like my nerves had been replaced with jagged glass. And the fact that I had to get up and neck my medication before I got jittery, which meant disturbing Sam and leaving the nest we’d built around us in my bed.
Fuck my life.
As if he’d heard my inner bitch, Sam stirred. He slid off me and stretched before he seemed to realise where he was.
I sat up on my elbows to watch him blink like a cartoon version of himself. His eyes widened as his gaze fell on me, and a laugh bubbled out of me, surprising both of us. I legit couldn’t remember the last time I’d laughed before lunchtime.
Sam scrunched his beautiful face and swatted me with a pillow. “What are you grinning at?”
“You.”
“Why?”
“Cos you’re funny.”
“It’s not my usual vibe.”
“Oh, I know. We live together, remember? I know exactly how unfunny you are.”
Sam moved like a goddamn ninja and replaced the pillow he’d tossed on my chest. He straddled me, arms braced on either side of my head, and dropped his face down low enough that I could’ve picked up where we left off last night if I’d had the balls. And why don’t you? It’s not like you didn’t kiss a thousand times last night.
I had no answer to that. All I knew was that if Sam was going to sit on top of me like this for a prolonged length of time, then we were never leaving this room.
Ever.
Like he’d read my mind, Sam sat back and circled his hips with just enough pressure to let me know I wasn’t imagining it. My body responded like a fucking firework. Heat rushed me, and my dick was an instant stone column.
I groaned and closed my eyes. “If you’re gonna do that, you’d better follow through.”
“With what? Is there something you want?”
I couldn’t look at him. He’d warned me before shit got complicated between us that he had a filthy mouth, but self-preservation had allowed me to forget. And there was no way I was verbalising what I wanted to do with him. Dirty talk or no, I didn’t want to scare him. Or myself. Man, when did sex get so complicated?
When you stopped fucking randos and fell in love with your roommate.
Garrett Leigh is an award-winning British writer and book designer.
Garrett’s debut novel, Slide, won Best Bisexual Debut at the 2014 Rainbow Book Awards, and her polyamorous novel, Misfits was a finalist in the 2016 LAMBDA awards.
When not writing, Garrett can generally be found procrastinating on Twitter, cooking up a storm, or sitting on her behind doing as little as possible, all the while shouting at her menagerie of children and animals and attempting to tame her unruly and wonderful FOX.
Garrett is also an award winning cover artist, taking the silver medal at the Benjamin Franklin Book Awards in 2016. She designs for various publishing houses and independent authors at blackjazzdesign.com, and co-owns the specialist stock site moonstockphotography.com with renowned LGBTQA+ photographer Dan Burgess.
Website: http://www.garrettleigh.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/garrettleighauthor/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Garrett_Leigh
