The Lie He Lived (Rosehill Hearts #4)

Chapter 1

Before

I’m waiting on the bleachers, watching Nate’s football practice because I have nothing better to do, and he told me we’d get Burger King after.

It’s hot.

And there are bugs.

I’m starting to think fast food isn’t worth this torture.

My earbuds have stopped staying in because of the sweat on my ears, and I haven’t read a single word of my book in half an hour because it’s too hot to concentrate on anything.

So I’m stuck watching practice.

Nate’s running them through some sort of drill, and watching them, I’ve never been more glad that I didn’t let Nate talk me into playing football.

I’m not looking at anyone in particular when I notice him.

Number seventeen is looking right at me.

I look away immediately, the way you do when you accidentally make eye contact with someone you don’t know. Nobody on that field has any reason to look at me. I’m just the coach’s little brother.

But my curiosity gets the better of me.

I look back.

He’s still looking.

Jason Barnett. I know who he is because I know everybody in Rosehill. He’s about to be a senior. His family moved here a couple of years ago. He’s good at football. That’s all. Surface level.

But right now, he’s looking at me weirdly.

I look down at my book, busying myself with putting it in my backpack while my heart does something I’ve never acknowledged out loud.

It doesn’t stop.

And he’s still looking at me.

Now

“It’s really starting to freak me out,” I pant out through deep breaths, staring up at the ceiling, doing my eighth rep on the bench press.

“What is?” Ryan asks from behind me, hovering in case I need him. “The roommate thing?”

I push through the burn in my arms, but decide in that moment that I’ve had enough for today, racking the bar before sitting up. “I swear he took my hoodie.”

“You sure you didn’t lose it?”

“How? The room ain’t that big. And I know it was hanging on my chair.” I grab my reusable water bottle for something to do, other than get worked up over my stalker.

Like I haven’t already dealt with enough to last a lifetime.

“The notebook I could write off,” I continue, even though I needed that notebook. Dude stole it right before an exam worth twenty-five percent of my grade.

And for what?

“The pencils, whatever. Maybe he ran out. But it’s been five things now, and we don’t even wear the same size. What would he want with my hoodie?”

“I can think of a few things,” Ryan says, raising his eyebrows, insinuating something that would make my stomach twist if it wasn’t so absurd.

“Genuinely, what?”

He shrugs it off, unbothered, the way he is about everything. Like it wouldn’t bother him one bit to have a roommate stealing his things. And it probably wouldn’t.

Because he’s normal.

I wonder what that feels like.

“You talk to the RA?”

“And say what? My roommate is creepy?”

He shrugs again, leaning back on his hands. “So what are you gonna do?”

I don’t have any idea, so I stand up and move to the leg press. Ryan follows, because that’s what we do. We’ve been working out together three times a week since freshman year, when he came over to spot me, and I didn’t have the heart to tell him I would rather be alone.

And we’ve actually become friends. Which is a little weird, if I’m being honest.

Ryan isn’t the usual type of person I would hang out with. He looks like he would’ve considered stealing my lunch money back in high school. But underneath all the muscles, he’s actually a good guy.

And I guess I look like that, too.

Weird.

Anyway, somehow, it works. It’s even nice having a friend sometimes, always talking. It keeps me out of my head.

“You could transfer to my room,” he offers.

“Nah, RA wouldn’t go for that.”

“True.” He watches me adjust the weight on the cable machine, then adds, “You could always find your own place.”

“I don’t have that kind of money. I could barely afford my textbooks.” I start the first rep and feel the familiar burn settle into my legs.

I used to hate this, back when I was a kid and wanted to be like Nate.

He’d get me set up on the weights, and I’d last five seconds. Who would do this for fun, I would say. And I stand by it. It sure as hell isn’t fun, but now, every rep I do, every miserable second I spend in the gym building muscles I don’t even want, is another step closer to safety.

To no one ever being able to hurt me again.

“I want him to leave me alone,” I say, almost to myself.

“I get it, man.” Ryan shrugs. “But some people are messed up. Nothing you can do about it.”

I don’t say that I’m aware, probably more than most, that some people are messed up.

Some people are worse than.

The leg machine faces the mirror, but I keep my eyes on my form instead of my face, pretending it’s someone else.

I stopped recognizing myself in mirrors sometime before freshman year. Not in some kind of insecure way. It’s not even a big deal.

It’s just that the person looking back at me isn’t who I thought I’d end up being. He’s big, and he frowns a lot, and he’s not very interesting to look at. He fits in. Nobody thinks twice about him.

But isn’t that the point?

A group of guys pour into the gym, loud enough that I can hear them before they’re even fully inside.

I know their type. Guys who make it their life mission to take up as much space as possible.

Never stopped to think that maybe someone else is trying to exist too, and doesn’t want to listen to whatever is so important that they have to shout over each other.

And of course, they’re headed this way.

I move on instinct, reaching for my phone and water bottle.

“You done already?” Ryan asks. “We’ve only been here thirty minutes.”

“Gonna hit the treadmill.”

He doesn’t question it, even though I hate the treadmill. Anything’s better than being here, in this corner, with those guys three feet away, and my shoulders threatening to climb up to my ears. Ryan glances at the group, then back at me, but I can tell he’s not reading into it.

Dude doesn’t have the brain cells to waste on why I’m being weird.

“Cool,” he says. “See you in class.”

I nod, my feet already moving.

The room feels smaller every time I come back to it.

I thought I would feel better coming here. Moving to the dorms. Not having to drive past Rosehill High every single day. To not have to drive past our spots.

But I think it might be a me thing. One of the many things I’m stuck with.

Either way, this roommate situation isn’t helping anything. There’s something about the way he’s always here, silent, hunched over his desk, that’s started to make my skin feel too tight.

He doesn’t look up when I come in.

“Hey,” I say, trying to stay friendly on the off chance that he’s not a major creep.

And nothing. I suppress my sigh.

Barely.

Maybe he didn’t hear me. Probably got his headphones in.

He doesn’t.

“Whatcha working on?” I ask, louder.

He flips a page of his textbook.

I stand there for a long second, trying to figure out if this is a being rude thing or a being in the zone thing. But I can’t figure it out, which is the problem. I can never figure it out with this dude.

It’s not that I want to have problems with my roommate. And I think I’ve given him the benefit of the doubt. I get it, he’s not chatty. I’m not myself these days. But there’s being an introvert, and there’s being weird, and with all my missing stuff, I’m starting to lean toward the second option.

So I stop giving him the benefit of the doubt and start taking inventory of my stuff.

It’s a system I’ve developed over the month we’ve lived together. Subtle enough that he won’t notice that I’ve caught on to whatever he’s doing. Laptop’s still there, chargers, notebooks, wait.

The remaining three notebooks are still there.

I move to the drawer. The one I use as a catch-all for random stuff, plus the couple hundred dollars Nate gave me at the start of school in case of an emergency.

Money’s still there.

Okay.

Maybe it’s a good day then. Maybe I’m so paranoid that I’ve made it all up in my head.

I can’t tell anymore.

“You mind if I put some music on?” I ask because the silence is starting to take on a suffocating quality.

He doesn’t respond, so I take that as a yes and plug my phone into the speaker, keeping the volume low.

Some old Arctic Monkeys album I’ve listened to since high school.

I used to listen to it while I played guitar in my room, back when I could do that.

When my fingers worked right, and music was something I could enjoy.

Now, I’m lucky if I can stomach my old playlists.

Once that’s settled, I pull up my laptop, planning to focus on the assignment I’ve been putting off for too long, but my eyes keep drifting to him.

He’s studying, probably. That’s what people do in college. They sit at their desks, and they study, and they don’t steal their roommates’ stuff.

He shifts in his chair, and my entire body tenses up.

This is getting out of hand. I’m freaking out over the dude stretching. I need to get out of here. I need to find somewhere else to live before I completely lose it and make everything a thousand times worse.

After about ten minutes of pretending that I can focus on this paper, I give up.

“I’m gonna shower,” I announce, grabbing my stuff.

I stand there another beat, waiting for something. Anything. Proof of life. He highlights something in his textbook.

“Okay,” I say to no one. “Cool.”

The safety of the hallway feels like taking a breath for the first time since I got back.

Intro to statistics is at nine, and that should be illegal.

I get there early enough to claim a seat in the back corner, where no one will notice me and pull out my worksheet, spending the next ten minutes finishing up the work I was too freaked out to do last night.

Ryan strolls in at eight fifty-eight, because that’s what Ryan does.

He finds me and drops into the desk to my right, smelling like he came from the gym even though we went yesterday. Dude works out more than Nate. “You survive the night?”

“He didn’t say a single word to me.”

“See? Maybe you were freaked out over nothing.”

“It’s not nothing, Ryan.”

He shrugs, pulling out his phone.

I open my notes and try to remember what we covered last week. Easier said than done because I spent most of last week distracted, too. And every week since the first thing that disappeared, a few days after the new semester started.

Class comes and goes. I hardly understand any of it, but oh well.

Math isn’t my thing.

After class, Ryan falls into step beside me, talking about some girl from his computer science class. I nod in the right places even though I have no interest in what he’s saying.

That’s what makes this friendship work. He talks, I’m nearby, and occasionally we have a real conversation.

Good enough for me.

He’s still going on about her when I see the flyer.

It’s tacked up on a bulletin board in the hall, buried between a lost cat and something about a theater club. Handwritten in Sharpie. Big messy letters.

ROOMMATE WANTED.

There’s a number, an address, and underneath that, in smaller writing, barely legible,

No weirdos.

I stop.

“No way, man,” Ryan says, following my gaze with an expression of displeasure. “Don’t even think about it. That’s Mike Pierce’s address.”

“You know him?”

“Everybody knows him. The guy is a total disaster. He’s not even an undergrad.

Dude’s doing some master’s thing. Throws parties every weekend, actual parties, not a couple of people hanging out.

Plays in some weird rock band. And,” he lowers his voice like his next words are too much to say in public.

“Sleeps with anyone. Guys, girls, doesn’t matter.”

I look at the flyer.

“Your roommate is better than him,” Ryan adds. “I can promise you that.”

I think about last night. About every single day since I moved back into the dorms this August. The silence that makes my skin crawl. The notebook that I needed for an exam.

The three emails I’ve sent to the housing office and gotten no reply.

“I don’t know…”

“Alex.”

I take a picture of the flyer.

“Dude, come on. You’re gonna be miserable.”

Maybe. Probably. Mike Pierce doesn’t sound like my speed in any way, shape, or form.

He sleeps with anyone. Guys, girls, doesn’t matter sits in the back of my head, flashing a red neon sign telling me not to go there.

Don’t let it happen again.

But even if he is all of those things, he’s probably not interested in stealing my stuff. And that sounds freaking amazing right about now.

“Maybe he’s nice.”

“He’s insane.”

I look at the number and open my phone again, decision made, even though Ryan is watching me like I’ve grown another head.

I don’t care.

I text the number before I can talk myself out of it.

Alex: Hey, saw your flyer. The room still available?

“You texted him,” Ryan says, his voice going flat.

“Yep.” My phone buzzes before we’ve even walked away.

Mike: Come by tomorrow!

I show Ryan the screen. He scoffs, throwing his hands up. “I warned you.”