Chapter 2
Riley
“Iam so sorry, Miss O’Malley. Unless you can cover the next month’s accommodation fees, we will have to rescind your contract.” The head of accommodations looks at me with the last piece of sympathy I’m sure she has by this time of the day.
I glance at the clock.
It’s already dark outside.
It was a long shot, anyway.
“Thanks a million, anyways.” I stand, pulling my satchel onto my shoulder.
She nods, setting aside the forms for the student grants that apparently don’t apply to international students, and tidies her desk.
Feeling utterly dismissed, I push through her office door and out onto campus grounds. My plan was solid: undergrad in Ireland, my home, and then a postgrad diploma from Canada to set me apart from the rest of the veterinary grads.
Like the damn eejit I am, I didn’t think far enough ahead. I’m almost down to my last few quid, and now I’m about to be homeless. The girl who has been kind enough to share her unit here on campus with me will be up for the full payments now. God, I have fecked this up somethin’ grand.
What a laugh. A business student—no, an MBA student who can’t track her own personal financials. Why on earth did I ever think I could run my own veterinary practice?
On paper it’s a great idea, I swear. Veterinary school, then a one-year MBA from a high-end college. Now, I can’t even manage my own finances.
I’d planned on getting a part-time job, but the workload—
“Riley!” Stacey calls, crossing the grassed area, hand waving in the air, the smile that is forever plastered over her face for me still there.
“Oh, hey.”
“How did you go? All sorted?”
“Yes, I—”
“God, I couldn’t imagine life on campus here without you now.” She wraps her arm around my shoulders. “Come on, let’s get a coffee and head for the library. You’re free tonight, right?”
“Yeah.” I dip my head, pushing my face into the bulky scarf keeping me warm, and walk in step with Stacey to the campus cafeteria. Inside is bustling and warm, most of the round tables full. Perfect.
We join the line for the food, and Stacey is all but hugging me as she says, “By the way, tonight is family dinner at the Lockwood house. You’re my plus-one.”
“Your what?” I raise an eyebrow.
She chuckles, swiping her wavy auburn hair from her face. “You’re my invite. My parents always have a weekly dinner, the food is—”
“I don’t wanna intrude, though?”
Brows lowering, she tilts her head. “Absolutely not. Besides, I want someone other than my older brother to talk to. Maybe with you there, my parents won’t start picking our lives apart. Well, Spencer’s, at least.”
“Ah, I see. So, I’m the decoy.”
But now I’m interested.
She sighs. “I promise the food will be great, and we could use a night off campus, right?”
“You said weekly, but you were with me last Thursday night.”
We move up the line and Stacey grabs two trays, handing me one. “I was. I didn’t have the energy for Dad’s Spanish Inquisition. Guess Spence got the brunt of that one. I would feel guilty, but part of me wishes he’d get his shit together, you know?”
“What do you mean?” I’m genuinely curious now.
She huffs a laugh. “We are like chalk and cheese. He’s the manager at Silver Elite Stables, but only because if Dad didn’t make him do that, he’d just do . . . nothing.”
“He must have something he likes, or some kind of motivation.”
I’m being generous. To a guy I’ve never met.
Stacey’s critical analysis of her only sibling is getting my hackles up a tiny bit.
My own five brothers and sister annoy the living bejesus out of me, but that’s sibling stuff that only extends between us.
If anyone else talked about them that way, or we spoke about each other that way to others, I’d beat the living daylight—
“. . . iley?”
The line has moved up. Stacey is at least six paces ahead, and the guy behind me groans before huffing, “Hurry up, some of us have stuff to get done.”
“Hold ya horses, yeah?” I toss him the side-eye from hell and move up. Flames engulf my cheeks as Stacey gives me a soft smile. “Eejit. Like we don’t all have shite to get done,” I mumble.
“You alright? You kinda zoned out on me there.” Stacey turns her attention to the buffet and pulls a dish onto her tray.
“Yeah, fine. Sorry, my schedule and all that is kind of intense.”
“Sure. If you have to study tonight, I’ll understand, babe.”
Babe.
Gosh, friendship seems to ooze outta this one. Like it’s part of her personality. My standoffish tendencies ruin most friendships after a few weeks. The fact that I prefer animals over humans doesn’t help.
I’m going to have to work on that if I want to be boss someday.
No, not someday. In five years exactly.
A plan is a plan. And I have one I’ve been fine-tuning since my first day of veterinary school.
Being the eldest of six children and a farmer’s daughter, I am used to managing multiple people. Keeping all the balls in the air.
Apparently, the international time zone screwed with that. I’m barely a term in, and every skill I thought I ever possessed is nowhere to be found.
“Riley, you eating?” Stacey touches my forearm, nodding to the server waiting behind the counter.
“Aye, just the soup please.”
The lady slides a huge bowl of soup onto my tray with a half smile and a nod.
“Thanks, yeah.”
The woman scrunches her nose up as she lights up with an amused smile, which I’m assuming my accent elicited. My Northern Ireland accent is a blessing and a curse some days. I can only imagine the havoc my two brothers would bring to the girls on campus with it.
Stacey is seated and waving at me by the time I reach the register.
“That will be seven fifty, hon,” the woman says, her brown eyes dialed in on me, her hair almost as dark as mine under the hairnet.
I pull out my card to pay, holding my breath as I tap it to the machine. God above, please work.
This guttural fear of my card declining elicits a heat prickling its way up my neck.
Feck, I hate this.
The card pings.
Approved.
The breath I lose almost deflates me entirely, but I hold it together long enough to get to the small table Stacey found and sink into my seat as my tray meets the top.
“You okay, Riles? You look flustered.” Stacey is stabbing her salad like it’s personally offended her.
“I’m fine. Low on funds, is all.”
Urgh, saying it out loud is as horrid as I imagined it to be. But I have to be honest with her.
“So, I’m not sure I can stay in your unit here on campus. My financials are not looking great, and—”
She holds up a hand. “I got you, don’t worry about it.”
“No, I have to pay my share.”
Stacey loses her fork to the bowl before she shoves it aside. “Okay, well. How about this. You be my date to every family dinner I have to attend, and I’ll cover you for the time being.”
How bad is her family?
“I can’t let you pay for me with only family dinners as the repayment.”
I swallow past the air trying to crawl up my thickened throat.
I’m trying so hard not to be humiliated right now.
I know her well enough to know she is just trying to be kind.
But the sentiment that I get room and board in exchange for merely attending a weekly family dinner, which I also don’t have to contribute to, is . . .
“You would be doing me a solid, babe. Besides, if I lose you as a roomie, I will have to advertise and interview. Or worse, campus staff will pick for me.”
“That’s exactly how I became your roommate, Stace.”
She winks at me. “But I like you.”
I huff a small laugh and turn my attention to the soup, diving the spoon into the hot liquid. I guess I could use a break, just this once.
And I will start job hunting first thing next week, if not tonight.
I raise the spoon, blowing on it before sipping the unidentified goop. It burns my tongue, and I purse my lips before forcing myself to swallow. Typical. Like the rest of my day, lunch is going up in flames as well.
Stacey’s phone pings.
She slides it from the table before tapping out a reply to someone. When the phone vibrates again, she sighs and frowns.
“Everything okay?”
“Yeah, my brother is trying to get out of tonight’s dinner.”
“Oh, is that a regular thing?”
“Ever since he started the bull riding circuit a few years back, yeah.”
The soup almost projectiles from my mouth. I choke on the last mouthful and clear my throat. “Your brother is a bull rider?”
My eyebrows may as well be one with my hairline when Stacey rolls her eyes. Okay, so she doesn’t like the idea of him getting hurt?
“I’m pretty sure it’s his way of saying a huge ‘fuck you’ to Mom and Dad.
They hate it. Mom has begged him to leave the circuit more times than I can count.
Honestly, I think she’s given up asking now.
He still gallivants all over the countryside every weekend of the year, chasing whatever it is he finds so addictive. ”
“It must mean something to him if he still does it, even after your mom asking him not to and all.”
“Nothing much means anything to my brother. He coasts. That’s what he’s good at.”
I feel my brows lower as I study her face. I genuinely can’t understand what she means.
Like, I know what she is saying. But how can she be so critical of her own brother? If my parents gifted their six children anything before they died in that stupid icy road crash, it was a healthy dose of making sure family came first.
Family is everything, end of story.
“Alright, I’ll come to the dinners. And I’ll stay in the unit until the term is over.” The words are out of my mouth before I can second-guess myself. If I’m honest, I have to see for myself this unfamiliar family dynamic.
Stacey grabs my hands, dipping her head. “You’re a lifesaver, Riles. Thank you.”
I don’t know about that.
More like curious in an intrusive kind of way.
I make a mental note to not be weird tonight when meeting Stacey’s family, and to start job hunting ASAP. We finish our lunch, and Stace guzzles her coffee before we head to our last classes for the day.
I find a seat in the lecture hall of my economics class and set up as the last of the students straggle in. Pulling the small side table over my lap, I place my computer down and grab up my phone.
Three notifications fling onto the screen as it lights up with the movement.
I tap the first.
An email from Chloe, my youngest sister. My little snuggle bug. Urgh, I miss her cuddles. Huggles, as we call them. And the way she sneaks into my bed. I took care of my siblings with the help of Declan, my oldest younger brother, after Mom and Dad died.
It was so hard.
It was a turning point in my life. In our lives.
The email is a littering of emojis and GIFs. I huff out a strangled laugh as emotion closes over my throat.
I swipe out of the app as the lecturer walks toward the lectern.
My messages app lights up. Another message from Stacey.
“Just a heads up, Riles, Spencer’s definitely going to be late.”
Um . . . okay?
Three dots appear and then disappear. I wait, and the lecture hall darkens around me as the professor brings up his slides.
My phone vibrates.
“This means the Lockwoods are going to be extra pissy tonight. You’ll need your big girl panties.”