Private Property (Rochester Trilogy 1)

“I’m sorry.” Guilt churns my stomach. “I’ve been wrapped up in this job. There’s not really a clear boundary between work and personal time.”

That is the truth. I just finished doing the dishes and in a few minutes I have to help Paige with her bath time and then put her to bed. It’s rather like being someone’s actual mother. I suppose that’s why I do feel so close to her. And why the person doing this job needs to live here.

It’s the truth, but not the whole truth. That’s why I still feel guilty. The truth is I never quite know what to say to Noah. I love him like a brother, and I don’t want to disappoint him, but it feels like that’s inevitable. We want different things.

Movement and voices on the other end. Then the sound of a door shutting.

And quiet.

“I’m in my room,” he says. “The guys pooled their money for a game that just came out, and they’ve been playing nonstop. I went to my shift and came back, and they were still there. I don’t think they moved for ten hours.”

I give a snort-laugh.

That sounds like his roommates. One of them is as broke as Noah, working hard to pay the bills. The other two are going to college on their parents’ dime. Splitting the cheap rent in the old two-bedroom apartment instead of the more expensive dorm rooms is how they’re helping out.

It’s a totally different kind of existence.

“Did Ryan at least stop locking you out of your room?” Ryan is a total manwhore. One day after Noah ignored the tie on the doorknob to go in and grab his work badge, Ryan started locking the door whenever he had sex. Which was a lot.

“We have a truce.”

“How’d you manage that?”

“Told him if he did it again, I’d stab pins through his condoms.”

“You wouldn’t!”

“I totally would. And he knew it. That’s the only reason why he stopped. I was sick and tired of sleeping on the sofa while they played their games.” There are some shifting sounds, and I imagine him lounging on his bed. I’ve been in that room plenty of times—the door open, of course. Him on one side of the bed, me on the other, trying to throw Skittles into his mouth. “That’s one benefit of your job. No roommate drama.”

I look around my small room. I haven’t made much of a personal dent here. There’s a glass of water on the nightstand. A black charger cable waits for me to plug in. My clothes are neatly packed away in the dresser, the luggage—still muddy from its one use—is stowed in the closet. You can’t really see that it’s my room, but it feels like mine.

He’s touched me, he’s kissed me.

My room is one boundary that Mr. Rochester has not crossed.

“I don’t miss the drama.” My roomies were good people, but we were packed in three to a room. It was tight but the rent was dirt cheap. Doesn’t matter how hard you try to get along. When there’s less than two hundred square feet per person, you’re gonna have problems. “Or the claustrophobia. This place is pretty massive.”

“Rich people need some place to keep all the shit they buy.”

The acid in his tone makes me flinch. “I don’t know why you hate rich people so much. I mean, it sucks being poor, but they didn’t make us this way.”

“The whole capitalist system relies on some people doing menial labor for shit wages.”

I sigh. “I don’t want to argue with you, and maybe you’re right, but I just can’t hate these people for being born rich. Or working hard and earning money. That’s the dream, right?”

“It’s not your dream. Or are they rubbing off on you?”

“No,” I say, feeling defensive. “I still want to go to college and become a social worker, so I can help people. That’s my dream, but I need money to do it.”

“I would have helped you.” There’s hurt in his voice. He’s offered that a few times, but there’s just no way I can accept his money. We have so little of it. We work so hard for it, and there’s never quite enough to pay all the bills.

“And I appreciate that. It means more than you can know, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. That’s your money for you to go to college, and fulfill your own dreams.”

He snorts. “Such as?”

That makes me smile. “I don’t know. There was that time you filled Mr. Lawson’s car with frozen hot dogs. That could be your true calling.”

“Hey, those were cooked from the sun by the time he found out. That’s like free food.”

I laugh softly. “I don’t know what you want to be when you grow up.”

“Hell, Jane. I feel like I’m a hundred years old sometimes.”