"Yeah, you think?" she spat. She wrapped the towel around her body, knotting it above her breasts with twin spots of pink on her pale cheeks. "How did you get in here?"
"It's my apartment," I replied evenly.
"How?" she challenged, tilting her chin away from me.
"I signed a lease twenty months ago."
Realization painted her features with horror. "Ye Gods."
"What?" I asked with exasperated irritation.
She waved me off. "It's a thing from the game I play."
Shaking my head, I said, "I'll clear this up, but it seems like my mother might have made some kind of… error." She stared at me, dripping water in a steady puddle on the dark tile floor and her luminous, sapphire eyes wide with revelation. She licked water from her bottom lip, and my body responded with a traitorous wave of lust that almost took me to my knees. I decided a hasty retreat would be the wisest course of action for the moment. "I'll wait outside while you get dressed."
"Wha—wait." Gemma stuttered. Then her mouth clacked closed as she looked down at herself. "Never mind. Yes, I'll be out in a minute."
"Oh, youarecapable of logic," I teased, already leaving.
"Excuse me," Gemma replied hotly. "You don't get to attack me in the shower and then have the last word, you butthole."
"Juvenile," I huffed under my breath. But the corner of my mouth twitched up when I heard her release a growl of frustration. I closed the door with a firm click. With the light from the bathroom snuffed, my eyes adjusted to the low light in my bedroom, and I tried to find solid ground beneath my feet, mentally.
Gemma Daise was in my bathroom. I'd yanked her naked body out of my shower, and she was right behind me getting dressed. What. The fuck. I crossed the room toward the doorway to my left, flicked on the light, and stared at the empty bedroom. Now that the lights were on and I was less worried about an intruder, I took in minute details. My bedside table had been cleared of all my personal belongings, and the closet had been closed. The bed, only feet away from the bathroom entrance, had been made neatly with new sheets and my spare comforter, and the two armchairs I kept in front of the French doors that led to thebalcony had been robbed of the usual assortment of pants and shirts I kept draped over them.
My home looked like a show house my parents might have put together.
"Fuck me," I muttered under my breath. I'd been gone for two days to a work conference in San Diego, and I'd returned to find that my mother had apparently given away my apartment. ToGemmaof all people. This made no sense.
But before I could call my mother and demand answers, a text came through on my phone.
Mom:
You have a roommate. Hope you don't mind. It is my building, after all. Signed a second lease to Gemma Daise yesterday. Shouldn't be a problem that she's a girl. Right? You don't do relationships, anyway.
Disbelief buzzed in my veins, followed closely by fury. I tapped out a curt reply.
Knox:
Email me the lease.
Mom:
Already did. Everything legal and in order. Enjoy.
Gemma came out of the bathroom then, but I couldn't hear anything but my own blood pumping furiously through my veins. There was no way this was real. And more importantly,why? What the hell was my mother playing at, here? I pulled up Gemma's lease in my email, scrolling through the PDF with a sinking stomach that grew heavier with each word.
"So, hey," Gemma said toweling off her hair and coming out of the bathroom in a cloud of steam like a siren emerging from a volcanic sea. "What the fuck, dude?"
I ignored her as I read, and I held up a finger, eyes taking in every word. There was no way she'd signed this.Please God, let this be wrong. But no—I read the last two paragraphs three times. It stipulated the most preposterous terms imaginable. And she'd signed it.
Foreboding twisted my gut, and I went through my email to pull up the lease I had signed with my parents twenty months ago. At the time I'd signed it, I'd thought it was a mere formality. I had lived in various properties owned by my parents for years. It allowed me to purchase and flip my own properties on the side without worrying about how many mortgages I owned at one time. The leases had never been anything more than a few paltry legal phrases strung together to add legitimacy to my parents' operation and their tax write-offs.
But this time, they'd trapped me.
Gemma sighed in frustration, moving past me to leave the bedroom. I side-stepped, blocking her. When I looked up from my phone, it was to find a pinched glare. "Are you adding kidnapping to your assault charges?"
I lowered my phone. "You signed a lease for this apartment yesterday?"
