Don't Fall for My Hot Roommate Brothers novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Terms

After Lacey posts a mocking update, Anneliese accepts the bet and writes terms on a napkin. Her first spying at breakfast ends with Dane catching her looking at his phone.

"No," I said.

"You haven't heard the stakes."

"I'm not asking your brother about his love life, Rory. I live in his house."

"That's the point. You're the only person who can ask him in a normal way, over eggs, with no audience."

"There's an audience for everything I do this week," I said. "Four hundred of them."

My phone buzzed against the counter.

I turned it over, and it was a notification from the tailgate club's account.

Lacey had posted a new picture, with a sandwich emoji and a row of hearts.

It was me, from the back, climbing out of a car with a box in my arms.

The caption said: Sandwich Girl update!! She moved in with the Conrad brothers. Honestly, goals.

The clip from the tailgate had two hundred thousand views, and the comments under the new post were still coming in.

Does she know they don't do charity cases

Imagine writing a letter and then having to LIVE with the football captain

Is she going to read page two to HIM

I put the phone down very gently.

"Fine," I said.

Rory pulled a paper napkin out of the holder and a pen out of his cap.

"I'll draw up the terms," he said.

"Terms."

"A bet without terms is just gossip."

He wrote with his tongue between his teeth.

Then he turned the napkin around so I could read it.

One. If Anneliese finds out by Thanksgiving, Rory washes the dishes and cooks Sunday dinner until the end of the semester. If she doesn't, she does.

Two. Anneliese never asks Dane straight out.

Three. Anneliese tells nobody about the bet. Not Dane, not a friend, not her mother.

Four. Anneliese does not fall for my brother. Girls do. It's a whole thing.

"Number four is a joke," I said.

"Number four is a rule."

"I am never falling for anyone again."

"Strong words," Rory said, "from a woman eating my toast."

I picked up the pen.

I wrote my name under his, and the date, and then I added a line of my own.

Five. Nobody tells Gary the fridge.

He laughed so hard he had to put his forehead on the counter.

"You already know the answer," I said. "Don't you?"

"I know what I know," he said. "You have until Thanksgiving to find out."

The back door opened before I could ask what that meant.

Dane came in from a run with his hood up and the cold still on his shirt.

His hair was wet at the edges, and a line of water ran down one forearm to his wrist.

I watched it go the whole way.

I told myself I was collecting evidence.

"Morning!" Rory said, much too loudly.

Dane looked at the napkin, which Rory had flipped over, and at Rory, and at me.

Then he took a mug down from the shelf and poured himself coffee.

He drank it standing up, by the window, with his back against the wall.

I made myself ask something, anything, in a casual tone.

"What kind of music do you like?"

"Whatever's on," he said.

"What's your favorite movie?"

"I don't have one."

"Everybody has one."

"Then it changes," he said, and he thought about it. "Lately it's the one with the bridge."

"What bridge?"

"The one that gets blown up. It's very sad."

Rory put his face in his hands.

I tried again.

"Do you have a type?"

Dane's eyes came up to mine.

They were gray and calm, and I could not read a single thing in them.

"A type of what?" he said.

"Anything. Food. Person. Weather."

"Soup," he said. "Rain. People who don't talk in the morning."

I opened my mouth, and then I closed it.

He finished his coffee and rinsed the mug.

My phone buzzed again, and I took it out under the counter to look.

It was Lacey, again, with a long text that started with the words I know you're mad.

I deleted it without reading the rest.

When I looked up, Dane had set his own phone on the counter beside the toast.

It lit up with a message from Coach: Film at four, don't be late.

I read it.

Then I read it again, because it was something to look at that wasn't him.

Then I looked at it a third time, to see if there was a name on it I didn't know.

Dane put a plate of eggs in front of me.

He had made them while I was still reading.

"That's the third time you've looked at my phone," he said. "Eat your eggs."

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