My Hockey Roommate's Filthy Desires novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Pell Street

Roxanne moves into an apartment above a laundromat and finds her silent 6 a.m. customer is Maddox Hendry, the Wolves' captain, who gives her the big room and three rules, and at dawn has her secret order ready.

I got to Pell Street at 10:50 with a duffel bag on each shoulder and my winter coat over my arm.

The laundromat on the ground floor was still lit.

A side door next to it had a buzzer, and one name taped over it: HENDRY.

I stood there with my thumb over the button.

Hendry.

I knew the name.

Everyone at Westbridge knew it.

It was on the back of the Wolves' captain's jersey, and it was spray-painted on the wall behind the arena, with a nickname next to it that I wasn't going to think about at eleven at night.

There were a lot of Hendrys in the world, I told myself.

I pressed the buzzer.

The door opened before the sound stopped, and the man behind it filled the whole frame.

He was big, broad through the shoulders, with dark blond hair, a nose that had been broken at least twice, and a scar through his chin.

He was wearing the black Wolves jacket.

"Large black coffee," I said, before I could stop myself.

"Twenty on the counter," he said.

It was the most he had ever said to me.

"You're C. Hendry."

"Maddox." He took both duffel bags off my shoulders in one move. "You're Roxanne. It's on your name tag."

I followed him up a steep stairway that smelled like dryer sheets.

The apartment at the top was small, clean, and half dark.

There was a couch, a TV, a kitchen with a two-person table, and a hallway with two doors.

At the table a red-haired guy in a Wolves hoodie sat eating cereal out of a mixing bowl.

"Roxanne, Teddy," Maddox said. "Teddy doesn't live here."

"I'm the goalie," Teddy said, with his mouth full. "I live in the fridge. Hi."

"Why is he in my kitchen at eleven at night?" I asked.

"He has a key," Maddox said. "I'm working on it."

Teddy raised his spoon at me and went back to his bowl.

Maddox carried my bags to the door at the end of the hall and put them down inside.

It was the bigger bedroom.

The bed was made, with new sheets still creased from the package, and a lamp was already on.

There was a desk with a real chair, and a small heater humming beside it.

"This one's yours," he said. "I'm in the other."

"The listing said furnished."

"It is."

"It didn't say this."

He shrugged one shoulder.

"The other room has a leaking window," he said.

I looked at the window in this one.

It was perfectly fine.

"Rules," Maddox said.

I turned around.

He stood in the doorway with his hands in his jacket pockets, looking at a spot just past my head.

"One. That's your room. The door locks from inside. I won't open it unless you open it first."

"Okay."

"Two. If you bring somebody here, text me first."

"I won't be bringing anybody."

"Text me anyway."

"Fine. Three?"

"Three." He looked at the floor. "Nothing from wherever you came from has to come in this door. Not the people, not the story. You don't owe me one."

That was an odd rule.

It was also the nicest one anyone had made for me in a long time.

"Rent's on the first," he said. "Four hundred."

"Thank you," I said. "I mean it."

"Don't thank me. Sleep."

He pulled the door nearly shut, and I heard him walk down the hall and tell Teddy to go home.

"Dude, she's cute," Teddy whispered, not quietly.

"Out."

I sat on the new bed and took off my shoes, and for the first time all week my shoulders came down.

My phone buzzed.

Chandler: Where are you? Camilla says your stuff is still in your room but you're not. Not funny, Roxy.

I turned the phone face down and set it on the desk.

I slept hard.

My alarm went at 4:40, and I dressed in the dark, tied up my hair, and went out to the kitchen for water.

The light over the stove was on.

Maddox was at the counter, fully dressed, with his jacket already zipped.

There were two paper cups in front of him.

"It's about fifteen minutes to Larkin's from here," he said. "Leave at five and you'll have time."

I stared at him.

I had never told him my shift started at 5:15.

He slid one of the cups across to me.

I picked it up and read the side.

Oat milk cappuccino, no sugar.

It was exactly what I made myself every morning when I thought nobody was looking.

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