My Ex’s Roommates: A Reverse Harem College Sports Romance (Ex Marks the Spot)
My Ex’s Roommates: Chapter 13

A week passed without me seeing Silas anywhere besides the football field. I kept my distance from all three of my roommates, despite how often I caught them glancing my way. Carter had even started standing by me at practice, smiling at me with his stupidly cute smile that I wasn’t sure if I wanted to kick or rub myself against. The kiss with Silas had woken my body from whatever depressed slumber it’d been in and I’d been so aware of my body that I was ready to explode.

Things were quiet at home until Friday night. The team played a scrimmage game and lost terribly against an unranked team. I hadn’t gone to the game, deciding to instead give myself some time alone at home to get my head on straight. I saw the score change in real time on my laptop while I painted my toenails, wincing at every bad move our team made. I felt bad for them and I felt angry that Jake was probably in California, feeling like some big honcho.

I heard the guys come in a few hours after the game ended and I knew they were hammered right away. A dead man would’ve heard them come in, they were so loud.

“And then you dropped the ball! What were you doing?” Dylan’s words were painfully slurred.

“Me? I was trying to catch the… the football thing and you were throwing it all wrong!” Carter was just as bad.

And then there was Silas. He appeared in my doorway after climbing the stairs absolutely silently. “Hey, princess. Think you can come take care of us down here? We got beat up pretty bad.”

I watched in shock as he pouted and held out his hand for me. In a stupor, I grabbed the first aid kit from my bag and took his hand. It was big and warm and nearly dragged me down the stairs when he stumbled.

He stopped halfway down the stairs and turned to me. “You almost fell, Harp. Let me carry you. Okay? Come on. I’ll carry you so you don’t fall.”

I slapped his hands away, laughing. “You almost fell! You’re not carrying me, Silas. You’d drop me. Go! Go down the stairs, you goof.”

He smiled so wide that his eyes crinkled closed. “I’d never drop the princess. Hey, do you want popcorn? I could really eat some popcorn right now.”

I followed him into the kitchen where Dylan and Carter already were. Carter was spreading sandwich ingredients on Dylan’s pristine kitchen counters and Dylan was slapping his hands all the while. Silas grabbed a bag of popcorn, uncooked, and opened it, sending little bouncing kernels everywhere.

“Hey. Where’d all my popcorn go?”

“Oh, my god! I’ll never get this kitchen clean again! What is wrong with you? I am going to vacuum up this shit this one time and if you do it again, I’m kicking your ass!” Dylan spotted me and a goofy grin stretched his lips. “Harper! Did you hear? We lost. You should’ve been there. You probably could’ve played better than us.”

I giggled at the sight of them. They were absolutely, totally drunk off their asses and it was endearing to see that they turned into little boys when drunk. Jake had turned into an even bigger raging asshole when he got drunk.

“Harper! Look at my eye. Look at it. Someone hit me.” Carter leaned over the counter in my direction and stretched his face out, blinking his eyes dramatically. “Massage it? Pretty please? It hurts.”

I walked closer and saw that his eye was absolutely fine without a mark in sight. Still, I walked around the island and grabbed a slice of the cold cuts he was spreading around. I put it over his eye and grinned. “There you go. All better.”

He wrapped his arms around me and bent forward so the slice fell off his face and onto mine. His laughter was infectious. “Hey. Give that back.”

Silas peeled it off my forehead and popped it into his mouth. “Yum.”

Dylan had pulled a vacuum from somewhere and was trying his hardest to plug it in. “Damn cord. Just plug in. I used you this morning! I know you work! Did someone change the plug?”

I pried myself away from Carter and took the plug from Dylan. “How about we vacuum in the morning instead?”

He looked like I’d told him his dog died. “What? But there’s a mess.”

Sighing, I plugged it in for him. “Go on.”

The loud roar of the vacuum made conversation impossible but that didn’t stop Silas and Carter from trying. They shouted at each other, only a foot of space between them, and from what I could tell, it looked like they were trying to decide who got to eat the first sandwich. Their hands came up between them and they played a messy game of rock, paper, scissors, that Carter lost.

Dylan turned the vacuum off after a few minutes and silently walked over to me before unceremoniously lifting me onto the kitchen island. I grabbed his shoulders and squeaked, unsure of what was happening. He swayed as he reached his finger out and tapped me on the nose. “Gotta vacuum under you, Harper.”

I sat there and watched as he finished vacuuming. The veins in his arms stood out as he ran the machine all over the floor and his normally perfect hair was sticking up all over the place. I was still watching when he put the vacuum away and came back over to me. I grabbed his broad shoulders again as he grabbed me and pulled me off the counter. I slid down his body, pinned between it and the island, and stared up at him with what I hoped passed as a normal, relaxed expression on my face.

His hands were still firmly on my hips, his fingers biting into my flesh. “You smell good.”

I was frozen as he leaned towards me, until I saw the bump on his forehead. Gasping, I grabbed his face and had to ignore the goofy smile that stretched his mouth while I inspected his head. “What happened? I didn’t hear anything about injuries during the game.”

Carter moved over to us and showed me his hands. “Hey, I got hurt, too.”

Silas moved to my other side, effectively boxing me in with their large bodies. “Look.”

Sure enough, his knuckles were as swollen and bruised as Carter’s. I grabbed Dylan’s hands but his knuckles were fine. “What happened?”

“I’m not a fighter.” Dylan’s eyes danced with laughter. “A fair one, anyway. I did my fighting with a stick instead of my hands. I’m the quarterback; I can’t hurt these babies. They’ve got games to lose.”

My eyes went wide. “What are you talking about? Who did you fight? Are the cops going to show up here any minute and carry the three of you drunk idiots to jail?”

Carter sighed dramatically. “Would you come to our rescue, Harper?”

“Of course, she would. Deep down, she likes us.” Silas leaned closer and the smell of whiskey washed over me as he exhaled. “Deep, deep down.”

“How deep?” Dylan’s hands moved higher to my waist. “I did some diving on a vacation once. I’m still certified.”

I laughed, despite myself. “Alright. All of you need to take a seat and let me check you out. One of you needs to tell me what happened tonight. And all three of you need to drink some water.”