After being cheated on by her fiancé, the last thing Lydia wants to do is room with her brother and his 2 roommates, but what happens when she has no where else to go?
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Devastated by a betrayal...
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Over and over again, my arms pumped the metal bar above my head, the heavy metal music blaring into my eardrums fast enough to make me forget the burn in my muscles from the tenth rep and I didn't stop until my spotter tapped me to let me know that I was probably over doing it.
"You good man?"
I wasn't sure.
Lydia hadn't come home the night before, and while she'd called me and we talked most of the night, it still felt like there was something she wasn't telling me, and that didn't sit right with me. I made sure to let her know that I wanted her to sleep over later and I would try and figure out what was on her mind.
In the meantime, however, I planned to focus all of my attention on my career and my livelihood, and part of that was basically killing myself in the weight room.
I was soaking in the ice bath when the phone rang. It was an inconspicuous phone number, not anything that looked like spam. It could have been business, so of course I answered.
"Hello?"
"Emmett. Nice to hear your voice."
Ice flowed into my veins that the sound of the gruff voice that reached my ears from the other line. It was so familiar that it sent memories flooding to the surface.
A lamp was thrown across the room in that particular memory, the lightbulb shattering on the ground upon impact. It all happened in such slow motion that I hardly had a chance to breathe before my father's words reached me.
He called her a slut, told her that she was worthless. Then he started in on me.
I was a waste of space, resources, money...then the first punch was thrown.
"Who is this?"
A tingling premonition slithered down my spine and I knew before even asking the question just who was on the other line of the call. My uncle.
"Don't recognize your own kin? Have to say I'm disappointed. Not in your accomplishments, though. Your old man woulda been proud if he'd been able to see it, that's for damn sure."
"Don't talk about him."
There was a beat of silence where I thought he'd hung up, but I wasn't quite so lucky.
"Touchy subject. Okay, I get it, I get it. I'll back off, no worries. Listen, I talked to that hot girlfriend of yours. I have to say, you sure did one hell of a job there. I've seen the pictures, but hearing her voice...damn. I'm jealous, that's one thing for sure."
The amount of strength that it took for me to keep my composure after his words was superhuman. It was almost impossible, but somehow I held back on completely crunching the phone in half right there in my hands.
"You spoke to Lydia?"
The words ground out of my mouth like I was spitting out metal that I had just chewed up.
