Never Kiss Your Roommate

Never Kiss Your Roommate

Never Kiss Your Roommate

Philline Harms

Contents

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Copyright

To my readers; this book wouldn’t exist without you.

1

Evelyn

Long train rides, to me, had always felt a little bit like slipping out of reality.

There was something about the smooth glide of the wheels on the rails and the monotonous hum of the engine, the way there was nothing interesting to focus on except the landscape outside and the bored faces of other passengers, that made it so easy to get lost in my fantasy.

All I had to do was close my eyes and I was in another time, another place, another one of those lives I had lived vicariously through the pages of some tattered paperback. I could be a young farm girl on her way into the city for the first time. Or maybe a detective on his way to a small town where he would investigate a mysterious murder. Or maybe some aristocrat’s daughter sent off to marry an unknown spouse—a noble woman, of course, because although I had a vivid imagination, it wasn’t that creative—the ambient noise of the train morphing into the rattling of a carriage across cobblestones in my mind.

It was all there, a whole world inside my head in which to immerse myself, and once I got bored of it, I could simply dive into the next one.

That was, unless the train came to a stop.

Right now, it stood in a train station somewhere in the middle of nowhere, the doors open to spit out people whose travel ended here. I blinked open my eyes and stifled a yawn behind my hand as I looked out at the platform, watching as people kissed their loved ones good-bye or hello while others strolled off alone.

Not many passengers were left around me and the announcement about the train’s departure that crackled through the speakers led me to the conclusion that no one else would be getting on—until a boy suddenly skidded inside, his large suitcase almost getting stuck between the closing doors.

He turned around, swearing under his breath when the duffel bag he had slung across his shoulder got caught on one of the seats. After heaving his suitcase into the overhead carrier, he slumped down on a seat on the left-hand side, level with where I was sitting. His third piece of luggage, a large backpack that looked like it was stuffed full to the very top, he placed on the seat next to him. Only then did he release a relieved exhale, one hand coming up to brush aside the strands of unruly brown hair that had fallen into his eyes. After what I assumed had to be an impressive sprint to the train platform, there was a bright flush that spread from his pale cheeks all the way to the tips of his ears.