The Soul Mate (Roommates, # 4)

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I got as far as the hall outside my apartment, watching her almost insane mad dash to the elevators, when the phone in my pocket vibrated.

At first, I thought it might be better to ignore it-to follow Bren down to the lobby and walk her to her car at the very least, but after what just happened, there was no doubting that she needed space and I had no choice but to give it to her. Even though I didn’t work at the zoo like she did, I knew what happened when you tried to cage a wild animal.

The only question was why she needed space to begin with.

After everything that had happened today-the zoo, dinner, and the mind-blowing almost-sex-I thought we were finally making progress. But she felt different…

I heard the distant ding of the elevator doors, then headed back inside my apartment, and my phone buzzed again against my thigh.

Gritting my teeth, I fished the device from my pocket and swiped my thumb across the glass to see that I had missed a call from my mother and she’d left a message.

I thumbed the voice mail button and pressed the smartphone to my ear, listening as the warm, familiar tone of my mother’s voice floated through the speaker.

“Mason, honey, it’s mom. I was calling to ask if you might be able to come over tonight or tomorrow? Your father and I have something important to tell you and we’d like if you could stop by the house so we can do it in person.”

My heart jumped into my throat as the recording ended.

Something important to tell me? The last time I’d gotten a call like this, I’d been on my way to Johns Hopkins, ready to start my freshman year and make a name for myself, only to turn around and find that the world was coming apart. My mother was sick with cancer. Potentially terminal.

The idea of a recurrence hadn’t been far from my mind ever since. It was the reason I’d never moved away and tried to make sure I always made time with both my parents, no matter how busy life got. And if my mom was sick again…

My stomach tightened at the thought.

I’d been on top of the world only ten minutes before, with Bren’s warm, solid palm pressed against my cock, and now my whole life had turned into one giant shit show.

I shot a quick text to my mom and slipped into a pair of shoes before locking my apartment and heading for the parking garage. If my parents needed to tell me something, then I was going to be there to hear it-come hell or high water.

I broke nearly every traffic law on the books trying to get there, but when I finally pulled up in front of the classic brick house where I’d grown up, I felt worse instead of better. It just all felt so familiar-the call, the drive, all of it. And when I went inside, I felt intense dread, like I already knew what would be waiting for me on the other end.

Steeling myself, I rapped on the door once before letting myself in with my spare key. My mother appeared on the other side of the door just as I stepped in, her blue eyes wary as she looked me over.

“You got here awfully fast.”

“If there’s something you couldn’t tell me on the phone, I wanted to know what it was right away.”

She nodded, pursing her lips. “I can understand that. Come in. Your father just made coffee.”

The tension around her eyes and the fact that she didn’t elaborate then or there settled it. My gut clenched and I braced myself for the blow.

Jesus, what if this was it? If she was sick again and Bren was pregnant, it would add a whole new level of grief to the mix. She wanted grandchildren so desperately.

Full of dread, I followed her into the quaint living room and settled onto one of the pink floral couches as my father appeared in the doorway with a black coffee carafe in his hand and a tray of mugs in the other.

“Let me help you with that.” My mother rushed toward him and took the tray, setting it on the coffee table between us before taking a seat opposite me and beside my father.

For a moment, silence fell over us and my father leaned forward, the light shining off his bald spot, as he poured three cups of black coffee and handed one to my mother and one to me.

“So let’s hear it. What going on?” I asked.

My parents looked at one another, then back at me.

Finally my mother cleared her throat. “Your father and I have come to an important decision, and we felt it was important that you knew about it as soon as we were certain.”

“Okay.” I nodded, my skull pounding with a tension headache as I resisted the urge to demand they just say it already.

“We’ve decided that, as we are now entering new stages in our lives, we’d be better off apart from one another,” my father said, patting my mother on her knee as she nodded solemnly.

I examined each of them, not sure I’d heard them right. Apart from one another?

“What does that mean, exactly?”