Damn these scratchy sheets.

My first night away from my beloved thousand thread count Egyptian cotton sheets at my apartment with my ex-fiancé and I was already suffering.

The cold expanse of cheap white linen became illuminated from the first strike of lightning. It had been so long since I'd slept alone and the thought of doing so in the middle of a torrential downpour only exacerbated my lonely thoughts.

At least I wasn't in the house alone, as my brother and his roommate were only a few feet away but separated from my room with four thin walls.

Flashes of the day I'd had tried to invade my mind then. My gorgeous white lace dress laying in tatters on the floor in front of the closet a delicate misery reminiscent of the days I'd been blissfully ignorant to the truth that laid in front of me for so long.

If only I'd allowed myself to be less naive, my heart wouldn't have been on the ground right along with my once glorious wedding gown.

"Lydia, you alright?"

My brother Lucas peeked his head through my new bedroom's door and I looked up through tear stained lashes.

I'd lost my home, my fiancé and my best friend all in one night but thankfully at least I still had my family... sort of.

"I'm fine. Thanks for letting me crash here..." I trailed off not knowing what else there was that I could say.

The disastrous day tried to come back to me all at once but again I shoved it down, my gag reflex wanting to take me to the toilet again to puke out my tumultuous emotions once more.

Thankfully the feeling passed and I tried to focus in once more on what Lucas had been saying to me.

"You can stay here as long as you want. I know you make good money at your job and it's a lot less in rent than your other place. We were honestly looking for another roommate anyway and Reed is totally cool with it. Emmett has to stay near school so he won't be coming back until this Summer, if he comes back at all. You can stay here indefinitely, sis. If you want to."

"Thanks Luc. I'll need some help getting my stuff from the apartment if that's okay?"

He flashed a small smile and I knew he was happy that I'd agreed to stay at his rent house. My brother had done good for himself with a career in bioengineering but he was still going through grad school and shared the house with a fellow student, Reed Mitchell, who'd quickly become his best friend.

Emmett Scott had also lived in the house before as well but left to pursue his degree at a division one college where he could put his football dreams in the forefront.

I thought back to when I had first met Emmett two years prior, but the memory of our meeting was marred by a fight with Nate.

Nate.

I wanted to scrub his name out of my mind for good but it was like he was a permanent scar on my consciousness and getting him out of me completely would take a miracle.

"Okay well goodnight, let me know if you need anything..." he trailed off as he lingered by the door to make sure I was fine yet again.

"Goodnight, love you."

"Love you too," he said, a morose sympathy flashing in his blue eyes that matched my own before finally shutting the door, closing me in on my own madness and melancholy.

Thunder from up above shook the foundations of the house and I clutched onto my blanket tighter, the warmth and comfort seemingly leaving me as quickly as I had grasped it.

My mind drifted off into a thoughtless dance of what could have been as the rain pattered down on the siding of my new home for a while.

Booming thunder tried to wake me from my restless sleep but I kept my eyes firmly shut, staving off the nightmares that tried and failed to overtake my mind.

Okay, that last boom did not sound like thunder...

My suspicions were confirmed when someone strode through my room and a hard body landed directly beside me on the bed.

At first I couldn't speak, the words dying in my throat as the scent of rain clung to the stranger beside me and it was obvious that he'd just gotten done showering as the remnants of his body wash wafted off of him and I greedily inhaled, wanting to memorize the scent so I could tell Nate to buy....

Nate.

Cheater.

I angrily hushed my thoughts and focused on the stranger in my bed beside me.

"Who are you and what are you doing in my room?!"

He jumped up to a sitting position and it was obvious that he had been oblivious to my presence until I spoke up. I wished I could see his face, but the moon was shining in from the other direction so he could see me but I couldn't see him.

"Excuse me? This is my room, who are you?"

Shoving off the shivers that rolled down my spine at the sound of the deep scratchy timbre of his voice, I began an argument with the intruder.

"No this is my room," I reminded the stranger and then my memories came back to me in a flurry, and after remembering my meeting with him for the first time, it only made sense that he was the one in my room claiming that it was his.

"Wait, Emmett? Emmett Scott?"

"Who wants to know?"

Only someone with enough ego and arrogance to fill the entire room would have responded as such.

"Lydia Montgomery, Lucas' sister. He's letting me rent out this room now since you don't live here anymore. I'm guessing he hadn't told you yet."

He snorted as disdain dripped from his voice.

"Clearly. Can I have my bed now? I'm pretty damn exhausted."

"Excuse me? You want me to get out of my bed when I was obviously already fast asleep? I don't think so. You can take the couch."

"The couch? This was my room first, and I'm not gonna let Lucas' annoying little sister take it from me."

I rose up on my arms and let the moonlight casting over my body do the talking for me. I knew he could see the hills of my breasts through my thin lace shirt and smirked to myself when I heard his sharp intake of breath.

"Not so little anymore. Now get out. I've had a terrible day and I don't really want to finish it this way."

"You don't exactly corner the market on terrible days."

"Wanna bet?"

He paused for a moment in thought.

"Yeah I do wanna bet. I pulled my hamstring in practice and coach took me out of our next game."

"Ouch that sounds horrible. I'm so sorry that happened to you. That's the worst thing that could ever happen to someone, you know what you're right, I don't corner the market on bad days. I'll go sleep on the couch, you take this nice comfortable bed from your best friend's little sister."

I was sneering the entire time I spoke, sarcasm dripping from my voice as I spoke.

"Wait. What happened to you?"

"The fact that you don't know yet shows just how little you've been around. You'd know if you bothered to speak to Lucas more than once every three months, not only because you need a place to crash when your coach hurt your feelings because you pulled a wittle muscle."

I turned over and landed my head against the pillow, forcing the tears back when I tried to stave off the vicious memories that threatened to drag me under.

"Wait. So you're still gonna sleep here?"

"Yup."

I grabbed a pillow from the foot of the bed and squished it behind my back.

"Long as you leave me alone and be quiet we won't have a problem."

"Aye aye captain."

I rolled my eyes and focused on my breaths slowing and my heart rate relaxing, counting jumping sheep over a fence until the sanctuary of peace flooded my senses and finally I could rest once more, desperately trying to forget that there was a potentially gorgeous and amazing smelling man laying beside me that wasn't the man I was supposed to marry in three weeks.