The Roommate's Sin

Quinn Montgomery finds the flyer taped over an ad for a vintage lamp collection, the paper already yellowed at the creases. A sublet in Portland at eight hundred a month. He reads it twice, three times, because that number does not belong in this city any more. The first place is already rented. The second doesn't ring, it just clicks. By the time the call gets sorted out he is standing in the hallway of the apartment arguing with the tenant about which of them phoned the other. Morgan opens the door: green eyes, a kraken wrapping around his forearm, his own name misspelled on his flyer, and a floor covered in trade paperbacks that Quinn is currently standing in. Quinn needs the room because his younger sister Tessa is getting married and his landlord is putting him out for a roof repair. He also has a rule, made at seventeen on a porch in Northeast Portland with a duffel bag and his brother's flannel, the night he told his father the truth and heard the lock click behind him. The rule is that he will never be that small again. Morgan has a proposal he has been building for six months, a city grant he is applying for, and a competitor called Caleb Vance who has the connections, the polish, the whole package. Morgan also has a debt. Not eighteen thousand. Not seventeen. *"Thirty-six thousand, four hundred and twelve dollars, counting interest."* Three loan sharks, each one borrowed from to pay the last. A payday loan signed without reading the fine print. And eight months of payments quietly made from the account of Jules, the friend who collected Quinn from that porch years ago and never mentioned any of it. There is a brother, too. Danny, who sat with his back to the door while Morgan pressed a letter against the glass of a rehab visiting room. When it all finally comes out, Quinn's answer is not the one Morgan has braced for: *"I want to make a plan to fix the debt. You fix yourself."* This is a contemporary MM romance about a gambling addiction told honestly, a family that measured love in conditions, and two men learning the difference between rescuing someone and standing next to them.