All Chapters of The Quarterback's Roommate : Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

Chapter 21 – Routine Sets In (Dante POV)It had been ten days since we laid down the rest of the rules, and somehow we’d turned it into a rhythm.Quick and quiet when the door was locked and the lights were low. Intense, but controlled. Always careful to clean up, separate beds after, no lingering looks in public. We were pros at it already.Or so I thought.I got back from Thursday afternoon practice early—coach let us out after a light walk-through. The hallway was empty, most people still in class or at the library. I pushed open the door expecting an empty room so I could shower and crash.Instead, Eli was at his desk, headphones on, typing furiously on his laptop. Midterm paper crunch time. He had on that oversized “Support Your Local Coffee Shop” hoodie, sleeves pushed up, curls a wild mess like he’d been raking his hands through them for hours.He didn’t hear me come in.I shut the door softly, dropped my bag by my bed, and just watched him for a second. The fairy lights wer

Chapter 23 – Jealousy Denied (Dante POV) I told myself I wasn’t looking for him. The party had only gotten louder while I was in the bathroom music cranked so high the bass rattled my teeth, bodies packed tighter than a fourth-quarter goal-line stand, air heavy with the sour-sweet mix of spilled beer, sweat, and too much cologne. I grabbed a fresh Solo cup from the kitchen counter, let Jax and a couple linemen slap my back about the three-touchdown game earlier, forced the right laughs at the right moments. The script was easy. I’d been running it since freshman year. But my eyes kept scanning the crowd anyway. Eli hadn’t come back downstairs since he’d disappeared up there an hour ago. Or if he had, he was doing a damn good job of avoiding me. I told myself it didn’t matter. We weren’t glued at the hip. We weren’t anything official. Rule five: no jealousy. Clear as day. We’d agreed on it after the third time we’d ended up tangled in sheets, pretending it was just stress relief, j

Chapter 25 – Cracks Appear (Eli POV) The cracks started small. A lingering hand on my lower back when Dante passed me in the narrow space between our beds fingers pressing just long enough to feel deliberate. A soft “goodnight” muttered into my hair after we’d finished, bodies still slick and hearts still racing, when we were supposed to roll apart and retreat to separate mattresses. The way he’d reach over in the dark and pull the blanket up over my shoulder when he thought I was already asleep, tucking it around me like I might get cold in the middle of the night. They were tiny things. Easy to ignore if you squinted. Easy to explain away as post-sex haze, or roommate politeness, or the kind of casual intimacy that happens when you share twelve-by-twelve feet of space for too long. I told myself they didn’t mean anything. I told myself I was reading too much into it because midterms were turning my brain to mush and I needed something anything to hold onto that wasn’t another ann

Chapter 27 – Miscommunication Fix (Eli POV) The fallout from Jax’s conversation hit like a delayed sack—slow to register, then slamming full force into the chest when you least expect it. Thursday evening the dorm felt unnaturally quiet. The usual background hum of campus—distant laughter in the hallway, someone’s bass thumping through the floor below—seemed muffled, like the building itself was holding its breath. Dante came back from practice later than usual. No slammed door this time, no muttered curses about a bad read or a dropped pass. Just the soft click of the latch, the heavy thud of his gym bag hitting the floor, and then silence. He didn’t look at me. Didn’t speak. Just peeled off his sweat-soaked practice jersey, kicked his cleats under the bed, and walked straight into the bathroom in nothing but compression shorts. The door closed with a deliberate softness that felt louder than any slam. I sat cross-legged on my bed, laptop open to a half-finished essay I hadn’t

Chapter 29 – Holiday Temptation (Dante POV) The semester was winding down like a slow fourth-quarter drive—everyone counting the seconds until the clock hit zero, campus already bleeding students. Half the dorm windows were dark, lights flickering off one by one as people hauled suitcases down the stairs and loaded cars in the parking lot below. The hallways smelled faintly of stale pizza boxes and the sharp bite of winter air sneaking in every time the exterior door opened. Eli was leaving tomorrow morning. Early flight home to his family in some quiet suburb two states away—snow on the ground, string lights on the porch, the kind of place that probably smelled like cinnamon and pine all December. He’d been packing all afternoon in his own chaotic, methodical way: suitcase open on his bed like a mouth waiting to be fed, stacks of folded clothes growing beside it, fairy lights still glowing stubbornly across his wall as though they refused to accept the room was about to be split in