All Chapters of Sharing A Roof With Trouble: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

The knock on the door came just after sunrise—three sharp raps that split the quiet morning in half.Ava Hartley had been pouring cereal, still in her sleep shirt, when she saw two uniformed soldiers through the glass pane. For a moment, she didn’t understand. Her father was supposed to video-call that night. He had promised. “Just one more week, sweetheart,” he had said from the base in Iraq, smiling through grainy pixels. “Then I’m home.”But the look on the soldiers’ faces stole the breath from the room.Her mother’s cry came first—raw and broken—before she collapsed to her knees. Ava couldn’t move. Couldn’t think. She stared at the folded flag being placed gently into her mother’s shaking hands. The edges of the world blurred, and Ava felt herself slipping backwards, as though gravity itself had changed direction.Her father—her hero—was gone.For days after, Ava walked through the house like a ghost in her own skin. At night she tucked herself into his old jacket, inhaling t

Jace POV The night she arrived, the rain came down like metal sheets hammered from the sky, relentless, unforgiving. I watched from the front steps, hood half-up, shoulders loose, letting the storm slap against my skin. The city reflected in the slick driveway looked like fire caught in oil—messy, dangerous, irresistible. A storm like this should have warned me. But storms never warn you about the quiet, creeping kind of chaos that walks in on two legs. I saw her first through the windshield. New girl. Not new in the world, but new here. And apparently, new in my life. She sat pressed against the glass, forehead to cold glass, staring out at the rain-smeared city like it could somehow erase everything she’d just lost. I studied her—the small set of her jaw, the way she slumped in the seat like she wanted to disappear, the faint tension coiling in her shoulders. Fresh start. Funny. I could smell the lie in that. Fresh starts didn’t exist. Not in my world. Not for anyone I cared

Ava’s bare feet froze on the polished wood floor, the coolness crawling up her legs like a warning. The hallway here felt darker than before—as if the shadows had thickened, drawing breath while she slept. The sound came again. A muted thud. A short, sharp curse—definitely Jace’s voice. Then silence. She shouldn’t care. She shouldn’t even be out of bed. This wasn’t her house, wasn’t her territory. But something in the tone of that voice… something pained, frustrated, raw… pulled at her. A knot formed in Ava’s stomach. She wasn’t used to reacting to people this way—especially not boys. Maybe once, a long time ago, before things fell apart. Before hospitals and broken promises and funerals. Before she learned how easily people disappeared. She stepped into the hall. The storm had died, but the house still felt like it was vibrating, holding onto leftover thunder. Ava wrapped her arms around herself and took a careful step forward. Then another. The west wing was to her righ

Ava didn’t sleep. Not even a little. She lay in the unfamiliar bed, eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling as shadows shifted with every passing car or flicker of moonlight. Her thoughts were loud—too loud—buzzing like static she couldn’t turn off. Jace’s voice replayed over and over. *Because some parts of this house remember too much.* What did that even mean? The floorboards creaked once, twice—this house never seemed fully asleep. Or maybe it was her. Maybe she was the one who couldn’t settle because nothing about this place fit against her edges. It was too perfect, too polished, too full of corners she didn’t understand. Ava turned over in bed, clutching her father’s jacket to her chest. She breathed in the faint, faded scent of old leather, hoping it would calm her. It didn’t. Her father had always been good at making a room feel smaller when she was overwhelmed, like pulling her back into herself. He would sit next to her on the porch at midnight, hand her a cup of ho

Ava didn’t remember much of the drive back to the Rowan estate.Just flashes.Mark gripping the steering wheel too tightly.Jace staring straight ahead, jaw clenched, breathing too shallow.The sound of her own pulse echoing in her ears.No one spoke.Every question Ava wanted to ask felt too big for the air in the car.An incident in the west wing.Something left for her.Her stomach twisted as gravel crunched under the tires.The house loomed above them, tall and patient, like it had been waiting for this exact moment.“Stay close to me,” Mark said as they stepped out of the car.Not reassuring.Not calming.Just… scared.Ava swallowed and followed him inside. Jace stepped in behind her, close enough that she could feel the warmth of him, but not close enough to touch.She hated how aware she was of that distance.Mark led them toward the west wing hallway — the one Ava had only seen from a distance, the one with shadows that seemed too still, too deliberate.Halfway there, Jace gra