“You should try one. They’re amazing.”
Homemade scones. So fucking domestic.
He stared at the plate. He owned a few dishes, but he usually ate off paper plates that he bought in bulk. He didn’t own a plate like this—cream colored with tiny little flowers edging the border. Briar would own plates like these. His brother would eat off a plate like this. Knox could pretend he was someone else. That he’d never been kept inside a cage.
Not North.
She sighed. “Fine. Be stubborn.”
He didn’t look up from the plate as Serena pressed a kiss to his lips and slipped out of his house. He heard her car door slam in the night. The engine started and faded away. He began to turn, intending to head out back to his welding shop, but then he was spinning around. He had plenty of work to finish—his own freelance and custom pieces he was hired to do for the garage where he worked—but first he had to deal with this. He snatched up the plate and pulled open the front door.
He stalked across the shared front porch. The light was on and he could see there was already a welcome mat in front of the door. Of course.
Bending, he set the plate with the three remaining scones on the mat.
He didn’t want to make nice with his new neighbor. He didn’t want homemade scones. He wasn’t that man. His time at Devil’s Rock had seen to that. Twelve years turned men into animals, and he was nothing less than a fucking brute. Scarred inside and out.
Two years free on the outside didn’t erase that. Nothing could be undone. Nothing was ever erased.
He knew it. He wouldn’t pretend otherwise.
He couldn’t if he wanted to.
She was still awake when she heard the back door open and slam shut next door. The slam reverberated for moments, traveling into the bones of her house. It was strange that she was connected to another person like this, sharing and sleeping within one actual structure, only a wall dividing them. And yet they hadn’t met yet. She didn’t even fully know what he looked like. Just the sound of him fucking.
She bounded from her bed and made it to her bedroom window in two strides. She peered through the blinds, craning her neck to get a better view of the figure striding across the backyard.
It was him. North Callaghan. The guy who had just made a woman scream like a porn star. She shifted in place on her feet, suddenly feeling itchy inside her own skin as she observed the way his jeans hung low on his hips . . . the denim hugging his ass perfectly. Her already alert girl parts clenched.
From her position at the second-floor window, she could see into both her yard and the neighbor’s, a fact she had noticed when she initially viewed the property. A work shed of some sort sat at the far back of his yard.
Usually the double doors were shut, but tonight they stood open, revealing various tools, machinery and equipment inside.
She sighed as he disappeared into the shed. Out of sight, out of mind. Well, not exactly out of mind. She was standing rooted to the spot, still staring after him like he was the hot lifeguard at the community pool the summer she turned thirteen.
God. She was hard up if the sight of a man’s back got her this flustered.
Yes, she wanted to date and meet Mr. Right, but maybe she should focus a little less on finding her forever guy and more on Mr. Right Now.
Would hot, meaningless sex be so wrong? How hard could it be to get laid? She knew the thought would traumatize her father and brothers. But wasn’t that why she wanted her own place? To lead her own life without interference or judgment from her family?
The privacy and freedom to do whatever she wanted—whoever she wanted.
It was something to consider.
Lights sparked and flared from inside the shed, spitting out into the night. It sounded like a blowtorch. Maybe he was welding? She wasn’t exactly sure about stuff like that. She’d grown up around guys. Changing the oil in her car, mowing the yard. Anything mechanical. Her dad and brothers handled that. Guy stuff might have rubbed off on other girls, but not Faith. Those things never interested her. She’d stayed inside in the air-conditioning and read her books and watched Barefoot Contessa.
Turning from the window, she moved and sank back onto her bed. Sliding under the covers, she listened to the distant sounds of a welding torch. It wasn’t nearly as distracting as the sounds of sex. It was almost pleasant. Like white noise to lull her to sleep.
She pulled the pillow to her chest and tucked it between her legs. White noise or not, her mind drifted back to him. To the sounds of him having sex.
She jammed her eyes shut. So the walls were thin. Serena wasn’t a girlfriend. By her own admission, she had told Faith that. Tonight wouldn’t be a daily occurrence. So loud sex would only happen sometimes. Occasionally. She’d deal with it. Having a place of her own, her first home, still outweighed the annoyance.
Rolling on her side, she prayed for sleep to come.
THREE