Fitting. She marred his tile floor. She laughed. “And you were so worried about you ruining things. Guess I did that.” Shrugging, she exited his house, deliberately slamming his door for no other reason except that it felt good.
To feel even better, she slammed the door on the way back inside her own house. She paced the length of her living room. She couldn’t believe she had been so stupid. She’d fallen for her neighbor and, of course, it meant nothing to him. She meant nothing to him.
Her family had been right. He was bad news, but not in the way he claimed. North insisted he was broken and not good enough for her and yet that hadn’t stopped him from sleeping with her. She should have seen it coming, but she still felt used. How could she even look at him again?
She knew what she needed to do.
TWENTY-FIVE
The pounding wouldn’t stop. She stopped amid packing up her kitchen, pushing herself to her feet. She stepped around the U-Haul boxes she had picked up after visiting with her Realtor yesterday. Mandy didn’t understand, but after her initial questions, she didn’t press Faith for an explanation. The house would go up on the market at the end of the week. In the meantime, Faith had decided to start packing. She could move back in with her father and sell the house while it was vacant. He’d be happy to have her until she found another house. She just couldn’t stay here. Not any longer than she had to. She’d avoided seeing North so far, but she knew it was only a matter of time before they came face to face.
The pounding was enough to drive her crazy. After taking a quick peek out her front blinds to assure herself that it wasn’t North, she yanked open the door and marched out to confront the offender. “Can I help you?”
The man pounding on North’s door stepped back and looked at her. “Yeah. I’m looking for the guy that lives here.”
The guy. It was assumed she wouldn’t know him. And really . . . did she know him? Did she know him at all? She thought she had. Or she thought she was at least starting to. She thought that maybe they had something special. But she was wrong. She was wrong about him. She didn’t know him at all.
She narrowed her gaze on the man, wondering if maybe he was North’s parole officer . . . except he had a look to him that reminded her of North. Even though he was fairly clean cut, he had that edgy bad-boy vibe. And something else, too.
“He’s not home.” She waved to the street. “His bike is gone. You’ll have to come back another time.” She used the tone of voice that she adopted when dealing with difficult people. Wendy called it her pit bull voice.
The guy blinked, looking her over. “You know North Callaghan?” It was more of a statement than a question.
Knew him? That might be an understatement. She knew him in the biblical sense, yes. She wasn’t the first one able to claim that fact. However, something other women couldn’t claim, something maybe no woman could claim, was that she loved him. But North didn’t love her. The thought angered her more than it surprised her. She shouldn’t have been so stupid to fall for someone so wrong for her.
God. She closed her eyes in a suffering blink. She loved him. She was an idiot. It was only physical to him, but she had gone and thrown her heart into the fray. If she hadn’t already made her mind up to move, she sure as hell would now.
She hesitated before nodding at the stranger. “Yes. He’s my neighbor. I know him.” It seemed the smartest thing to leave it at that and say nothing more.
He stared at her a long moment before sighing. He ran a hand through his hair, ruffling the dark locks as he looked out at the street. She should move inside. She should be nervous. This guy that she didn’t know, who seemed in no hurry to go away, should make her nervous.
He looked back at her then. “I’m his brother, Knox. He hasn’t been answering any of my phone calls or texts.”
She angled her head, studying him further. Same dark hair. Same angular jaw. Good looks must run in the family. The tension in her chest relaxed a little. She stepped out from her doorway and stuck out her hand. “I’m Faith Walters.”
“Faith,” he murmured. She smiled, trying not to feel uncomfortable. “Maybe you could give him a message for me?”
She shrugged uneasily. “We’re not really friends.” Or friendly. In fact, I’m moving because of him. Because I slept with him and I love him and he is incapable of loving me back.
Knox angled his head and looked at her with growing interest . . . almost as though he could read her thoughts. She forced a smile. “I see. So. You don’t see him?”
She shrugged again.
Knox’s eyebrows lifted. “Huh.” Now there was no denying the interest in that single sound. “You don’t talk ever?”