Fury on Fire (Devil's Rock #3)(67)

She slid a step closer. “So you’re saying that other men were hurt and you didn’t try to help them?” She stepped forward, reaching for him, eager to touch him and offer comfort.

He flinched and jerked back. “Don’t say it’s all right. The boy I was when I went into that prison might have committed a crime, but he had honor, humanity. He would never have stood by as men were attacked . . . as men begged for help, crying like babies as horrible, unthinkable things were done to them.” He punched his chest with a fist. “I. Did. Nothing.”

She touched his arm. “You can’t blame—”

“Stop it. This was just sex. That’s all it was and all it can ever be. Now if you’re okay with that, fine. If not, you should leave.”

She dropped her arm, everything in her wilting inside. She had believed all along that he wasn’t a man who would hurt her—at least not physically. And that still held true. Her heart, however, was another matter. Right now it was dying.

She gave herself a mental slap. Faith had always prided herself on being one of those women to steer clear of bad boys. She had seen so many women make poor choices when it came to the men in their lives. Boyfriends and husbands who abused them and their children, who failed to provide, who abandoned them. She had never been tempted by men with unsavory pasts, and yet here she was. She had been tempted. She had fallen for this guy who was not long-term-relationship material.

“Like I said,” she finished, her voice strong and steady as she stared him down. “Coward.” Turning, she strode across the room and grabbed the doorknob, yanking it open.

“Faith?”

She stopped halfway out the door and looked back at him.

“That line you drew on the floor of my kitchen?”

“Yes?”

“You did it with a permanent marker.”

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.