By the time I walked in the door to our place, I was exhausted. All I wanted was a hot shower in my own bathroom and my bed. The condo was spotless, as usual, as I walked through. When I got to my room, I tossed my bags on the bed and pulled off my shirt.
Grabbing some towels out of my linen closet, I turned on the shower and started toward my closet to grab some clothes. I pulled open the door and almost stepped on Faith, who was sitting Indian style on the floor, surrounded by books.
She looked up at me in shock before she started to hurry and clean the space around her.
“I was wondering when you were going to come out of the closet.” I joked.
I reached down and picked up one of the books sitting by her feet.
“What the hell are you doing in here anyway? And why are you reading about…” I read the title of the book. “Economics in America, when you should be scrubbing my toilet or something?”
She practically hissed at me, her eyes tiny slits in her face. She was pissed and she’d never looked so fucking hot.
Snatching the book from my hand, she stuffed it in an old purple backpack with her name written in whiteout on the strap.
“I was just catching up on some reading, but don’t worry, your toilets are nice and clean.” She gave me a sarcastic smile before trying to walk around me.
I moved so she was stuck in the closet and placed my arms against the doorframe around me. Her eyes dropped to my chest and roamed across my tattoos. I had a lot more than I had the last time she’d been this close to my body. I liked the way her eyes felt on me.
When she looked back up, her eyes were softer.
“Let me through,” she said calmly.
I shook my head. “Nope.”
She took a deep breath and looked away from me. “Finn, let me out of here. Seriously, I don’t have time to play games with you.”
Her words struck a chord, and I felt myself going from playful to pissed off just that quickly.
“Why not, Faith? You had plenty of time to play games with me when you were younger. Why not now?”
Her eyes clashed with mine as we angrily stared each other down.
“I never played games with you,” she said sternly.
“The hell you didn’t. I bet you felt good—the innocent girl who played the player. Well, think again, little girl. You can’t play someone who doesn’t give a shit about you!” I shouted.
The minute I said it, her face went pale and dropped. I felt sick to my stomach after saying those words—mostly because they were a fucking lie. I’d been so in love with Faith and she’d taken me apart piece by piece when she left. I was still trying to put myself back together four years later.
It was unexpected, but out of nowhere, she exploded. Dropping her bag to the floor, she used her fists as she starting pounding against my chest. She was screaming things I couldn’t understand uncontrollably as she had a breakdown right in front of me.
I let her hit me until my chest became tender from her tiny fists, and then I grabbed her by the wrists and pushed her up against the wall. Still, she tried to kick me in the shins and knee me in the balls. Using one of my legs, I trapped hers. She struggled a little more before finally giving in.
She turned her face away from me, her hair sticking to her flushed cheeks.
“Look at me!” I shouted.
No one was allowed to put their hands on me like that—ever. Grown-ass men had gotten their asses kicked for less.
When she refused to look at me, I used one hand to capture both her wrists and used my other to turn her face to me. When I did, her hair slipped from her cheeks and I could see she was crying. I felt like the biggest dick in the world, but I had to hold strong. I couldn’t be fooled by her again.
Her big brown eyes met mine and her slow flow of tears turned into much more when she burst out crying even harder.
“Please just let me go, Finn,” she cried. “I swore I’d never let you see me like this.”
I was so shocked that I let go of her arms. She grabbed her right one and rubbed it, making me feel bad that I might have held her too roughly. I wasn’t one to hurt a girl, but she had made me so fucking angry.
She wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand and then reached over to grab her bag.
“Just go ahead and fire me already. I’ll find another job,” she said as she walked out of my closet.
I wasn’t sure what had just happened, but I was pretty sure the girl was having a mental breakdown. If she was still living with her dad, which I was sure she still was, why was she working as a maid? I hadn’t even thought about that. It made me wonder what Faith had been up to all these years.
When I went back into my bedroom, she was nowhere to be found. I wasn’t going to give her what she obviously wanted—I wasn’t going to fire her. If it was torturing her to be around me as badly as it was torturing me to be around her, then I could take it as long as possible.
The following day, I stayed in again just in case she showed. I sat around and watched TV while the guys went out shopping and hit up Disneyland. I waited until later in the afternoon, and when she still didn’t show, I put in a phone call to the temp agency.
“Hi, Mrs. Cooper, this is James Finn. The maid didn’t show up this morning and I was wondering if everything was okay?”
I didn’t want to admit it, but I was nervous that I might’ve hurt her arms or something. I was angry, but I didn’t think I was angry enough to actually hurt her.
“Hmm… that’s weird. Let me call Miss Warren and find out if she’s okay. Thanks for the call, Mr. Finn.”
I hated that it made me happy that Faith’s last name was still Warren. Why the fuck did I care if she’d been married? I shouldn’t care about anything that had to do with her, but when I thought of her being with another man, which I’m sure she already had been, I felt a strange pressure in my chest that I didn’t like.
An hour later, she showed up at my door. She said nothing to me as she moved around the condo straightening up and bagging the trash. I couldn’t keep my eyes off of her. I hated that my body responded to her so easily, yet all the girls who threw themselves at me did nothing for me.
“So since when do you read books about economics?” I asked.
I was sitting on a barstool at the counter she was cleaning.
She didn’t answer, which only made me mad. Who the hell did she think she was? I stood up from my stool and snatched up her backpack from the floor. Unzipping it, I had all the books pulled out before she even noticed what I was doing.
“Put them back,” she said as she came toward me.
I looked down at the books in my arms. English, Chemistry, Economics, High School Biology—books that any college student would’ve been done with years before.
She snatched the books from my hands and stuffed them back in her bag.
“Did anyone ever teach you it was rude to go through other people’s things?” she yelled.
I’d never heard her yell so much when she was younger. Actually, the idea of Faith yelling was almost comical. Her voice was too soft and sweet for it to sound forceful. It came out sounding completely wrong.
“Nope. Didn’t your holy rolling daddy ever tell you it was a sin to have premarital sex?” I responded.
Her tiny hand across my cheek caught me off guard. I could tell by her expression that she had shocked herself as well. She gasped and covered her mouth with the hand she’d hit me with. Fire shot through me, but the wrong kind. Instead of being mad, I was so turned on that I could barely hold myself together.
I reached in and pulled her to me, locking my arms behind her back and trapping her in my embrace. My cheek stung and by the way she was staring at the stinging spot, I was sure there was a fierce little handprint there.
“You hit me.” I stated the obvious.
She pressed her palms to my chest and tried to wiggle her way out of my arms. All that did was press her tiny body against my already rock-hard cock.
<
br /> “You’re not strong enough,” I said. “Isn’t there something you should say to me?”
I couldn’t have given a shit less if she apologized. I just wanted a reason to hold her against me a little longer. The way she was moving was rubbing against the front of my jeans, and it felt like a damn good dry hump. Her hair pulled away from her face again and every time she moved, the sweet scent of roses and fresh power, her familiar scent, would invade my senses.
She stopped struggling against me and looked up at me with big wounded eyes. For a brief moment, I felt my heart melt a little before I realized my mistake and put my guard back up. It was so easy to forget the past when I held her so close. It was easy to forget what she’d done to me. For a moment, I wished to myself that I could forget.
“I guess you want me to apologize?” she said as she rolled her eyes. “Fine. I’m sorry, but you have to admit you deserved it.”
“I deserved to be hurt?” I asked.
My voice cracked and it made me sound weak.
I wanted to know what I’d done for her to just up and leave four years ago. I really felt like I deserved some kind of explanation. As soon as the question left my mouth, I regretted it. I never wanted her to know how badly she’d hurt me—never. Thankfully, she thought I was talking about her slapping me.
“I seriously doubt my hand hurt you that bad. I’m sure you’ve been hit worse than that before,” she said.
I had been. One of the worst hits I’d ever taken had been by one of my best friends, and he’d died in an accident that same night. Her making me think about Reynolds upset me worse than her hitting me. I felt my arms tighten around her and all the playfulness left me.
“Don’t hit people. You never know if they might hit you back,” I said as I released her suddenly.
She grabbed the counter behind her and had the nerve to look like I’d hurt her feelings.
“I know I never really knew you, Finn, but I find it hard to believe that you’d ever hit a woman.”
And just like that, I was more pissed off than I’d ever been in my life. How could she say she never knew me? She knew me better than anyone else in my life ever did or ever would. I wanted to turn and put my fist through anything that wouldn’t feel it. I wanted to release my anger on anything but the girl in front of me.
I settled for a big expensive vase on the top of the breakfast table behind me. It crashed to the floor. Bits and pieces of blue glass shattered everywhere and sounded like raindrops on the expensive tile flooring.
Faith looked at me like I was a monster, and that was just fine by me. Let her think what she wanted to think. I turned and walked away before I did anything I truly regretted. I wanted to hurt her the way she’d hurt me, but emotionally only. She was right about one thing; I’d never lay a hand on a woman. No matter how badly she’d ripped my heart out and or how badly she’d changed me for the worse.
Twenty-Three
Faith
I couldn’t go back there. It was obvious that Finn wasn’t stable and I couldn’t handle him. I was too sensitive to anything that involved him. I couldn’t deny that anymore. I still had feelings for Finn. I was pretty sure they’d never gone away, but the minute I found myself sitting his closet to study, I knew I was going down the wrong road.
The closet smelled familiar to me. It smelled of a time long ago when I’d spent stress-free nights with Finn. Only after sitting in there with the lights on and a book in my face did I realize it was his cologne that was so familiar to me.
He wasn’t the boy I’d once thought he was, though. I’d been fooled, and I swore that I’d never be fooled again. Having him treat me so badly wasn’t something I was willing to put up with—ever.
He didn’t have any right. I understood that I left him first, but he moved on without me entirely too fast. That made it more than clear that he never really cared about me and that letter—the letter that ripped out my heart and destroyed it, I could never get over it. As a matter of fact, it was still tucked away in my old journal. I’d filled that particular journal with all the things I’d longed to say to Finn. I’d recently pulled out that journal in particular to remind me of anything I might’ve forgotten.
I’d almost quit altogether, but when Mrs. Cooper called to check on me, I had to go in. Not to mention the lack of groceries in the apartment was a big kick in the butt, too. But I had to find something else and I had to find it fast. Continuing to work for Finn wasn’t a good idea anymore.
I made up my mind the next morning that Finn wasn’t going to scare me away. I had no choice but to continue to clean until I found something else. I was taking adult education classes at night so that was going to make things a bit more difficult, but I could do it. If I’d learned one thing about myself over the last four years, it was that I could do anything as long as I worked hard enough.
When I got to the condo, no one was there. I let out the breath I’d been holding, then made my way to the bedrooms. I wanted to be done with those before anyone came back. The first room I came to was Zeke’s. I stepped up to his door, ready to push it open, when through the crack, I heard soft panting noises.
I should’ve backed away. I should’ve gone back into another part of the house and cleaned until the back of the condo was empty, but I didn’t. Instead, I peeked in through the crack. It was Zeke and his girlfriend Patience. They were completely covered, thank God, but he was on top of her, looking into her eyes as if she were the only thing holding him on Earth.
It was mesmerizing. He whispered sweet words of love to her as he slowly moved his body against hers. Their kisses were sweet, and again, it made me long for the affection I was missing in my life. I was tired of being alone and shouldering all the responsibilities. I wanted a partner in life—someone who could hold me on the nights when I felt like everything was falling apart and tell me that I was going to be okay—that Jimmy was going to be okay.
I backed away from their door slowly, ready to turn and go back into the kitchen to clean. Instead, I walked straight into Finn. He looked past me into the crack in the door and then looked back down at me with a knowing smirk.
My face lit up with a deep blush. I could hardly believe that I’d been caught watching a couple make love.
I tried to move around him quietly so I didn’t interrupt Zeke and Patience, but Finn caught me around the waist and turned me back around to face the door. His arms locked around me the way they had the day before and then I felt his hot breath against my ear.
“So you’re into voyeurism now?” he whispered.
Chills broke out across my body.
I tried again to get away, but he was holding me so tightly that I couldn’t move. The fear of Zeke and Patience seeing us standing in their doorway watching was too much. I didn’t want to say anything to him. I didn’t want to make any noise at all. I just wanted him to let me go so I could be out of the embarrassing situation.
“Let me ask you something, Faith. What do you see in there?” His lips brushed my ear. “Are you into Zeke now? Because if so, let me go ahead and squash your fantasies now. He wouldn’t touch you.” He was still whispering, but it sounded so loud to me that I was positive Zeke and Patience would hear it, too.
The noises from their room were starting to get louder, and instinctively, I pressed back away from the doorway, but all that did was press me harder up against Finn. He hissed softly in my ear and cursed under his breath.
Everything was so quiet that I could still hear the things that Zeke and Patience were saying to each other.
“I love you so much, baby. God, you feel so good,” Patience was saying to Zeke. “Please. Please don’t stop.” She moaned louder.
Again, I pressed myself back. I wanted to run. I wanted to be anywhere in that moment but where I was.
My eyes locked onto Zeke’s tattooed back as the covers slid down around his waist. Patience dug her nails into his back so hard that I was sure he would bleed. Instead of yelling, he kept telling her h
ow beautiful she was and how he couldn’t live without her. It was the most disturbing yet most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.
“Tell me, Faith. What do you see?” Finn whispered in my ear again.
I felt his words all over. My knees were getting weaker by the second. My stomach dug into his arm as my body slowly melted.
Finally, he released me enough that I could move. I turned in his arms and looked up at him. I was so mad that he was making me watch them. I didn’t want to be there. I didn’t want to see people engage in something that I’d never know. I’d probably never feel a man’s touch again, and I’d probably never hear someone call me beautiful or tell me they loved me. I wanted to scream at him. I wanted to hit him again.
Instead, I pushed him back away from me. He moved out of my way and grinned down at me like he’d been playing a joke.
“I see love,” I said. “Something you know nothing about.”
His face dropped and he attempted to say something, but instead of waiting to listen, I walked away. He didn’t follow and I was glad. I wanted to be rid of him. I couldn’t get into the kitchen fast enough, and once I was in there, I cleaned the fastest I ever had. Once I was done with the place, I left as quickly as I could.
I stopped by the grocery store on the way home and grabbed some essentials. A few of the people I worked with were happy to see me and kept telling me how great I looked. They were just being nice since I knew my stress level had only gotten worse since I’d taken on my new job.
When I got home, Jimmy was jumping on the couch and singing loudly.
“Baby boy, get off the couch and quiet down some. The people next door are going to start complaining.” He jumped down from the couch and into my arms. “Where’s Grandma?” I asked.
“I dunno!” he sang playfully.
Worry set in. I set Jimmy down and started searching through the apartment.
“Mom?” I called loudly. “Mom, where are you?”
I went to her room and pushed the door open. She was nowhere to be seen. I started to panic. She would never leave Jimmy alone. Something was wrong. Something was definitely wrong.
Finding Faith Page 18
