I nod and leave. My job for tonight is done.
Outside, the crew is getting ready to leave. They’ll probably stay for a few more minutes just to be sure everything is all right.
I get home and place the extinguisher back where it belongs, making a mental note to replenish it. Ghost nervously moves around my feet, nearly knocking me down with his massive frame. “Easy, boy. We have a new neighbor. I have a feeling our quiet days are over.”
He whines and presses his wet muzzle into my hand, his big brown eyes looking up at me.
I reek of smoke but don’t have the energy to take a shower, so I go back to my bedroom. Before mindlessly falling into bed, I peek outside. My window is across from Mrs. Jenkins’s window. Well, from her new tenant’s. Her curtains are open, and the light is on. She’s standing in the middle of the room, her face covered by her hands. I step closer to the window, trying to get a better look. Her shoulders are shaking. She’s crying. Fuck.Fuck!
Not your problem. Not your problem.
Even if she’s annoying as fuck, I’m a firefighter, and she might be in shock. The sour taste in my mouth is impossible to ignore, and I’m about to go to her again when she turns, notices me peeping, and jumps to the window to close the curtains. What do I do now? Just as I’m about to turn back to my bed, an elegant hand, covered in grime, pops up between the curtains, middle finger raised. I chuckle. I guess that’s my answer.
“Watch our new neighbor tonight, Ghost. Daddy was rough and kicked her door out,” I say to him as my head hits the pillow.
He lets out a low bark and patters to the window overseeing her front porch. He’ll let me know if someone comes around. Heaven knows I can’t watch it tonight.
ChapterThree
ALICIA
I wake up groggy and puffy from crying. The first day of my new life didn’t exactly go according to plan. To almost burn down the house on my first night… I couldn’t even make that up for one of my books.
Speaking of my books, one positive is that I got some good inspiration from my next-door neighbor. He’s very tall, a few good inches taller than me, and as I’ve mentioned, I’m not petite. His brown hair was in a messy, low man-bun, and he has abs I’d describe as washboard in any of my novels. And his arms? Huge. Real deal arm porn. I can’t stop thinking about his chest either. He’s hairy. Very hairy. I was never the one to like hairy guys, but this particular one pulls it off like a champ.
Perfect inspiration indeed—until he opened his mouth.
Oh, I saw the judgment in his eyes. For multiple reasons, I’ve become well acquainted with people’s convictions over the years, so I recognize it when I see it.
And how much embarrassment can one person handle? A firetruck outside my new home on my first night. I groan and cover my face with a pillow, wishing I could erase the humiliation. If Mrs. Jenkins finds out, I’ll be out on my ass faster than I can sneeze. So I need to make sure she won’t. I have a very long day ahead of me.
I took a shower before I went to sleep to wash all the soot and grime off my body, but I need another one now. I still feel dirty, so I hop under the hot water and scrub my body, ridding it of the invisible dirt. The more I scour it, the more I remember another time I tried to scrub off filth. A different type of filth. Dirty, sweaty, wandering hands on my skin. I scrub faster. The hands slither up my arms, and I scrub them fiercely too, wanting nothing more than to deterge my brain from the memories. I scrub my skin so vigorously, it bleeds. But I don’t stop. I can’t stop. The hands make their way down my back and push me down. I can’t breathe. I’m suffocating. I claw at the hands—the door handle—and run out of the shower. Here, I can breathe again. I’m alone. I’m safe.
It’s been nearly eight years.Why can’t I move past it? Why?I smack the tiled wall. And again. And again.
When I’m done, and the panic is taken out on myself and the wall, I dry up and do my skincare routine. It’s the constant in my life, keeping me grounded. It might seem superficial for some, but for me, it’s the only thing that still makes me feel like a woman.
I might have joked about vibrators earlier, but I don’t use them. I don’t have a use for them. My libido’s been dead ever since that night. My doctor says it will come back when the time’s right, but I don’t think it ever will. At least, it feels that way. It’s had a lot of time to find its way back and still hasn’t done so.
I’m broken, and I accept it.
After applying my seven-step morning routine to my face and body, I get dressed in my typical grey oversized sweatshirt and sweatpants and go to the kitchen to assess the damage.
Smoke is still everywhere, especially on the walls and ceiling next to the fireplace. The front door hangs on a hinge. One. It must have been moved by the wind at night. After my neighbor left after saving my bacon, the firefighters came back and tried to put screws back in there, but the threshold was destroyed. They did their best. The entrance was somewhat covered by the door, but not well, and it won’t hold up for long. I need to call one of my brothers to come help me. The cold will be here before I know it, and I’d like to be able to shield myself from the Maine elements.
I cover my face with my hands and groan loudly. Man, I can hear it now. I’ll never hear the end of “I told you so.” Not until the day I die.
I start the coffee machine and get to work. Everyone in my family is a self-proclaimed proud coffee snob, so I can’t do anything without a cup of good, sweet caffeine.
A few hours later, the front door bursts open, almost falling, nearly startling me to death.
A glass of tall, messy, and angry comes in without knocking. He’s wearing his brown hair in a low bun, his beard neatly trimmed. A tight white T-shirt fits his impressive chest like a glove, and worn-out dark jeans cling to his narrow hips and muscular thighs. I wonder if he forgot his jacket. It sure is cold outside. It’s mid-September, but it’s uncommonly chilly out there—with the amount of muscle he has, he probably doesn’t even know he’s supposed to get cold.
His shoulders are broad, even wider than my small door, fit for a fairy—or a very old woman. He has to step in sideways to get in. I’m not kidding. It’s the only way he fits. I always wrote those characters, but I’ve never seen one of them in real life. Well, maybe Alex fits the bill a little, but I’ve never seen him stepping through any doorway sideways. I gulp, freezing on my knees, my scrub brush forgotten on the floor.
And then it hits me like a ton of bricks. There’s a big man in my space. Averybig man in my space. I look around for an escape route. If he comes charging in, I’ll run for the back door and outside to the front of the house, where other neighbors can see me. I’ll be yelling all the way. I will not be quiet. Not this time.
I turn my attention back to him as he carefully watches me. Assessing me? Thinking about how easy I’d be able to overpower?
