Finding Faith (28 page)

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.

“
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.