Chapter 5

Chapter Five

Reid

I couldn’t fucking believe that she brought me fucking cupcakes. Like she was Susie Sunshine, the perfect neighbor or something. I knew that if I didn’t send a clear message that under no circumstances did I ever want to talk to her, then she wouldn’t leave me alone. She had that look.

Too sweet. Way too nice. She looked like the kind of person who woke up in the morning and smiled. She looked like the kind of person who sang while they unloaded the dishwasher and picked up pennies on the sidewalk claiming they were lucky.

The easiest thing had been to shut the door in her face. Even if I’d wanted the cupcakes.

Once I heard her go back to her apartment, the guilt hit me. It wasn’t fair that I had to be a bitch to someone like her. But I couldn’t deal with the alternative.

She looked too much like Kaylee. Way too much. Made me sick to think about. Like their parents’ DNA was so strong that they’d produced two almost identical daughters several years apart.

I’d liked her parents. They’d been lovely to me. The kind of people who made me a part of the family the second I’d started dating their daughter. I’d gotten a Christmas sweater and been in the family phots and had gone on vacation with them.

Losing Kaylee had meant losing them too. That part had almost been harder. I’d developed a strong relationship with her mom and then it was just…gone. Ended. Because of Kaylee’s selfish choices.

I hadn’t seen her in a few days. That was fine. That was how I liked it. In time, I’d forget that she was even here.

Right now, though, I was still sticking my head out of my door cautiously before going into the hallway so I didn’t bump into her. It was probably silly, but I didn’t want to risk seeing her. I kind of wanted to apologize, but then that might give her encouragement.

Jo, Cade, and Hunter thought I was an idiot. I’d told them about the fiasco, and I’d been admonished for being an asshole.

This wasn’t news, but they didn’t get it. None of them had been through a relationship like that. How a betrayal fundamentally changed who you were as a person. How it had broken my trust in just about everyone and everything.

Eventually they left me alone about it, but still asked if I’d seen Sophie lately. I told them no.

Until that Sunday when I was coming back from a long walk in the park. I couldn’t wait until it was just a little bit warmer so I could go on long hikes in the mountains again.

I bounded up the stairs, still energized from my walk when I heard someone cursing.

Sophie . Standing outside her door with a laundry basket on her hip as she jiggled the handle of her door and cursed again.

There was no way for me to back away and leave her like this. I might be a bitch, but I wasn’t a monster.

“Locked out?” I asked and she spun around.

“Oh,” she said, her face immediately going red. “Yeah. I thought I had my keys in my hand, but I guess I…didn’t.”

“You don’t have a spare in your car or anything? Or with a friend?”

She pressed her lips together and shook her head.

Christ, she looked like Kaylee. Looking at her was hard, so I lowered my gaze.

And now I was staring at her tits. Great. They were very nice tits though. She wasn’t wearing a bra and I could see her nipples pressing through her thin shirt.

Looking at her nipples wasn’t a good idea either, so I focused on her face again and was hit by a bolt of pain, but then the longer I gazed at her face, the more subtle differences I saw. Kaylee’s eyes had been truly blue, where Sophie’s flirted between blue and green. Kaylee had dyed her hair blonder, especially in the summer. Sophie’s cheeks were rounder, her face…sweeter. Except for her chin. That was all stubbornness.

“You’ll have to message Tyler and have him bring the master key. He’s usually pretty good about showing up, but it might take a while.”

A nice person would invite her inside to wait for Tyler the head of maintenance to get over here. Was I that nice? I wasn’t feeling particularly nice, but then she bit her lip and I found the words falling out of my mouth anyway.

“You can come in and hang out until he gets here. Fold your laundry while you wait or whatever.”

Her eyes widened.

“Are you sure?”

Instead of answering her, I unlocked the door and held it open for her. “Just get in.” I wasn’t going to ask her again.

Sophie scurried ahead of me, nearly taking me out with her laundry basket.

I didn’t care what she thought of my place, but I’d cleaned up and organized yesterday.

Sophie looked around and I instantly regretted letting her in.

I set my crap down by the door, and Sophie set her basket down on the couch and started typing on her phone.

Annoyed by the quiet and this woman invading my space, I decided to mostly ignore her and went to my bedroom to change out of my hiking clothes. Normally I’d put on an old stretched out dance tank and some booty shorts, but I wasn’t gonna wear that with Sophie here, so I pulled on a pair of leggings and a regular T-shirt. I made sure to put on a bra, even though I didn’t want to.

I brushed through my hair and wished I could take a shower, but I wasn’t going to get naked with her here, so it would have to wait. If I could, I would have hidden in the bedroom as long as she was here, but my laptop was in the living room and I really needed to upload the new chapter of my current fic. I’d gotten myself on a schedule of regular updates and I didn’t want to disappoint my readers. Sure, I was writing everything for free, but I still felt a responsibility. Every week I’d get comments that people loved my stories and they were helping get them through some rough times. Readers would sometimes pour their hearts out in their messages and that affected me. I couldn’t let them down.

Bracing myself, I went back into the living room and found Sophie folding her laundry and chewing her lip.

“Is he on his way?” I asked and she spun to face me, holding a pair of lacy underwear in her hands that she’d been in the midst of folding.

They were pink and feminine and for a second I lost the ability to both breathe and swallow.

Sophie yelped and dropped the underwear onto the floor before diving down to grab them. She shoved them into the basket, her face beet red again. It was cute how much she blushed.

No, it wasn’t.

“Tyler?” I prompted her when she didn’t say anything and wouldn’t look me in the eye. “Is he on his way with the master key?”

“Yeah. He’ll be here in twenty minutes he said.”

I nodded.

“He’s usually pretty prompt, so he probably will be.” As far as property managers went, Tyler was a good one. He’d show up when shit broke, and he wouldn’t make you feel bad about it. He and I often shot the shit when he came to fix things, or I ran into him when he was dealing with a finicky dryer. It was one of the reasons I liked living here, even if the amenities weren’t the best.

Sophie nodded and started chewing her lip again. I wanted to tell her to stop doing that. She was going to make it bleed.

I coughed and realized I should maybe be a good hostess or something.

“Do you, uh, want anything? Water?”

She shook her head and went back to folding laundry.

“Suit yourself,” I said as I poured myself a glass of filtered water from the pitcher in the fridge and then downed it, trying not to watch her too much.

She’d finished her folding and was fiddling with the corner of something.

“You can sit down, you know. My couch won’t bite.” Sophie jumped at the sound of my voice and her eyes flew to my face.

The afternoon sun streamed in through the windows and lit her up from behind, haloing her in light.

“I’m okay,” she said, picking at a hole in the hem of her shirt. She seemed to vibrate with energy even when she was standing still.

“Sophie. Sit down. I’m not going to yell at you.”

She raised one eyebrow, skeptical. That movement made me laugh.

“I know I shut the door in your face the last time. I…I guess I’m sorry about that.” I hopped up and sat on the kitchen counter, my back against the cabinets.

“You are sorry, or you guess you are?” she asked. There was the jut of that stubborn chin. She might be nervous, but there was a strong spine underneath.

“I mean, my methods probably weren’t the best, but I wanted to send a message. I should have just said no thank you. The door slamming was excessive.”

She crossed her arms and looked away from me and toward my bookshelf.

“I was trying to be nice,” she said in a quiet voice.

“I know. But I didn’t want it. I still don’t want it. It’s really fucking hard to look at you.” My voice cracked and I had to swallow past the knot of pain that had worked its way up my throat. Fuck. I couldn’t let her see me fall apart.

Her eyes went wide. “Oh. I didn’t think about that.”

I clenched my teeth together to stop a bunch of really terrible words from coming out of my mouth. It wasn’t Sophie’s fault that she looked like her sister. It wasn’t her fault that her sister was a lying, cheating piece of shit.

You couldn’t help who your family was, and I knew that better than anyone.

“I can go wait in the hallway.” She reached to pick up her laundry and I shook my head.

“You don’t have to. But I think I’m going to just stay in my bedroom until you leave. If that’s okay.” That was the best I could do. Staying in the living room and looking at each other was going to cause me to say things that weren’t kind or nice and I’d done enough of that already.

“Of course. That’s fine. Do whatever you need to do. Thank you for letting me hang out here. I appreciate it.”

Pushing myself off the counter, I kept as much space between us as I could.

“I’m not a total bitch,” I said before I opened my door and walked into my bedroom. She was silent as I shut the door between us and breathed a sigh of relief.

The next fifteen minutes passed by like hours. I did everything I could to ignore the fact that Sophie was on the other side of my bedroom door. Probably sitting on my couch. Definitely looking at my apartment and judging it. Not that I cared. It didn’t matter if she hated my decor or decided I was messy or had bad taste in furniture or books.

It didn’t fucking matter.

I’d forgotten to grab my laptop, and there was no way I could go out and get it now, so I did my best to just try and read, but I kept stopping and listening.

When a message notification went off in the other room and I heard her walking out the door, I exhaled and flopped onto my bed. I’d been alternating between sitting down and hovering by the door nearly the whole time.

I waited at least five minutes before venturing out, still tentative as if she was going to pop back up and try to scare me.

She didn’t, but her presence was still here in the air. A slightly sweet fruity fragrance like grapefruit mixed with soft florals. It was pleasant.

A little paranoid, I walked around to make sure she hadn’t messed with anything. Had to be sure.

After a quick check of my apartment, I assured myself that everything was where I’d left it and there was no evidence that Sophie had been here, other than the dissipating scent in the air.

Relief.

Now I could definitely go back to ignoring her.