Ryan (Mallick Brothers 2)

That being said, I almost never cooked. It seemed like a tedious, pointless endeavor to do for myself. Especially when Anita was happy to do it for me. So I almost always came home to a meal cooked and sitting in a warm oven. All except on Saturdays and Sundays when she was off.

I opened my oven and found a slab of steak, roasted potatoes, and an almost obnoxious pile of peas. Anita, being a mother of four grown sons, seemed to like to lump me in with the rest of them and insisted I needed to eat my greens. Something I did because my own mother raised me with the same idea.

I put the food on the counter and poured myself a scotch, sitting down at the island and eating, pretending I wasn't fucking listening for sounds across the hall like some goddamn creep.

But I was.

And my stomach didn't unclench until I heard the door open, casual, muffled voices, footsteps, and the click of the door and the slide of the locks to Dusty's apartment.

Then I maybe spent too much time wondering what the hell she had gotten herself into involving those guys. Being a shut-in didn't leave her much in the way of work unless she wrote, blogged, telemarketed, or was an artist or some shit like that. So chances were, her involvement with those guys was a source of income for her.

And, well, there weren't a whole hell of a lot of options for her to be doing.

Holding money.

Holding drugs.

Or whoring herself out.

Judging by the way that she stiffened when the Bry guy touched her, I doubted it was the latter.

Which only left the other two unsavory choices. Both of which came with a level of danger for a woman living alone with no goddamn security system or even a fucking guard dog to protect her. And if she didn't have a security system or guard dog, I doubted she had a gun.

Stupid risk.

But it wasn't my business, I reminded myself as I scraped the remainder of my plate into the garbage, put the dishes in the sink, and made my way toward my bedroom to change.

And I didn't (read: absolutely did) make sure I got home at the same exact time the following Thursday and the one after that and the one after that, to make sure that Bry and his counterpart didn't cause any trouble with my pretty little agoraphobic neighbor.

Two of those times, I caught them on the way in. The last time, I caught them on the way out, snatching a small glance at Dusty as she closed her door, noticing she seemed a lot less tense to see them go than she did to see them arrive.

I could feel her watching me as I moved to put my key in my lock and as I moved to step inside, the urge to turn back to her was almost overwhelming.

So I did.

"Hey," I said, head ducked to the side a little to find her still looking at me, her lower lip caught in her teeth for a second until she heard me.

Then she jumped back like she hadn't expected I was even capable of speech.

"Ah, hi," she said, sliding backward on her hardwood floor in her silly kitten-printed socks, and slamming the door.

Why that shit made me grin like a kid on Christmas morning, yeah, I was not analyzing that.

But it was exactly what happened.TWODustyI watched him.

Okay, that sounded really creepy.

I never watched him watched him.

Fine.

Sometimes I did.

I wasn't some kind of crazy stalker or anything like that. But when you lived in a cage, terrified of stepping outside of it, you tended to watch everyone else move around, living the life you wish you could live as well. It wasn't like he was the only person I watched.

I also watched the lady who lived two floors below. She was a pretty, young, single mom of a freckle-faced, redheaded daughter who was always beaming at her mom. My apartment window overlooked part of the parking lot out back and the small little common area the apartment building boasted that had two picnic tables that got painted on the third of April every single year, a swings set, and a small little play gym area.

So I would watch as the mom would climb out of her car, tired from a long shift somewhere that required her to wear lilac-purple scrubs and white non-slip shoes, her red hair falling out of its high, messy bun, looking as frazzled as frazzled could. But then she would get her daughter out of the backseat and she would jump up and down, looking like she was begging to go to the play area, and her mom would agree and she would dart off to play and the mom would follow, each minute she watched or chased around her little girl seeming to take hours of stress off her shoulders.