Page 6 of A Smile Full of Lies (Secrets of Stonewood #1)

Chapter

Five

KNOX

A hum of anticipation tingled from the top of my head to the tips of my toes as I slid the stack of mail aside and hit the spacebar on her laptop. The anonymous confession forum window was still up. Her cursor blinked steadily at the bottom of the screen.

I minimized it and pulled up her email client, my gaze dissecting the data laid out on her screen. Messy inbox. Unread notifications. Overdue statements. Junk.

And then I saw it: Exclusive Opportunity – Philip Knox.

My heart forgot how to beat. My mouth pressed into a hard, thin line as I clicked it open.

Hey, kid. Quit fucking around with freelance copy gigs and leverage your connection with your mysterious multimillionaire neighbor already.

My stomach churned, bile rising like acid in my throat as I kept reading. Nina’s predatory nature shone through every word like a neon sign.

People have been dying to get the exclusive inside story on his family’s murder ever since it happened four years ago…

I ground my teeth, fighting back the urge to vomit. Rage boiled through my bloodstream.

Of course Nina fucking Frost would try something like this. She’d been circling me for years, like a goddamn vulture. I’d seen her name pop up more than once, sniffing around me and my family’s murder, but this time, she tried using Ros to get to me.

My vision darkened at the edges and my pulse throbbed at my temples as I kept reading.

I have it on good authority that he has a key to your house, for fuck’s sake…

I smirked, savoring the dark thrill that shot through my bloodstream at those particular words.

She’s not wrong. I do have a key. And I’m sitting in my sweet girl’s house right now.

I leaned in, forcing myself to keep reading.

This story is a fucking goldmine, and it could make us both rich as fuck. Just talk to the guy. Get him to open up to you.

My jaw ticked. Nina was trying to make Ros sell me out and turn my grief into a fucking paycheck.

I clicked into the sent folder. My heart stuttered. A single reply to Nina’s email sat at the top of her sent emails. I opened it, dying to see whether Ros had been loyal, or if she’d agreed to sell me out.

Nina, I can see why you’d think this would be a good idea, but I’m really not comfortable using Knox like that.

My breath hitched. An electric hum sparked low in my chest.

He’s a friend, and I respect his privacy. If he wanted me to know about his family’s murder, he’d have discussed it with me already.

My heart swelled. Ros was protecting me.

I don’t want to profit off his trauma and tragedy. It wouldn’t be right, no matter how profitable you think it might be, and I’m not that kind of girl.

My chest burned with the weight of my pride in her.

She didn’t sell me out, even though it would have fixed everything for her: the funeral expenses, the overdue bills, the notices piling up on her table. All it would have taken was a single conversation. But she wouldn’t do it because she’s a good fucking girl… my good girl.

She’s in so deep she can’t fucking see daylight, and she still wouldn’t betray me. That made her surrender inevitable. Because now? She already belonged to me. She just didn’t know it yet.

I sat back on the couch, stretching my legs out beneath the coffee table, the soft blue glow from the screen flickering across my hands.

My cock twitched at the thought of her typing out that reply to Nina.

I imagined how her breath probably caught, her fingers faltering on the keys, every word a confession she didn’t know I’d read.

I closed the email. The soft sound of her snoring carried down the hall, steady and even.

She’d protected me, chosen me, even over her own survival. That meant something, whether she was ready to admit it yet or not. That kind of quiet devotion wouldn’t go unrewarded.

My mouth curled faintly. Soon, she and I were going to have a little chat about Nina Frost. But first, I needed to come up with a cover story or a plausible way that I could have discovered this information.

Ros couldn’t know I was in her house tonight. She couldn’t know I’d been in her inbox, her bills, her private shit she never meant for anyone to see. If she realized that… if she figured out how deep my habit of invading her life went, she’d go fucking ballistic.

I dragged my thumb across my lower lip, my head tipping back against the couch.

That was a problem for tomorrow’s Knox. I just had to come up with something that made sense.

Whatever I landed on, she’d believe me. Ros already trusted me.

That’s why I had a key to her house, why I could slip in and out of her home as I pleased, even while she slept, completely unaware that I was here, watching over her.

That trust was going to make it so easy for me to pull her under.

My gaze darkened as I minimized the email window and reset the screen to exactly how I’d found it.

Seven years. That’s how long I’ve waited to make her mine.

I watched her walk into Thayer’s arms at eighteen and did nothing because if I’d torn them apart the way I wanted to, I’d have proven him right.

It would have proved every fucked-up, paranoid thing he ever said about me.

That I was dangerous. That I was obsessed.

That I wanted to steal her out from under him.

So I didn’t do it. I let her go.

I bought the house next door to hers and stayed close. Close enough to watch her smile on her porch swing. Close enough to hear her cry behind her bedroom wall when he started pulling away.

I stayed even after my family was murdered. She kept me alive. That weekend? The one that saved my life? The reason I wasn’t home when they were killed?

I was in Gulf Shores, spying on a girl I thought Thayer was cheating on Ros with. Because I knew he was hurting Ros, and I needed to prove it.

I wasn’t there for my family because I was following my obsession. And the sickest fucking part is, I can’t bring myself to regret it.

Because if I hadn’t been there… if I hadn’t been out chasing proof for her, I’d be dead. Just like them.

I buried my parents and my sister, and I still couldn’t bring myself to walk away. I stood at their graves and thought long and hard about joining them. The only reason I didn’t blow my own fucking brains out was Ros.

Her laughter through my walls. Her light at three a.m., when she couldn’t sleep. Her dumb little chicken pajamas and worn-out porch chair.

She was my anchor in the storm.

I inherited a company I had no idea how to run at twenty-one, along with fifteen million dollars, a pile of lawsuits and estate lawyers and press releases. Every single time I thought I couldn’t fucking breathe, I’d look out my window and see her.

Then Thayer broke her. Humiliated her.

And then… that same night, she was roofied at the party where he dumped her.

I found her and carried her out. I let Alyssa Allen take her to the ER while I went and picked her Gran up.

I gave her Gran a ride to the ER because Mrs. Cooper couldn’t see to drive after dark.

I stayed with Ros all night until she was discharged the next morning.

I should’ve killed the guy who did it. I almost gave in to the temptation, but Alyssa and her partner would have figured out it was me who ended him after the conversation we had when I hauled her out of that goddamn party.

After all that, I still fucking waited.

I gave her time. I gave her space. I kept our Wednesday movie nights like clockwork, sat beside her on that sagging couch for almost four years and tried so fucking hard to be normal. Tried not to let her see me unraveling while I waited for her to heal from the heartbreak Thayer put her through.

But this? This changes everything.

She didn’t sell me out. She chose me. Over money. Over safety. Over everything.

That email was a test she didn’t know she was taking, and she passed with flying colors.

Her filthy little confession to the forum was the match. This? This was the fuse.

Seven years I’ve waited. But I’m not waiting anymore. It’s time.

Her whole life is imploding, and she still protected me. That’s not just loyalty. That’s devotion. That’s admitting without words that she’s mine.

My hand curled into a fist. My cock ached behind my zipper, hard and full and fucking feral for her.

Leave it to Rosalind fucking Cooper to be the only thing in this world that can make me eat my fucking words.

Stonewood Manor wasn’t an option. Not for tourists, not for thrill seekers, not for anybody who wanted to pay for a night of pretend fear. I’d made that clear to Josh Walker the day he called me.

But this wasn’t pretend, and it wasn’t for just anybody.

Ros wanted to be chased. She wanted the real edge, the pulse-pounding truth of knowing she was being hunted.

I could give her the feeling without ever putting her in real danger, but only if I could control the game…

every fucking inch of it. And there was only one place I knew like the back of my hand.

I’d grown up in Stonewood Manor. I knew which boards creaked before you stepped on them, which stairwell echoed the loudest, which hallways bent the light just right to hide a shadow until it was too late.

I knew where I could corner her, how I could steer her.

The whole house was muscle memory, still burned into me no matter how much I hated it.

And Josh… Josh had offered me full creative control.

He didn’t know what that really meant, not for me.

It meant I could design the entire layout, choose the lighting, dictate who went where and when.

It meant I could isolate her from the crowd entirely, send her into a wing no one else would see.

It meant I could decide exactly when the hunt began and exactly how it ended.

Anywhere else would have too many variables, too many exits, and too much I couldn’t account for. But Stonewood Manor? There, I could build the perfect trap and know she’d never slip through it.

If I wanted to make her fantasy real — if I wanted to see what she’d do when it was just her instincts and mine — this was the only way.

The only place.

The only hunt worth willingly walking back into the house where my trauma lived and breathed. I sucked in a deep breath and let the full weight of the decision settle in my bones.

I’ll call the event coordinator back in the morning. I’ll tell the Southern Scare Collective I changed my mind. They can host the Halloween haunted house at Stonewood Manor, after all.

I’ve got a mask. I’ve got a plan. And I’ve got a girl who wants to be hunted.

I stepped toward the hall, intent on leaving through the back door just so I could look in on her once more on my way out.

But then I heard it: soft movement and the shuffle of blankets. Next came a low sound, half-asleep and confused.

My breath sharpened. I turned toward the hall and heard light footsteps followed by the quiet creak of her bedroom door.

Shit.

My chest tightened as Ros’s shadow stretched across the dark hallway.

She was awake, and I was still in her fucking house.