Page 7 of A Smile Full of Lies (Secrets of Stonewood #1)

Chapter

Six

ROS

I woke to the soft creak of a floorboard — too deliberate to be the house settling.

For a split second, I stayed still, eyes wide in the dark, listening.

Nothing. Just the quiet hum of the fridge and the faint whoosh of the ceiling fan in the hall.

My heart pounded hard enough to leave me shaking like a leaf in a hurricane. Had I imagined it?

Another sound snagged my attention, a muffled thud this time. My breath caught.

Someone was in my goddamn house.

I sat bolt upright, blankets tangled around my legs. The air felt colder than it should’ve. My pulse roared in my ears. I stared at the half-open bedroom door like it might start rattling on its own.

The glow from the hallway nightlight spilled a weak rectangle across the floor. I eased out of bed, every muscle screaming at me not to move. My bare feet touched the hardwood with a soft thump. I padded quietly toward the door, cursing the way my breath rasped too loud in my chest.

Another sound broke the silence, this one closer. The low scrape of a chair leg echoed from the kitchen. I didn’t grab a weapon, didn’t even think to. No, I just moved on pure instinct. Fear had hollowed me out too fast for strategy.

I froze in the hallway, heart in my throat. A light flickered on around the corner.

I wasn’t imagining it. Someone was definitely in my house.

Every step I took toward the kitchen felt like dragging myself through wet concrete. I sucked in a deep breath and held it, not breathing again until I reached the edge of the doorway, bracing myself.

And then I stepped into the kitchen, and screamed bloody murder.

There, standing by the counter, dressed in all black like a goddamn cat burglar from his t-shirt down to his combat boots, was Knox.

He was casual and calm, like it was a perfectly normal fucking time for him to be rifling through my key rack.

“Jesus fucking Christ, Knox!” My voice came out sharp, too loud, cutting through the quiet like shards of broken glass. “What the hell are you doing?”

Knox didn’t jump. He didn’t flinch. The man just turned his head slightly, that maddeningly calm look on his face, then offered me a sheepish smile.

“Sorry, Ros. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

My hands were shaking.

“It’s the middle of the night.”

“I know,” he said, like that somehow made it better.

He turned fully toward me then, holding a familiar keyring in his hand, the spare key to his truck, which he insisted on leaving over here just in case my beater car crapped out and I needed a ride in an emergency. “I locked my keys in the truck.”

“And that led to you breaking into my house?!”

His brows lifted.

“I didn’t break in, babe. I have a key, remember?”

“That’s not the point!” I snapped.

His mouth curved, not quite a smile, but the kind of expression that should’ve pissed me off a hell of a lot more than it did.

“There’s a work emergency. I need to drive to Mobile, and I didn’t want to wake you if I could help it. I figured I could just grab my spare key and go.”

“You figured wrong,” I snapped, one hand still pressed over my racing heart, as if that could calm me down. “You scared the living shit out of me.”

His expression sobered slightly.

“Yeah, my bad. That’s on me. I didn’t think you’d be up.”

I dragged a hand through my hair, exhaling hard… and then it hit me. I wasn’t wearing any pants.

Nope. I was standing here in front of my hot-as-fuck neighbor in just a t-shirt and panties. Nothing else. No bra. No shorts or sleep pants.

And now that the adrenaline was starting to cool, I could feel the night air on my thighs.

My eyes widened.

“Oh my god,” I breathed, looking down at myself, then back up at him.

Knox didn’t stare. He didn’t leer. But he definitely noticed. His gaze flicked downward — brief and sharp — then back to my face, like he hadn’t just catalogued everything about me in a single heartbeat.

Heat rushed to my face.

I suddenly wished the floor would open up and swallow me whole.

I crossed my arms, even though the fabric of my t-shirt tugged a little too tight across my chest when I did it. I didn’t care. It gave me something to do with my hands, besides fidget or cover myself like a flustered idiot.

Knox didn’t say a word. He just stood there — dressed vaguely like a sinfully tempting cat burglar in a black t-shirt that stretched tight across his muscles, black jeans, and black boots.

The only things he didn’t wear that might have completed the cat burglar look were a set of leather gloves and a balaclava.

But no… he was just leaning against my kitchen counter like this was a completely reasonable interaction for us to be having at three o’clock in the fucking morning .

“I could’ve called the cops,” I said, my voice still pitched too high. “Do you realize how close I came to grabbing the kitchen knife and going full Final Girl on your ass?”

His mouth twitched again. That same almost-smile that made something warm and dangerous curl low in my stomach.

“I would’ve deserved it.”

I scowled at him. “Don’t joke.”

“I’m not,” he said, quietly now. “You’re right to be freaked out. I should’ve left a note or something.”

“A note?” I snapped. “Knox, you let yourself into my house in the middle of the goddamn night! You don’t leave a note , you call and wake me up like a normal person.”

His gaze didn’t waver.

“You’ve barely slept since your gran’s funeral. I didn’t want to take that from you.”

That stopped me cold.

He said it so simply, like it was obvious.

Like it made perfect sense. And maybe it did…

in his mind. Because this was Knox. The same man who remembered my favorite sandwich from a single throwaway comment seven years ago.

Of course he noticed I hadn’t been sleeping.

Of course he’d try to protect the one night I finally managed it.

That damn calm, steady look in his eyes… it made it hard for me to stay mad at him.

My arms stayed crossed, though. Mostly so I didn’t do something stupid like lean against him, or let him get closer, or hell… grab him by the front of his shirt and haul him against me like some kind of sex-starved maniac.

“Next time,” I said through gritted teeth, “just fucking call or knock.”

Knox didn’t respond right away. He just looked at me, really looked at me, and I hated the way my body reacted.

I couldn’t stand the way I burned under his gaze, even though he wasn’t doing anything.

He wasn’t touching me, wasn’t smirking, wasn’t even leering.

He just stood there like he always did — calm, composed, too damn steady — and it wrecked me.

“You okay?” he asked softly.

My arms tightened across my chest.

“You scared me half to death, Knox. That’s not okay.”

“I know,” he said, voice low. “And I am sorry. I just… didn’t want to wake you unless I had to.”

I stared at him.

“That’s not your call to make.”

“I know that too.”

And the worst part? He actually sounded like he meant it. No excuses. No deflection. Just giving me that quiet, remorse-laced calm. Like he understood exactly how badly he’d messed up and wasn’t trying to justify it.

That was the most frustrating thing about Knox. He was never wrong enough to fully rage at. Worse than that, he was just earnest enough to keep me off-balance, to make me feel like the overreactive one, even when I wasn’t.

I shifted my weight and glanced toward the clock on the microwave. 3:12 a.m.

My stomach twisted.

“You really driving to Mobile this late?” I asked, suspicion still curling around the edges of my voice.

“Yeah,” he said, lifting the keyring slightly.

“There’s an emergency at the Knox Cybersecurity office.

I’ve got a crew on site, but the lead dev called in sick and we’re rolling out big updates this week.

They need someone on site who knows the system inside and out. Nobody knows it better than me.”

That tracked. I hated how much it tracked. I offered him a grudging nod.

He moved toward the door, his boots thudding heavy against the hardwood floor.

“I’ll text you when I get there.”

I blinked and cocked my head.

“Why?”

He paused, hand on the doorknob, and looked back at me.

“Because you look shaken, and I want you to know I made it okay, so you can go back to sleep rather than staying up and worrying about me crossing the bay at this hour.”

Damn it, that ruined me a little.

I stood there, stunned into silence as the door clicked shut behind him.

That was it?

Just… I’ll text you when I get there?

Like this was normal. Like this was something he did all the time — slide in, scare the shit out of me, make my heart race for more reasons than one, and then disappear like nothing had happened.

But it wasn’t nothing. We’ve watched movies together every Wednesday night since he moved in next door to me.

He knows I love horror movies, and I enjoy a good jump scare more than I probably should, but it hits different when the jump scare is your six-foot-four neighbor dressed in all black and pilfering through your kitchen in the middle of the witching hour.

My pulse was still too loud in my ears, my skin still too hot in all the wrong places.

I was keenly aware of every inch of exposed skin now — my thighs, my bare arms, the stretch of cotton riding too high on my hips.

It was like my body had only just now caught up to the fact that Knox had seen me like this.

Not dolled up. Not ready for company. Just raw, half-dressed, and vulnerable. And somehow… he didn’t take advantage of it.

He noticed. Of course he noticed. But he didn’t say anything cruel. Didn’t crack a joke. Didn’t let his gaze linger inappropriately. He just… registered it and respected it. Like my lack of pants wasn’t the most interesting thing about me right now.

My chest ached with the weight of that kindness.