All Chapters of My Old Crush, My Neighbor Nextdoor: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

Adam tucked his head deeper into his red hoodie, his hand curling around the hilt of the knife buried within the sweatshirt’s through and through pocket. It was easy to blend in the middle of the night, swirling from shadow to shadow, avoiding the anemic yellow street lights of the dark, dingy street, but that didn’t mean this was a safe neighborhood. Not by any means.This was the forgotten part of town. Every building had bars on the windows, the roads were pockmarked with potholes, which became oil-slicked pools each time it rained. The prevalence of gun stores, bail bondsmen, and lawyers sat in stark contrast to Adam’s neighborhood on the other side of the tracks. But he wasn’t trying to ‘slum it’ with the poor. These were Adam’s people. He’d spent the first six years of his life in a dilapidated trailer behind the mini-mart.Police cars prowled the streets, sometimes shining their flashlights out the window to harass a cluster of people until they dispersed. But they never notice

He stumbled to the shower, letting the molten water blast along his back and shoulders, thinking of big, brown eyes and freckles sprinkled over pale skin. He felt weirdly responsible for the boy. He didn’t know why he kept thinking of him as a boy. They couldn’t be more than six years apart, but Adam felt like he’d been born an old man—had lived a hundred lives in the twenty-seven years he’d been alive. Noah’s life had clearly not been easy, but there’d been a vulnerability, a quiet desperation that had tugged at something buried so deep down inside Adam. Something he didn’t know even existed inside him. His conscience.Would it bring Noah any comfort knowing he had, in fact, kept Adam up all night?He was watching him again. It was an almost nightly occurrence now. At first, Noah thought he was going crazy, imagining phantoms in the shadows. But no, it was him. Adam Mulvaney. The man who killed his father. His father…the child predator. Noah’s stomach lurched at the thought, the imag

Adam’s lip curled as he heaved the bloody corpse towards the drain in the middle of the floor. He’d thought he was in really good shape before he’d had to haul his brother’s latest victim—a six foot four, three hundred pound rapist—from said victim’s car to the center of the abandoned slaughterhouse. While Adam was fit, his brother…wasn’t.Atticus was tall and fair with a gym body and ginger hair. He looked like a Mormon and a tax attorney had a baby with shitty eyesight. Even now, while they were attempting to dispose of his brother’s fuckup, he was wearing a pair of seersucker pants and a white button down shirt, though both were covered in blood.“Seriously, dude? Wet work is not my thing. How could shit go this completely sideways? And what the fuck are you wearing?” Adam finally asked after they got the man where they wanted him.Atticus gave him a pissy look, using the back of his hand to push his glasses up his nose. “I had a work thing.”“A work thing?”“Yeah, you know work? T

NOAHNoah had almost made it to his trailer when a beer bottle crashed against its side inches from his head, beer and glass hitting his skin. Noah might have startled if not for Bailey’s little pink pills. It wasn’t the first time a bottle had been chucked at his head, wasn’t even the first time that month. People in cheap strip clubs often made poor decisions.“Hey, you little shit. Don’t you run from me.”Gary whirled him around and slammed him up against the trailer, his head thudding hard enough to make him see little cartoon stars. “Hey, Gary. What’s up?” Noah asked, a giggle falling from his lips.They must have looked comical to outside observers. Gary was a foot taller and a hundred pounds heavier, and his meaty hand around Noah’s throat might have been able to encircle his whole neck if he wasn’t pressed against the metal siding of his Airstream.Noah’s stomach soured at the stench of sweat and beer and bad breath coming from Gary, who was an inch from his face. “Did you tak

ADAMAdam woke with his arms around Noah, his body tucked snuggly against him. He was small compared to Adam’s six foot two, but he fit perfectly, allowing Adam to all but envelop him when they spooned. He liked the idea of people having to go through him to get to Noah. It was a foreign concept. He didn’t know how to describe it. From the moment he’d seen him standing there, holding that gun on him, Adam had just known he wasn’t going to let him go.Ever.He nuzzled his nose against Noah’s neck, inhaling deeply. Noah had said he smelled like sweat, which would have been fine with Adam, but it wasn’t true. Noah had his own peculiar scent, something that evoked a sense memory deep in Adam’s lizard brain. Something that made him think home.“Are you sniffing me?” Noah asked sleepily.Adam liked Noah’s voice, not too high, not too deep. Everything about Noah was just right. “Yes.”He felt Noah’s body shake with laughter. “You’re so weird.”Adam grinned, even though Noah couldn’t see it.