Chapter Eight
Eight
One thought kept rolling through Faith’s mind as she sat at her desk and tried to attend to her work.
She wasn’t a virgin anymore.
She had lost her virginity. In a pickup truck.
Of all the unexpected turns of events that had occurred in her life, this was inarguably the most unexpected. She surely had not thought she would do that, ever.
Not the virginity thing. She had been rather sanguine about that. She had known sex would happen eventually, and there was no point in worrying about it.
But the pickup truck. She had really not seen herself as a do-it-in-a-pickup-truck kind of girl.
With a man like that.
If she actually sat and broke down her thoughts on what kind of man she had imagined she might be with, it wasn’t him. Not even a little bit. Not even at all.
She had imagined she would find a man quite a bit like herself. Someone who was young, maybe. And understood what it was like to be ambitious at an early age. Someone who could relate to her. Her particular struggles.
But then, she supposed, that was more relationship stuff. And sex didn’t require that two people be similar. Only that they ignited when they touched.
She certainly hadn’t imagined it would be an ex-convict accused of murder who would light her on fire.
Make her come.
Make her cry.
Then send her away.
It had been a strange twelve hours indeed.
“Faith?” She looked up and saw Isaiah standing in the doorway. “I need estimates from you.”
“Which estimates?” She blinked.
“The ones you haven’t sent me yet,” he said, being maddeningly opaque and a pain in the ass. He could just tell her.
She cleared her throat, tapping her fingers together. Hoping to buy herself some time. Or a clue. “Is there a particular set of estimates that you’re waiting on?”
“If you have any estimates put together that I don’t have, I would like them.”
She realized that she didn’t have any for him. And if she should...
That meant she had dropped the ball.
She never dropped the ball.
She had been working, full tilt, at this job for enough years now that she had anticipated the moment when she might drop the ball, but she hadn’t. And now she had taken on this extra project, this work her brothers didn’t know about, and she was messing up.
That isn’t why...
No, it wasn’t.
She was messing up because she felt consumed. Utterly and completely consumed by everything that was happening with Levi.
Levi Tucker was so much more than just an interesting architecture project.
It was the structure of the man himself that had her so invested. Not what she might build for him.
She wanted to see him again. Wanted to talk to him. Wanted to lie down in a bed with him, with the lights on so she could look at all his tattoos and trace the lines of them.
So she could know him.
Right. That makes sense. He’s nothing like you thought you wanted. Why are you fixating?
A good question.
She didn’t want him to be right. Right about virgins and how they fell in love as easy as some people stumbled while walking down the street.
“Faith?”
Isaiah looked concerned now.
“I’m fine,” she said.
“You don’t look fine.”
“I am.” She shifted, feeling a particular soreness between her legs and trying to hide the blush that bled into her cheeks. It was weird to be conscious of that while she was talking to her brother.
“Faith, no one has ever accused me of being particularly perceptive when it comes to people’s emotions. But I do know you. I know that you’re never late with project work. If all of this has become too much for you...”
“It isn’t,” she insisted. “I love what we do. I’m so proud of what we’ve built, Isaiah. I’m not ever going to do anything to compromise that. I think I might have overextended myself a little bit with...extra stuff.”
“What kind of extra stuff?”
“Just...community work.”
Getting screwed senseless for the first time in my life...
“You don’t need to do that. Joshua can handle all of that. It’s part of his job. You should filter it all through him. He’ll help you figure out what you should say yes to, what you can just send a signed letter to...”
“I know. I know you’ll both help me. But at some point... Isaiah, this is my life.” She took a breath. “We are partners. And I appreciate all that you do. If I had to calculate the finances like you, I would go insane. My brain would literally leak out of my ears.”
“It would not literally leak out of your ears.”
She squinted. “You don’t know that.”
“I’m pretty confident that I do.”
She shook her head. “Just don’t worry about me. You have a life now. A really good one. I’m so happy for you and Poppy. I’m so excited for your baby, and for...everything. You’ve spent too many years working like a crazy person.”
“Like a robot,” Isaiah said, lifting his brow. “At least, that’s what I’ve been told more than once.”
“You’re not a robot. You came here to check on me. That makes it obvious that you aren’t. But, you also can’t carry everything for me. Not anymore. It’s just not... I don’t need you to. It’s okay.”
“You know we worry. We worry because you’re right. If it weren’t for us...then you wouldn’t be in this position.”
She made a scoffing sound. “Thanks. But if it weren’t for me you wouldn’t be in this position, either.”
“I know,” he returned. “I mean, I would still be working in finance somewhere else. Joshua would be doing PR. And you would no doubt be working at a big firm somewhere. But it’s what we could do together that has brought our business to this level.
And I think Joshua and I worry sometimes that it happened really quickly for you and we enabled that.
So, we don’t want to leave it all resting on your shoulders now. ”
She swallowed hard. “I appreciate that. I do. But I can handle it.”
Isaiah nodded slowly and then turned and walked out of her office.
She could handle all of this.
Her job, which encouraged her to open up some files for her various projects and collect those estimates Isaiah was asking for, and this new turn of events with Levi.
She was determined to finish the project. The idea of leaving it undone didn’t work for her. Not at all. Even if he was being terrible.
And you think you can be in the same room with him and not feel like you’re dying?
She didn’t know. She had just lost her virginity twelve hours ago, and she had no idea what she was supposed to do next.
Sitting at her desk and basking in that achievement was about all she could do. It was lunchtime when she got into her car and began to drive.
She had spent the rest of the morning trying to catch up, and as soon as she got on the road her thoughts began to wander.
Back to what Levi had said to her last night.
All the various warnings he had given. About how rough he was.
How broken. And in truth, he had not been gentle.
But none of it had harmed her. It might have hurt her momentarily, but that pain wasn’t something she minded.
Maybe...
Maybe he had been right.
Maybe the whole thing was something she’d been ill-prepared for. Something she shouldn’t have pushed for. Because, while physically she had been completely all right with everything that had happened, emotionally she wasn’t okay with being pushed away.
And maybe that was the real caution in this story.
He had gone on and on about all that he believed she could handle and she had imagined he meant what she could handle from a sexual-sophistication standpoint. Moves and skills and the knowledge of how things went between men and women.
But that had been the easy part. Following his lead. Allowing his hands, his mouth, his... All of him, to take her on a journey.
But afterward...
She frowned, and it was only then that she realized which direction she was driving.
And she knew she had a choice.
She could keep on going, or she could turn back.
But even as she thought it, she knew the truth. It was too late.
She couldn’t go back.
She might have a better understanding of things after last night, and with everything she knew now, she might have made a different decision in that bar.
But she had to go forward.
With that in mind, she turned onto the winding road that led up to Levi’s house.
And she didn’t look back.
When Levi heard the knock on his door, he was less than amused.
He was not in the mood to be preached at, subjected to a sales pitch or offered Girl Scout cookies.
And he could legitimately think of no other reason why anyone would be knocking on his door.
So he pulled it open on a growl, and then froze.
“You’re not a Jehovah’s Witness.”
Faith cleared her throat. “Not last I checked.” She lifted a shoulder. “I’m Baptist, but—”
“That’s not really relevant.”
Her lips twitched. “Well... I guess not to this conversation, no.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I felt like I was owed a chance to have a conversation with you when I wasn’t naked and waiting to be returned to my car.”
When she put it like that... He felt like even more of a dick. He hadn’t thought that was possible.
“Go ahead,” he said, extending his hand out.
“Oh. I didn’t think... Maybe you should invite me in?”
“Should I?”
“It would be the polite thing to do.”
“Well, you’ll have to forgive me. In all the excitement of the last few years of my life, I’ve forgotten what the polite thing is.”
“Oh, that’s BS.” And she breezed past him and stamped into the house. “I understand that’s your excuse of choice when it comes to all of your behavior. But I don’t buy it.”
“My excuse?” he asked. “I’m glad to know you consider five years in prison to be an excuse.”
“I’m just saying that if you know you’re behaving badly you could probably behave less badly.”
He snorted. “You have a lot of unearned opinions.”
“Well, maybe help me earn some of them. Stop making pronouncements at me about how I don’t know what I’m doing and help me figure out what I’m doing. We had sex. We can’t change that. I don’t want to change it.”
“Faith...”