Chapter Fourteen
Fourteen
She was finished designing the house.
That day had been inevitable from the beginning.
It was what they had been moving toward.
It was, in fact, the point. But still, now that the day had arrived, Levi found himself reluctant to let go.
He found himself trying to figure out ways he might convince her to stay.
And then he questioned why he wanted that.
The entire point of hiring her, building this house, had been to establish himself in a new life. To put himself on a new path. The point had not been to get attached to his little architect.
He was on the verge of getting everything he wanted. Everything he needed.
She should have nothing to do with that.
And yet, he found himself fantasizing about bringing her into his home. Laying her down on that custom bed he didn’t really want or need.
He hadn’t seen the designs yet. In fact, part of him wanted to delay because after he approved the designs, Jonathan Bear would begin work on the construction aspects of the job. Likely, any further communications on the design would be between her and Jonathan.
Levi should be grateful that once this ended, it would end cold like that. For her sake.
He wasn’t.
It was a Sunday afternoon, and he knew that meant she had dinner with her parents later.
But she hadn’t left yet. In fact, she was currently lying across the end of his bed, completely naked.
She was on her stomach, with her legs bent at the knees and crossed at the ankles, held up in the air, kicking back and forth.
Her hair had fallen in her face as she sketched earnestly, full lips pursed into a delicious O that made him think of how she’d wrapped them around his body only an hour or so earlier.
“Don’t you have to be at your parents’ place soon?” he asked.
She looked over at him, her expression enigmatic. “Yes.”
“But?” he pressed.
“I didn’t say ‘but.’”
“You didn’t have to,” he said, moving closer to the bed and bringing his hands down on her actual butt with a smack. “I heard it all the same.”
“Your concern is touching,” she said, shooting him the evil eye and rolling away from him. “It’s complicated.”
“I understand complicated family.” He just didn’t want to talk about complicated family. He wanted to get his hands all over her body again. But he could listen to her. For a few minutes.
“No,” she corrected. “You understand irredeemable, horrendous families. Mine is just complicated.”
“Are you going to skip this week?”
“Why do you care?”
It was a good question. Whether or not she went to her family’s weekly gathering was only his concern if it impacted his ability to make love with her.
Right. Because making love is what she’s been doing all day, every day at your house.
Not living together. Not playing at domesticity.
Going out and riding on the trails. Cooking dinner. Eating dinner. Going to sleep, waking up, showering.
Hell, they had ended up brushing their teeth together.
He could suddenly see why—per her earlier concern—men got weird about toothbrushes.
There was something intimate about a toothbrush.
There was also something about knowing her so intimately that made the sex better. Everything that made the sex unique to her made it better. Living with her, being near her, was foreplay.
He didn’t have to understand it to feel it.
Faith cleared her throat. “I told Poppy about us.”
He sat down on the edge of the bed. “Why?” He had never met Poppy, but he knew all about her. Knew that she had pretty recently become Faith’s sister-in-law. But he hadn’t gotten the impression they were friends in particular.
“It just kind of...came out.” She shrugged, her bare breasts rising and falling. For the moment, he was too distracted to think about what she was saying. “And I didn’t see the point in hiding it anymore.”
“I thought you really didn’t want your brothers to know.”
“I didn’t. But now...”
“You finished designing the house. We both know that.”
She ducked her head. “I haven’t shown it to you yet.”
“That doesn’t change the fact that you’re done. Does it?”
“I guess not. It’s not a coincidence that I went ahead and told her now. I needed to talk to her about some things.”
“Don’t you think that if it’s about—” he hesitated over saying the word us “—this, that you should have talked to me?”
“Yes, I do need to talk to you.” She folded her knees upward, pushing herself into a sitting position. “I just... I needed to get my head on straight.”
“And?”
“I failed. So, this is the thing.” She frowned, her eyebrows drawing tightly together. “I don’t want us to be over.”
Her words hit him with all the force of a blade slipping into his rib cage.
“Is that so?”
He didn’t want it to be over, either.
That was the thing. Not being over was what he had been pondering just a few moments ago. They didn’t have to be over yet.
He almost felt as if everything else was on pause. His revenge, his triumphant return back into Alicia’s circles. His determination to make sure that she went to prison by proving what she had done to him.
All of that ugliness could wait. It would have to. It was going to start once the house was finished. And until then...
What was the harm of staying with Faith?
Right. Her brothers know. Soon, her parents will know. And you really want all of that to come down on you?
That’s not simple. That’s not casual.
That’s complicated.
But still. The idea that he could have her, for a little while longer. That he could keep her, locked away with him...
It was intoxicating.
“You want more of this?” he asked, trailing his finger along her collarbone, down her rib cage, then skimming over her sensitized nipple.
“Yes,” she said, her voice a husky whisper. “But not just more of this. Levi, you have to know... You have to know.”
Her eyes shone with emotion, with conviction. His chest froze, his heart a block of ice. He couldn’t breathe around it.
“I have to know what, little girl?” he asked, locking his jaw tight.
“How much I love you.”
That wasn’t just a single knife blade. That was an outright attack. Stabbing straight through to his heart and leaving him to bleed.
“What?”
“I love you,” she said. She shook her head.
“I didn’t want it to be like this. I didn’t want to be a cliché.
I didn’t want to be who you were afraid I would be.
The virgin who fell for the first man she slept with.
But I realized something. I’m not a cliché.
I’m not a virgin who fell for the first man she slept with.
I’m a woman who waited until she found something powerful enough to act on.
Our connection came before sex. And I have to trust that.
I have to trust myself. Until now, everything I’ve done has been safe. ”
“You went away to boarding school. You have excelled in your profession before the age of thirty. How can you call any of that safe?”
She clasped her hands in front of her, picking at her fingernails.
“Because it made everyone happy. Not only that—for the most part, it made me happy. It was the path of least resistance. And it still is. I could walk away from you, and I could continue on with my plan. No love. No marriage. Until I’m thirty-five, maybe.
Until I’ve had more of a career than many people have in a lifetime.
Until I’ve done everything in the perfect order.
Until I’m a triumph to my brothers and an achievement to my parents.
It will make me feel proud, but it will never make me. ..feel. Not really.
“A career isn’t who you are. It can’t be. You know that. Everything you accomplished turned to dust because of what your ex did to you. She destroyed it, because those things are so easily destroyed. When everything burns there’s one thing that’s left, Levi. And that’s the love of other people.”
“You’re wrong about that,” he said, his chest tightening into a knot.
“There is something else that remains through the fire. That’s hatred.
Blinding, burning hatred, and I have enough of that for two men.
I have too much of it, Faith. Sometimes I think I might have been born with it.
And until I make that bitch pay for what she did to me, that’s how it’s going to be. ”
“I don’t understand what that has to do with anything.”
Of course she didn’t understand. Because she couldn’t fathom the kind of rage and darkness that lived inside him. She had never touched a fire that burned so hot. Had never been exposed to something so ugly.
Until now. Until him.
“Then choose something else,” she said. “Choose a different way.”
“I’ve never had a choice,” he said. “Ever. My fate was decided for me before I ever took a breath in this world.”
“I don’t believe that. If people can’t choose, what does that mean for me? Have I worked hard at any of this, or was it just handed to me? Did I ever have a choice?”
“That’s different.”
“Why?” she pressed. “Because it’s about you, so that means you can see it however you want? You can’t see how hypocritical that is?”
“Hypocrisy is the least of my concerns,” he said.
“What is your concern, then? Because it certainly isn’t me.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. I warned you. I told you what this could be and what it couldn’t be. You didn’t listen.”
“It wasn’t a matter of listening. I fell in love with you by being with you. Your beauty is in everything you do, Levi. The way you touch me. The way you look at me.”
“What’s love to you?” he asked. “Do you think it’s living here in this house with me? Do you think it’s the two of us making love and laughing, and not dealing with the real world at all?”
“Don’t,” she said, her voice small. “Don’t make it like that.”