Chapter Fifteen
Fifteen
Faith had no idea how she managed to walk into her parents’ house. Had no idea how she managed to sit and eat dinner and look like a normal person. Force a smile. Carry on a conversation.
She had no idea how she managed to do any of it, and yet, she did.
She felt broken. Splintered and shattered inside, and like she might get cut on her own damaged pieces.
But somehow, she had managed to sit there and smile and nod at appropriate times.
Somehow, she had managed not to pick up her dinner plate and smash it on the table, to make it as broken as the rest of her.
She had managed not to yell at Joshua and Danielle, Poppy and Isaiah, Devlin and Mia, and even her own parents for being happy, functional couples.
She felt she deserved a medal for all those things, and yet she knew one wasn’t coming.
When the meal was finished, her mother and Danielle and Poppy stayed in the kitchen, working on a cake recipe Danielle had been interested in learning how to bake for Joshua’s birthday, while Devlin and her father went out to the garage so that Devlin could take a look under the hood of their father’s truck.
And that left Faith corralled in the living room with Joshua and Isaiah.
“Poppy told me,” Isaiah said, his voice firm and hard.
“She’s a turncoat,” Faith said, shaking her head. Of course, she had known her sister-in-law would tell. Faith had never expected confidentiality there, and she would never have asked for it. “Well, there’s nothing to tell. Not anymore.”
“What does that mean?” Joshua asked.
“Just what it sounds like. My personal relationship with Mr. Tucker is no more, the design phase has moved on to construction and he is now Jonathan Bear’s problem, not mine. It’s not a big deal.” She waved a hand. “So now your optics should be a little clearer.”
“I don’t care about my optics, Faith,” Joshua said, his expression contorted with anger. “I care about you. I care about you getting hurt.”
“Well,” she said, “I’m hurt. Oh, well. Everybody goes through it, I guess.”
“That bastard,” Joshua said. “He took advantage of you.”
“Why do you think he took advantage of me? Because I’m young?
” She stared at her brother, her expression pointed.
“Because I was a virgin?” She glared at them both a little bit harder, and watched as their faces paled slightly and they exchanged glances.
“People who live in glass towers cannot be throwing stones. And I think the two of you did a pretty phenomenal job of breaking your wives’ hearts before things all worked out. ”
“That was different,” Isaiah said.
“Oh, really?”
“Yes,” Joshua said. “Different.”
“Why?”
“Because,” Joshua said simply, “we ended up with them.”
“But they didn’t know that you would end up together. Not when you broke things off with them.”
“Do you think you’re going to end up with him?” Isaiah asked.
“No,” she said, feeling deflated as the words left her lips. “I don’t. But you can’t go posturing about me not knowing what I want, not knowing what I’m doing, when you both married women closer to my age than yours.”
“Poppy is kind of in the middle,” Isaiah said. “In fairness.”
“No,” Faith said, pointing a finger at him. “No in fairness. She was in love with you for a decade and you ignored her, and then you proposed a convenient marriage to her with absolutely no emotion involved at all. You don’t get any kind of exception here.”
He shrugged. “It was worth a shot.”
“I don’t need a lecture,” she said softly. “And I don’t need you to go beat him up.”
“Are you still going ahead with the project?” Joshua asked. “Because you know, you don’t have to do that.”
“I do,” she said. “I want to. I want to give him the house. I mean, for money, but I want him to have it.”
“Well, he’s the asshole who has to live in the house designed by his ex, I guess,” Joshua said.
She sighed heavily. “I know what you’re thinking—you’re thinking that you were right, and you warned me. But you weren’t right. Whatever you think happened between Levi and I, you’re wrong.”
“So he didn’t defile you?” Joshua asked.
“No,” Faith said, not backing down from the challenge in her brother’s eyes. “He definitely did. But I love him. And I don’t regret what happened. I can’t. It was a mistake. But it was my mistake. And I needed to make it.”
“Faith,” Joshua said, “I know it seems like it sometimes, but I promise, you don’t have to justify yourself to me. Tell us. I know what I said about optics, but that was before I realized... Hell,” he said, “it was before I realized what was going on. I’m sorry that you got hurt.”
“I’ll survive,” she said, feeling sadly like she might not.
“Faith,” Isaiah said, her older brother looking uncharacteristically sympathetic.
“Whatever happens,” he said, “sometimes a person is too foolish to see what’s right in front of them.
Sometimes a man needs to be left on his own to fully understand what it was he had.
Sometimes men who don’t deserve love need it the most.”
“Do you mean you?” she asked.
He looked at her, his eyes clear and focused.
And full of more emotion than she was used to seeing on him.
“Yes. And it would be hypocritical of me to accept the love I get from Poppy and think Levi doesn’t deserve the chance to have it with you.
Or maybe deserve is the wrong word. It’s not about deserving.
I don’t deserve what I have. But I love her.
With everything. And it took me a while to sort through that. The past gets in the way.”
“That’s our problem,” she said. “There’s just too much of the past.”
“There’s nothing you can do about that,” Isaiah said. “The choice is his. The only question is...are you going to wait for him to figure it out?”
“I vote you don’t,” Joshua said. “Because you’re too good for him.”
“I vote you decide,” Isaiah added, shooting a pointed look at Joshua.
“Because you probably are too good for him. But sometimes when a woman is too good for a man, that means he’ll love her a hell of a lot more than anyone else will.
” He cleared his throat. “From experience, I can tell you that if you’re hard to love, when someone finally does love you, it’s worth everything. Absolutely everything.”
“You’re not hard to love,” she said.
“That’s awfully nice of you to say, but I definitely have my moments. I bet he does, too. And when he realizes what it is you’re giving him? He’ll know what a damn fool he was to have thrown it away.”
“I still disagree,” Joshua said.
“And who are you going to listen to about interpersonal relationships? Him or me?”
Faith looked over at Isaiah, her serious brother, her brother who had difficulty understanding people, connecting with people, but no difficulty at all loving his wife.
She smiled, but didn’t say anything. She felt broken.
But Isaiah had given her hope. And she would hold on to that with everything she had.
Because without it... All that stretched before her was a future without Levi. And that made all her previous perfection seem like nothing much at all.