by Maisey Yates
“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.”
He interrupted her, not letting her finish, ignoring the hurt on her face. “Let me tell you what love is to me. A continual slog of violence. Blind optimism that propels you down the aisle of a church and then into making vows to people who are never going to do right by you. And I don�
�t even mean just my wife. I mean me. You said it yourself. I was a bad husband.”
“Not on the same level as your father,” she argued. “Not like your wife was a bad wife.”
He shrugged. “What did she get from me? Nothing but my money, clearly. And what about in your family? They’re normal, and I think they might even be good people, and they still kind of mess you up.”
“I guess you’re right. Loving other people is never going to be simple, or easy. It’s not a constant parade of happiness. Love moves. It shifts. It changes. Sometimes you give more, and sometimes you take more. Sometimes love hurts. And there’s not a whole lot anyone can do about that. But it’s worth it. That’s what it comes down to for me. I know this might be a tough road, a hard one. But I also know that love is important. It matters.”
“Why?” he asked, the question torn from the depths of his soul.
He wanted to understand.
On some level, he was desperate to figure out why she thought he was worth all this. This risk—sitting before him, literally naked, confessing her feelings, tearing her chest open and showing those vulnerable parts of herself. He wanted to understand why he merited such a risk.
When no one else in his life had ever felt the same.
“All my life I’ve had my sketch pad between myself and the world,” she said. “And when it hasn’t been my sketchbook it’s been my accomplishments. What I’ve done for my family. I can hold out all these things and use them to justify my existence. But I don’t have to do that with you. I don’t think I really have to do it with my family, but it makes me feel safe. Makes me feel secure. I don’t have to share all that much of myself, or risk all that much of myself. I can stand on higher ground and be impressive, perfect even. It’s easy for people to be proud of me. The idea of doing something just for myself, the idea of doing something that might make someone judge me, or make someone reject me, is terrifying. When you live like I have, the great unknown is failure. You were never impressed with me. You wanted my architecture because it was a status symbol, and for no other reason.”
“That isn’t true. If I didn’t like what you designed, I would never have contacted you.”
“Still. It was different with you. At first, I thought it was because you were a stranger. I told myself being with you was like taking a class. Getting good at sex, I guess, with a qualified teacher. But it wasn’t that. Ever. It was just you. Real chemistry with no explanation for it.”
“Chemistry still isn’t love, Faith,” he said, his voice rough.
She ignored him. “I want to quit needing explanations about something magical happening. I wanted to be close to you without barriers. Without borders. No sketchbook, no accomplishments. You made me want something flawed and human inside myself that scared me before.”
“The idea of some flawed existence is only a fantasy for people who’ve had it easy.”
She frowned. “It’s not a fantasy. The idea that there is such a thing as perfect is the fantasy. Maybe it’s the fantasy you have. But there is no perfect. And I’ve been scared to admit that.”
Tucking her hair behind her ear, Faith moved to the edge of the bed and stood before continuing. “My life has been easy compared to yours. You made me realize how strong a person can be. I’ve never met someone like you. Someone who had to push through so much pain. You made yourself out of nothing. My family might come from humble beginnings, but it isn’t the same. We had each other. We had support. You didn’t have any of that.
“I don’t want you to walk alone anymore, Levi. I want to walk with you. From where I’m sitting right now, that’s the greatest accomplishment I could ever hope to have. To love and be loved by someone like you. To choose to walk our own path together.”
“My path is set,” he said, standing. “It has been set from the beginning.”
He looked down at her, at her luminous face. Her eyes, which were full of so much hope.
So much foolish hope.
She didn’t understand what she was begging him to do. He had thought of it earlier. That he could pull her inside and lock her in this cage with him.
And he might be content enough with that for a while, but eventually... Eventually she wouldn’t be.
Because this hatred, this rage that lived inside him, was a life sentence.
Something he had been born with. Something he feared he would never be able to escape.
And asking Faith to live with him, asking Faith to live with what he was—that would be letting her serve a life sentence with him. And if anyone on this earth was innocent, it was her.
Even so, it was tempting.
He could embrace the monster completely and hold this woman captive. This woman who had gripped him, body and soul, and stolen his sense of self-preservation, stolen his sense of just why vengeance was so important.
It was all he had. It consumed him. It drove him.
Justice was the only thing that had gotten him through five years in prison. At first, wanting justice for his wife, and then, wanting it for himself.
Somewhere, in all of that, wanting justice had twisted into wanting revenge, but in his case it amounted to more or less the same. And he would not bring Faith into that world.
She stood there, a beacon of all he could not have. And still he wanted her. With all of him. With his every breath.
But he knew he could not have her.
Knew that he couldn’t take what she would so freely give, because she had no idea what the repercussions would be.
He knew what it was to live in captivity.
And he would not wish the same on her.
He had to let her go.
“No,” he said. “I don’t love you.”
“You don’t love me?” The question was almost skeptical, and he certainly hadn’t cowed her.
He had to make her understand what he was.
“No.”
It was easy to say the word, because what was love? What did it mean? What did it mean beyond violence and betrayal, broken vows and everything else that had happened in his life? He had no evidence that love was real. That there was any value in it. And the closest he had ever come to believing was seeing Faith’s bright, hopeful eyes as she looked up at him.
And he knew he didn’t deserve that version of love.
No. If there was love, real love, and it was that pure, it didn’t belong with him.
Faith should give that love to someone who deserved it. A man who had earned the right to have those eyes look at him like he was a man who actually had the hope of becoming new, better.
Levi was not that man.
“I can’t love you. You or anyone.”
“That isn’t true. You have loved me for weeks now. In your every action, your every touch.”
“I haven’t.”
“Levi...” She pressed her hand to his chest and he wanted to hold it there. “You changed me. How can you look at me and say that what we have isn’t love?”
He moved her hand away. And took a step back.
“If there is love in this whole godforsaken world, little girl, it isn’t for me. You’ll go on and you’ll find a man who’s capable of it. Me? I’ve chosen vengeance. And maybe you’re right. Maybe there is another path I could walk on, but I’m not willing to do it.”
She stared at him, and suddenly, a deep understanding filled her brown eyes. He was the one who felt naked now, though he was dressed and she was not. He felt like she could see him, straight to his soul, maybe deeper, even, than he had ever looked inside himself.
It was terrifying to be known like that.
The knowledge in Faith’s eyes was deep and terrible. He wanted to turn away from it. Standing there, feeling like she was staring into the darkness in him, was a horror he had never experienced before.
“The bird is freedom. That’s what
it means,” she said suddenly, like the sun had just risen and she could see clearly for the first time. She turned away from him, grabbing her sketchbook off the bed and holding it up in front of his face. “Look at this,” she said. “I have the real plans on my computer, but look at these.”
He flipped through the journal, until he found exactly what she was talking about. And he knew. The moment he saw it. He didn’t need her to tell him.
It was a drawing of a house. An aerial view. And the way it was laid out it looked like folded wings. It wasn’t shaped like a bird, not in the literal sense, but he felt it. Exactly what she had intended him to feel.
“I knew it was important to you, but I didn’t know why. Freedom, Levi. You put it on your body, but you haven’t accepted it with your soul.”
“Faith...”
“You never left that prison,” she said softly.
“I did,” he said, his voice hard. “I left it and I’m standing right here.”
“No,” she responded. “You didn’t. You’re still in there.” She curled her fingers into fists, angry tears filling her eyes. “That bitch got you a life sentence, Levi. But it was a wrongful sentence. The judge released you, but you haven’t released yourself. You don’t deserve to be in prison forever because of her.”
“It’s not just her,” he said, his voice rough. “I imagined that if I changed my life, if I earned enough money, if I got married and got myself the right kind of house, that I would be free of the fate everyone in my life thought I was headed for. Don’t you think every teacher I ever had thought I was going to be like my father? Don’t you think every woman in Copper Ridge who agreed to go on a date with me was afraid I was secretly a wifebeater in training? They did. They all thought that’s how I would end up. The one way people could never have imagined I would end up was rich. I did it to defy them. To define my own fate, but it was impossible. I still ended up in prison, Faith. That was my fate, no matter what I did. Was it her? Or was it me?”
“It’s not you,” she said. “It isn’t.”
“I can’t say the same with such authority,” he said.
“You’re not a bad man,” she said, her voice trembling. “You aren’t. You’re the best man I’ve ever known. But you can tattoo symbols of freedom on your skin all you want, it won’t make a difference. Revenge is not going to set you free, Levi. Only hope can do that. Only love can do that. You have to let it. You have to let me.”
