And that was all a man like him could ever hope for.
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. “Noin 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.”
