Need Me, Cowboy (Copper Ridge Book 2653) Page 15

  “Forgive me for not being overly concerned that you faking your death has left you without a lot of options.”

  “In fairness, I didn’t fake my death. I disappeared. That the police thought I was dead is hardly my fault.”

  “Alicia, are you honestly telling me you thought I would say I wanted you back?”

  “Why not? You want a redemption story, and getting back with me would benefit us both. I don’t think either of us were ever head over heels in love with each other. We both wanted things from the other. And you know it. Don’t go getting on your high horse now. We can come back. You don’t need to be vindictive,” she said.

  “I don’t need to be vindictive?” He shook his head. “This, from you?”

  She was standing in front of him, imploring him to rescue her. That was what she wanted. For him to reach down to lift her out of this hell of her own making.

  It was this exact moment when he knew he had her under his heel. He could take her in, make her think he was going along with her plan and maybe get some information about what exactly she had done that was illegal, and get the exact kind of revenge he wanted. Or, if not that, he could finish it now, devastate her.

  And then what?

  That question echoed inside him, hollow and miserable.

  Then what?

  What was on the other side of it? What was feeding all that anger, all that hatred?

  Where was the freedom? Where was the reward? Nothing but an empty house filled with reminders of Faith, but without the woman herself inside it.

  Somehow, he had a vision of himself standing by a jail cell holding a key. And he knew that whatever he decided to do next was the deciding factor. Did he unlock the door and walk out, or did he throw the keys so far away from himself he would never be able to reach them again?

  Faith was right.

  He had been given a life sentence, but he didn’t have to submit to it.

  Faith.

  He had been looking for satisfaction in this. Had been looking for satisfaction in revenge. In hatred.

  And maybe there was satisfaction there. Something twisted and dirty, the kind of satisfaction his father would have certainly enjoyed.

  But there was another choice. There was another path.

  It was hope.

  It was love.

  But a man couldn’t straddle two paths.

  He had to choose. He had to choose hope over darkness, love over hate.

  And right now, with dark satisfaction so close at hand, it was difficult. But on the other side...

  Faith could be on the other side.

  If he was strong enough to turn away from this now, Faith was on the other side.

  “Go away,” he said, his heart thundering heavily, adrenaline pulsing through his veins.

  “What?”

  “I don’t ever want to see you again. I’m going to write you a check. Not for a whole lot of money, but for some. Trade in your car, for God’s sake. Don’t be an idiot. I’m not giving you money for you, I’m doing it for me. To clear this. Let it go. Whatever you think I did to you... Whatever you really wanted to do to me... It doesn’t matter. Not anymore. We are done. And after you cash that check I want you to never even speak my name again. Do you understand me?”

  “I don’t want a check,” she said, taking a step forward, wrapping her hands around his shirt. “I want you.”

  He jerked her hands off him, his lip curling. “You don’t. You don’t want me. And I sure as hell don’t want you. But I’m also not going to let you suffer for the rest of your life. Do you know why not? Because everything in me, every natural thing in me, wants to. Wants to make you regret everything you’ve ever done, wants to make you regret you ever heard my name. But I won’t do it. I won’t let that part of myself win. Because I met a woman. And I love her. I love her, Alicia. You don’t even know about the kind of love I found with her. The kind of love she has for me. I don’t deserve it. Dammit, I have to try to be the kind of man that deserves it. So I want you to walk away from me. Because I’m choosing to let you go. I’m choosing to get on a different road.

  “Don’t you dare follow me.”

  “Levi...”

  “Leave now, and you get your money. But if you don’t...”

  She stared at him. For a long time. As if he might change his mind. As if she had some kind of power over him. She didn’t. Not over any part of him. Not his anger. Not his love. Not his future.

  It was over, all of it. Her hold on him. The hold his childhood had over him.

  Because love was stronger.

  Faith was stronger.

  “Okay,” she said, finally. “I’ll go.”

  “Good.”

  He watched her, unmoving, as she got back in her Mercedes and drove away. And as she did, he looked up into the sky and saw a bird flying overhead.

  Free.

  He was free.

  Whatever happened next, Faith had given him that freedom.

  But he wanted her to share it with him. More than his next breath, more than anything else.

  He’d lived a life marked by anger. A life marked by greed. He’d been saddled with the consequences of the poison that lived inside other people, and he’d taken that same poison and let it grow and fester inside him.

  But he was done with that now.

  He was through letting the darkness win.

  He was ready. He was finally ready to walk out of that cell and into freedom.

  With Faith.

  Seventeen

  It was Sunday again. It had a tendency to roll around with alarming regularity. Which was massively annoying for Faith because it was getting harder and harder to put on a brave face in front of her family.

  Although, how brave her face was—that was up for debate.

  Her brothers already knew exactly what had happened, and by extension so did their wives. And even though she hadn’t spoken to her parents about it at all, she suspected they knew. Well, her mother had picked up on her attachment to Levi right away, so why wouldn’t she have this figured out as well?

  Faith sighed heavily and looked down at her pot roast. She just wasn’t feeling up to it. You would think that after two weeks things would start to feel better. Instead, if anything, they were getting worse.

  How was that supposed to work? Shouldn’t time be healing?

  Instead she was reminded that she had a lot more time without him stretching in front of her. And she didn’t want that. No. She didn’t.

  She wished she could have him. She wished it more than anything.

  The problem was, Joshua was right. She was kind of secretly hoping things would work out. That he would come back to her.

  But he hadn’t.

  That was the problem, she supposed, about never having had a real heartbreak before.

  She hadn’t had all that hope knocked out of her yet.

  Well, maybe this would be the thing that did it.

  Not at all a cheering thought.

  There was a knock on the door, and her parents looked around the table, as if counting everybody in attendance. Everyone was there. From Devlin on down to baby Riley.

  “I wonder who that could be,” her mother said.

  “I’ll check,” said her father as he stood and walked out of the dining room, heading toward the entryway.

  For some reason, Faith kept watch after him. For some reason, she couldn’t look away, her entire body filled with tension.

  Because she knew. Part of her knew.

  When her father returned a moment later, Faith knew.

  Because there he was.

  Levi.

  Levi Tucker, large and hard and absurd, standing in the middle of her parents’ cozy dining room. It seemed...beyond belief. And yet, there he was.

  �
�This young man says he’s here to see you, Faith,” her father said.

  As if on cue, all three of her brothers stood, their heights matching Levi’s. And none of them looked very happy.

  “If he wants to see Faith, he might need to talk to us first,” Devlin said.

  Those rat bastards. She hadn’t told Devlin. That meant clearly they’d had some kind of older-brother summit and had come to an agreement on whether or not they would smash Levi’s face if he showed up. And obviously, they had decided that they would.

  “I can talk to him,” Faith said.

  Their father now looked completely concerned, like maybe he should be standing with his sons on this one.

  But her mother stood also, her tone soft but firm. “If Faith would like a chance to speak to this gentleman, then I expect we should allow it.”

  Her sons, large, burly alpha males themselves, did exactly as their mother asked.

  “I’ll just be a minute,” Faith said as she slipped around the table, worked her way behind all the chairs and met Levi in the doorway.

  “Hi,” she said.

  “Why don’t we go into the living room?” he asked.

  “Okay.”

  They walked out into the living room, where his presence was no less absurd. Where, in fact, he looked even more ridiculous standing on the hand-braided rug that her grandmother had made years ago, next to the threadbare sofa where she had grown up watching cartoons.

  She had known she wouldn’t be able to bring this man home with her.

  He had followed her home, anyway.

  “Is everything all right with the design?” she asked, crossing her arms to make a shield over her heart. As if she could ever hope to protect it from him.

  As if there were any unbroken pieces that remained.

  He tipped back his hat, his mouth set into a grim line. “If I needed to talk to you about your design work I would have come to the office.”

  “Well, you might have made less of a scene if you would have come to the office.”

  “I also would have had to wait. Until Monday. And I couldn’t wait.” He took off his hat and set it on the side table by the couch. And now she’d think of his hat there every time she looked at it.

  This was the real reason he should never have come to her parents’ house.

  She’d never be in it again without thinking of him, and how fair was that? She’d grown up in this house. And Levi had erased eighteen years of memories without him here in one fell swoop.

  He sighed heavily. “It took some time, but I got my thoughts sorted out. And I needed to see you right away.”

  “Yes?” She tightened her crossed arms and looked up at him. But this time she didn’t let herself get blinded by all that rugged beauty. This time she looked at him. Really looked.

  He looked...exhausted. His handsome face seemed to have deeper lines etched into the grooves by his mouth, by his eyes, and he looked like he hadn’t been sleeping.

  “Alicia came to see me,” he said.

  Her stomach hollowed out, sinking down to her toes. “What?”

  “Alicia. She came to see me. She wanted us to get back together.”

  Faith’s response was quick and unexpected. “How dare she? What was she thinking?” Even angry at him, that enraged her. The idea of that woman daring to show her face filled Faith with righteous fury. How dare Alicia speak to him with anything other than a humble apology as she walked across broken glass to get to him?

  And if there had been broken glass he would have mentioned it.

  “It was a perfect opportunity to find a way to make her pay for what she did to me, Faith. She handed herself to me. Told me her troubles. Told me she needed me to fix them. I wanted to destroy her, and she handed herself to me. Gave me all the tools to do that.”

  Ice seemed to fill her veins as he spoke those words. Those cold, terrifying words.

  What had he done? What would he do?

  “But you’re right,” he continued, his voice rough. “You were right all this time.”

  “About?” She pressed her hand to her chest, trying to calm her heart.

  “I do have a choice. I have a choice about what kind of man I want to be, and about whether or not I choose to live my life in prison. I have a choice about what path I want to walk. I was worried I was on the same road as my father. That his kind of end was inevitable for me, but it was only ever inevitable if I embraced the hatred inside myself instead of the love. You showed me that. You taught me that. You gave me...something I didn’t deserve, Faith. You believed in me when no one else did. When no one else ever had. You gave me a reason to believe I can have a different future. You gave me a reason to want a different future.”

  “I don’t know how,” she said. “I don’t know how I could—”

  “Sometimes looking at someone and seeing trust in their eyes changes everything. You looked at me and saw someone completely different than anyone else saw. I want to be that man. For you. The man you see. The man you care about. That you want.”

  “Levi, you are. You always were.”

  “No,” he said, the denial rough on his lips. “No, I wasn’t. Because I was too consumed with other things. You are right. To take hold of something as valuable as love there are other things that need to be set down. Because love is too precious to handle without care. It’s far too precious to carry in the same arms as hate, as anger. I couldn’t hate Alicia with the passion that I did and also give you the love you deserve. It would have been like locking you in a prison cell with me, and you don’t deserve that, Faith. You deserve so much more. You deserve everything.” He took a deep breath. “I love you. I gave Alicia money. And it took the past couple of days to get that squared away. But I also drafted some legal documents. And she is not going to ever approach us. She’s not speaking about me in the media. Nothing. If she does, she’s going to have to return what I gave her.”

  “Why?” Faith asked. “Why did you...give her money?”

  “To make sure she stayed out of our lives. I don’t ever want her touching you.”

  “You didn’t have to do that, Levi...”

  “I would do anything to protect you,” he said. “And I don’t trust her. I needed to at least hold some kind of card to keep her away from us. And I knew that if she was just out there, desperate and grasping, she could become a problem later.”

  “But to give money to a woman you hate...”

  He shook his head. “You know, suddenly it didn’t matter as much. Not when there is a woman I love. A woman I would die for. Laying all my anger down was a small thing when I realized I’d lay my life down for you just as easily.”

  “Levi...”

  “That feeling, this feeling,” he said, taking a step toward her and grabbing her hand, placing her palm flat on his chest. “It is so much bigger than hate. That’s what I want. I don’t want to be my father’s son. I don’t want to be my ex-wife’s victim. I want to be your husband.”

  “Yes,” Faith said, her heart soaring. Her arms went around his neck and she kissed him. Kissed him like she wasn’t in her parents’ living room. Like he wasn’t absurd, and they weren’t a ridiculous couple.

  She kissed him like he was everything.

  Because he was.

  “What about your plan? I didn’t think you were going to get married until you were at least thirty-five? And to be clear, Faith, I would wait for you. I would. I will. Whatever you need.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t want to wait. I don’t see why I can’t have all my dreams. I’m an overachiever, after all.”

  “Yes, you are.” He laughed and picked her up off the floor. “Yes, you are.”

  She heard a throat clear, and she turned, seeing her dad standing in the doorway. “I expected that the man who would ask my daughter to marry him would ask for my permission f
irst.”

  Levi squared his shoulders, moved forward and extended his hand. “I’m Levi Tucker,” he said. “I would like to marry your daughter. But, no disrespect, sir, she’s already said yes. And strictly speaking, hers is the answer I need.”

  Her father smiled slowly, and shook Levi’s hand. “That is correct. And I think...you just might be the one who can handle her.”

  “Handle me?” Faith said, “I’m not that hard to handle.”

  “Not hard to handle,” her dad said. “You are precious cargo. And I think he knows that.”

  “I do,” Levi said. “She’s the most important thing in my life.”

  “I’m not that important,” she said.

  “No, you only saved me. That’s all.”

  “That’s all,” Faith said, smiling up at him.

  “It’s good he proposed,” her father said. “Now I probably won’t have to stop my sons from killing you. Probably.”

  Her dad turned and walked back into the dining room, leaving Levi and Faith alone together.

  “How badly do I really have to worry about your brothers?”

  She waved a hand. “You’re probably fine.”

  “Probably?”

  “Probably,” she confirmed.

  She looked up into his eyes, and her heart felt like it took flight. Like a bird.

  Like freedom.

  And as he gathered her up in his arms, held her close, she knew that for them that was love.

  Redemption. Hope. Freedom.

  Always.

  Epilogue

  When the house was finished, he carried her over the threshold.

  “You’re only supposed to do that with your wife,” she pointed out.

  “You’re going to be my wife soon enough,” Levi said, leaning in and kissing her, emotion flooding his chest.

  “Just a couple of months now.”

  “It’s going to be different,” he said.

  “What is?”

  “Marriage. For me. When I got married the first time... It wasn’t that I didn’t care. I did. But I thought I could prove something with that marriage. She wasn’t the important thing—I was. No matter what I told myself, it was more about proving something to me than it was about being a good husband to her. And that isn’t what I want with you. I love you. I don’t want to prove anything. I just want to be with you. I just want to make you happy.”