50. BLAKE #2
Not just capable. The moment I’d learned about Eric Voss, my mind had gone to dark places with vivid, detailed fantasies of finding that piece of garbage and making him suffer. My medical oath meant nothing when I thought about what he’d done to her.
“Faith survived because of you,” she said. “You were just a kid, Blake. A kid protecting his baby sister the only way he could.”
I buried my face in her neck, breathing in her familiar scent.
“Faith survived,” I murmured against her skin.
“But then they separated us, pending the investigation. For months, I didn’t know if she was safe or if I’d ever see her again.
When I was finally cleared …” I tightened my hold on Tessa.
“It felt like something changed between us. There was this … distance that wasn’t there before. ”
“Have you ever talked about it?”
I shook my head. “By the time we were allowed to resume talking, it was mostly surface-level stuff. I was too afraid to rock the boat, and after a while, that just became our norm. Still is.”
“So, you still talk to her?”
“Not as often as I’d like.”
“Maybe you should try to talk to her about it now?” Tess suggested.
I considered this. “Yeah … I guess if I learned anything from you coding in my ER, it’s to assume tomorrow is no guarantee.”
Tessa allowed a few seconds to pass before continuing our previous conversation.
“So, is Faith the reason you kept pushing love away?”
I took a sip of wine. “When the foster system separated us, the process of getting her back was taking forever. I was starting to lose hope when Sarah took me in.”
My voice softened involuntarily at the name, some of the tension easing from my shoulders.
“By then, I’d built walls so high that I couldn’t see over them anymore. Life had become a series of waiting for the other shoe to drop. But my foster mom, Sarah …” I shook my head, turning slightly toward Tessa. “She was different.”
I felt warmth creep into my voice, despite everything that happened later.
“She didn’t just house me; she noticed me.
She’d catch me searching the web for footballs, and I’d find the exact one in my bedroom a few days later.
When I dozed off studying on the couch, I’d wake up with a blanket tucked around me and a glass of water on the coffee table.
Little things that made me feel …” I cleared my throat. “Seen, I guess.”
It was the small things, I’d discovered, that made you feel the most loved.
Tessa reached out, her fingers ghosting over my clenched hand. After a moment, I relaxed my grip enough to let her fingers intertwine with mine again.
“We’d spend hours out in her garden,” I continued, my thumb stroking Tessa’s skin.
“Just talking while we worked. She never pushed, never demanded answers, but somehow, I found myself telling her things. About Mom’s chocolate chip cookies.
About Dad teaching me to throw a baseball.
About wanting to help people the way the ER doctors had tried to help my parents.
And the way I used to care for Faith’s wounds after our foster dad …
” I trailed off, the pain choking the rest of that sentence.
Tessa tried to hide it, but I heard her sniffle.
“One evening, I told her I wanted to be a doctor. Instead of dismissing it as impractical for a foster kid with no financial means, she immediately started researching premed programs and scholarships.”
Tessa trailed a finger along my leg, patiently waiting for me to continue.
“She was also the first person I told about our previous foster father.” I cleared my throat. “She tried to hide it, but I saw her shoulders shake, saw the redness around her eyes. She promised I’d never experience anything like that again. Said she …” I swallowed hard. “She loved me.”
Loved. What a powerful word, capable of bringing people together. Or starting wars.
“Besides Faith, I’d forgotten what love felt like.
Having someone genuinely invested in my well-being, my future …
” My damn throat tried to clench again. “For the first time since that accident, I started to believe that everything was going to be okay. Sarah was actively working the foster process to get Faith into our home so we could be together again. I joined a baseball team where I met Ryker, and I started to hang out with him. A lot. Like any ordinary teenage boy and his best friend.” My breath hitched.
“But then one day, I came home from school …” Tessa pressed closer, her body a gentle warmth against my side as my voice grew distant.
“There was a stranger at our kitchen table with Sarah. A new foster system administrator.”
The memory of what happened with Sarah brought me back to that pivotal day.
I walked into the kitchen, and my entire world stuttered to a stop.
The air still smelled like the chocolate chip cookies Sarah had made yesterday.
Cookies she’d promised we’d make together every Sunday once Faith came home.
But instead of warmth, I found a stranger sitting at our kitchen table with a manila folder.
My gaze darted from that folder to Sarah, who sat opposite the woman, red-eyed and already crying at the sight of me. My stomach caved in on itself.
“What’s going on?” I stepped forward, my pulse spiking. “Did something happen to Faith?”
“Sit down, Blake,” the stranger said.
“Is she okay?”
“Faith’s fine.”
“Then what’s this about?” I questioned Sarah.
I didn’t like the tragic look on her face. Didn’t like the apologetic, pleading stare she was giving me. Didn’t like how the room felt like a funeral waiting to happen.
“Faith has to live with me,” I said, my voice cracking. “She’s the only family I have left, and we need each other.” My chest constricted like it was caught in a trap. “Please. Whatever must’ve happened with the paperwork, please fix it. Please get Faith here.”
The lady folded her hands. “I’m afraid that won’t be possible now, Blake.”
My heart crashed to my feet. Faith had to live with me.
What if she was with another abuser? What if she was scared or hurt?
She didn’t even go to the same school as me, so I’d have no idea it was happening.
I had to be able to protect her, and she needed me as much as I needed her.
Being separated from her was absolute torture, like my soul was split in half, and the only way I got through this was knowing that we’d been getting closer to having her come live with us.
For good. But suddenly, that was coming to a halt?
“Why?” I slammed my fist on the table, the impact sending tremors up my arm.
“Blake, sit down,” Sarah pleaded.
But she no longer resembled the mom I’d come to know. Something was different about her. Just last month, she’d helped me paint Faith’s room pink, her favorite color.
“Your sister will be home soon,” she’d promised, squeezing my shoulder with paint-stained fingers.
Now those same hands trembled in her lap.
“Just tell me. Don’t sugarcoat it, just spit it out.”
“Blake, this isn’t something to just blurt out,” Sarah reasoned.
I looked between them, and somehow, I just … knew. Maybe it was the pity in their eyes or the way Sarah looked so damn guilty. The truth hit me like a blood-soaked bomb.
“You’re not adopting us,” I deduced.
Her lip quivered.
“You’re sending me back.”
Sarah sniffled. Gone was the woman who’d wrapped her arms around me and given me a safe haven, a promise that life would be better. That she loved me, that she’d fight for me and Faith and give us a home forever. In her place was … whoever the hell this traitor was.
“You’re sending me back,” I repeated, pathetically hoping she’d tell me I was wrong. My voice came out small, like the kid I’d been when I first entered the system.
“I’m sorry.”
I huffed an angry laugh, and, goddammit, my eyes welled with tears, my throat betraying me by starting to close. The familiar sting of rejection burned through my chest, but this time, it went deeper, carved out places I didn’t even know could hurt.
“Why?”
“Blake, let’s talk about ? —”
“Why?” I slammed my fist on the table again, harder this time, welcoming the pain.
Sarah swallowed. “I’m sick.”
“Sick,” I repeated.
She didn’t look sick. Not in the least.
“Doctors think I have a degenerative illness, Blake.”
“And that disqualifies her from fostering us?” I snapped at the lady, tasting copper as I bit the inside of my cheek. It was selfish to ask about me first rather than Sarah, but this wasn’t about me. It was about saving Faith.
“It doesn’t, but—” Sarah started, but I cut her off.
“It doesn’t. So, you could keep fostering me. Us. You’re just choosing not to.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“I’m sure it’s not.”
“Blake.”
“I get it. Your ‘illness,’” I snarled, using air quotes around illness , “is enough on your plate. I’ll go pack my bag.”
“Blake, don’t …”
But I was already gone. Down the hall. Grabbing my backpack and shoving the little I had in this world into the duffel bag in my closet. The whole time, Sarah was trying to talk to me.
“I don’t want you to watch what’s about to happen to me,” she said.
“Got it. Thanks.”
“Blake, I’m doing this to protect you.”
“Protect me?” I got nose to nose with her now, close enough to see the tears clinging to her lashes. “By throwing me out? By taking away the best and probably only chance I have at getting my sister back? You’re doing that to protect me?”
“Blake, I’m sick.”
“So you say.”
“You don’t believe me?”
“At least the other foster parents were honest about why they rejected me.”
“I’m not rejecting you!”
“Move.”
“Blake!”
I moved around her, taking the extra second to grab the picture frame—the one where Sarah had written Family Forever across the bottom in her loopy handwriting, the one that had me and her at the beach, smiling, thinking I’d found my happily ever after—and threw it across the room.
The shattered glass rained down onto the carpet.
God, I was so fucking angry. How dare she do this to me? How dare she lead me on and promise me, repeatedly, that she would never turn her back on me? That she’d get me my sister back? How dare she pretend to care about the hell I’d gone through, only to do worse to me than anyone else had?
The pain was unbearable. The betrayal.
But beneath my anger at Sarah and the hurt, I was angry at myself. I should have known better. I let her in. I let her get my hopes up. I let myself smile again. And then I gave her the knife to cut my happily ever after to shreds.
Part of me wanted to turn around, to let her explain, to believe one more time. But I’d learned my lesson. Hope was just another word for poison.
“Blake!” Sarah cried.
I slammed the door behind me, leaving behind the scent of chocolate chip cookies and broken promises.
“Did you ever hear from her again?” Tessa’s question yanked me back to the present.
I’d gotten so lost in telling her about Sarah that the memory had felt real all over again.
The clinical tone returned to my voice. “She tried to reach out. But I refused to talk to her.”
I swirled my wineglass, watching the rim of red as it carried out its predictable pattern.
“I replayed every interaction, searching for the real reason she gave up on us. Was I too expensive to feed? Did I forget some crucial chore?”
Tessa reached up, her palm warm against my cheek. Her eyes were glassy, the tip of her nose slightly red.
“And now,” Tess whispered, “do you believe she was sick?”
I considered this. “That day I slammed the door, I never looked back. Couldn’t bear to.
But thinking about it now, in hindsight …
what if I’d been wrong? What if she really had been sick?
” The thought slammed into my ribs. “What if I didn’t believe her, just like all those doctors who’d dismissed you? ”
“Maybe you should reach out to her.”
“Maybe I should.”
Maybe it was time. Assuming she was still alive, that was. Fuck, what if I was too late?
“And Faith? Did you and she ever get fostered together again?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“So, that’s why I never met her?”
“Faith’s home was in a different school district.
And while I worked to save money to fight for her when I turned eighteen, Ryker’s family, your family, became my only taste of normalcy.
Playing video games, shooting hoops, having dinner conversations that didn’t revolve around foster-care hell. They never pried, and I was grateful.”
My voice softened. “To be honest though, I started to feel envious. Bitter even, at how unfair it was that Ryker had this awesome family, stability, and love when I didn’t.
I started pushing him away, isolating myself.
But by that point, Ryker knew me too well.
” A ghost of a smile crossed my face. “I can still picture Ryker’s face when he snapped and said, ‘It’s not fair, what’s happening to you, but you’re my best friend, and I need you.
So, don’t you dare push me away because of what those bottom-feeding trash pandas have done.
I’m like a stubborn piece of gum stuck to your shoe.
You’re not getting rid of me that easily. ’”
I finally met Tessa’s gaze fully, my voice quiet but firm. “So, I didn’t push him away. But watching him navigate relationships in college, I remember thinking how grateful I was to never have that kind of vulnerability again. Why would anyone willingly give someone else the power to break them?”
The city lights sparkled, endless and indifferent, as Tessa’s thumb brushed away a tear on her cheek.
“Why didn’t you get Faith when you turned eighteen?”
My gut coiled at the memory. “It turned out the foster system was harder to crack than I thought. But once she was eighteen, we’ve stayed in touch.”
Unfortunately, as I’d said, it was surface-level only. Maybe Tessa was right; maybe it was time Faith and I had that long-overdue talk about the night I’d killed my foster dad.
“Thank you for telling me,” she murmured.
“I feel like you’re the only one who’ll ever understand me fully,” I admitted. After a few seconds, I added, “Now, your turn.”