Chapter 15
FAITH
I emerged from Ryker’s sleek BMW and smiled at the little blue house on the corner of Maple and Chestnut.
God, I remembered when I first bought this place. All those double shifts, years of scraping together every penny for the down payment.
Pride. That’s what I’d felt when I finally accomplished this dream. Now? Terror that I’d lose it all before these kids had anywhere else to go.
“What is this place?” Ryker shut his door with a solid thunk and surveyed the neighborhood like he was calculating property values. Or escape routes. The chipped paint and sagging front porch railing probably weren’t helping his assessment.
“It’s a …” I tilted my head, searching for the right words.
“A group home of sorts.” Translation: the place where broken kids who had nowhere else to go came to heal.
I seriously needed to work on branding. But the thought of doing that made my heart hurt because, now, I might not be around to name it properly.
“A group home?” Ryker’s lawyer brain was clearly spinning, trying to categorize what he was seeing. “What kind of group home?”
“My group home.” I locked eyes with him, my voice dropping to deadly serious. “Do me a favor and don’t breathe a word about what’s happening. Not to them.”
His expression softened in a way that knocked the air from my lungs. “Breathe a word to who?”
The front door burst open, and a tangle of red hair came flying down the steps.
“Faith!” Brooklyn crashed into me with the force of a small hurricane.
I closed my eyes and inhaled the watermelon scent of her shampoo, the same brand she’d chosen on her very first day with me.
The scent that meant safety and home and everything I was about to lose.
“Where have you been?” She pulled back, eyes wide with worry. “We’ve been freaking out!”
“I’m sorry. I got tied up with some things.” Tied up. More like handcuffed and thrown in a cell, but who’s keeping track?
“Oh my God, what happened to your head?” She eyed the lingering white bandage.
“Minor injury. No big deal.”
“It doesn’t look like no big deal.”
“I swear, I’m fine.”
She didn’t look so sure, but her relief at seeing me appeared to win the battle for attention. Until she finally registered Ryker standing several feet away, hanging back near the car like he knew better than to crowd the reunion. Or perhaps he sensed her discomfort.
I didn’t bring men here. Hell, I hadn’t brought anyone here before.
“This is Ryker. He’s my friend.” I used that reassuring voice that silently said, You don’t need to be afraid of him.
Which freaking gutted me—that for the rest of her life, she might always be suspicious of men.
Offering him a simple nod, she returned her worried attention to me.
“We tried calling you, like, fifty times.”
My phone had been locked up in evidence, but I couldn’t tell her that. “Dead battery. But I’m here now.”
“You never just disappear like that. Ever.”
The guilt clawed up from my stomach like those first nights in a new foster home placement—choking, with nowhere to run.
I wrapped an arm around her shoulders and squeezed.
Brooklyn was my biggest worrier among the kids I’d taken in.
Nineteen chronologically, but emotionally frozen—somewhere around twelve—thanks to a childhood that would give grown men nightmares.
“What can I say? Life gets crazy sometimes. But I’m here now, okay? ”
Ryker’s stare pulled at something deep in my chest. The part of me that had learned to make myself small, invisible. But under his gaze, I felt seen in a way that terrified and thrilled me.
He wasn’t just looking; he was studying me with the kind of reverence I’d only read about, like he was memorizing the curve of my smile, the way my hands moved, storing each detail somewhere safe inside him as though I were art in a museum.
Like he knew that I didn’t bring people here.
That this was a private, intimate part of my life that I didn’t share with anyone, and yet I’d brought him here, and that mattered to him.
Sure, he could’ve chalked it up to convenience.
Me needing a ride, thanks to my car being impounded.
But in this moment, it was like he sensed it was more than that.
That I would have found another way here.
Because letting him bring me went so much deeper than the time I’d confessed I had claustrophobia.
It hurt because I needed that kind of intimacy.
Wanted it. Craved it like those first real meals after days of empty cupboards.
But if he knew I used to steal to eat, the amount of trouble I’d gotten into, and the terrible choices I’d made along the way, maybe he wouldn’t look at me that way anymore.
Maybe he’d see me as broken and unworthy of his affection.
Something twisted deep in my gut, recognizing that this could be the last moment he’d look at me with anything other than pity or disgust.
I felt Ryker’s presence behind me as we climbed the porch steps, his expensive shoes echoing against the worn wood.
I wondered what he saw when he looked at this place. I knew it wasn’t much. Hell, if I had it my way, I’d have a hundred homes with the best finishes in the best neighborhoods, but this was all I could afford for them right now.
When I glanced back, his expression caught me off guard. He wasn’t looking at my home with disapproval. He was looking at it like it was something miraculous. Like I was something miraculous.
And that … that made my soul come alive.
Walking through the front door, I smiled when I saw two teenagers sprawled across the living room floor, controllers in hand, completely absorbed in their game.
“Faith!”
Both headsets hit the carpet as Todd and Jessica scrambled to their feet.
“What happened to your head?” He asked.
“Slipped on some ice,” I lied, even rolling my eyes for effect. I hated lying to them, but the truth would send them into an anxiety spiral.
“Where have you been?” Todd’s voice cracked with worry.
“It’s a long story.” The understatement of the century.
I walked straight to them and pulled them both into my arms. I held on longer than necessary, probably longer than they were comfortable with, but, God, three days. It felt like three years since I’d seen these kids.
Behind me, I could feel Ryker’s attention like a physical touch.
“We were so worried!” Jessica’s voice was muffled against my shoulder. “We tried calling you.”
“I’m so sorry.” I pulled back to study their faces. Dark circles under Todd’s eyes. Jessica’s nervous habit of picking at her sleeves. My heart cracked a little more. “Guys, this is my friend, Ryker. Ryker, this is Todd and Jessica. And you met Brooklyn out front.”
“Hey.” Ryker’s kind smile and short wave seemed to soften their guard a bit.
“You guys need food?” I asked.
They nodded in unison.
“Come on. Let’s see what’s in the fridge.”
They followed me into the kitchen like lost puppies. When I opened the refrigerator, I frowned. It had been in need of restocking before I’d been arrested, and now, it was practically empty. A carton of milk that had probably gone bad, some wilted lettuce, and not much else.
“Okay, new rule.” I shut the fridge door. “I’m keeping emergency cash stashed somewhere in this house at all times. If I’m ever tied up again, you guys can at least go grocery shopping.”
“Are you okay?” Jessica’s arms wrapped around herself, in that protective stance she fell into whenever she sensed the slightest bit of distress. Her world had taught her to always scan for threats, to brace for impact.
And I hated that she had to live that way. Almost as much as I hated that I was about to become another person who let her down.
“I’m totally fine.” I reached out and stroked her cheek, the gesture automatic after months of trying to show her what gentle touch looked like. Playing the part of the woman who had it all figured out.
If only they knew. I’d have to tell them soon enough what was really going on, but not now. Not yet. Maybe not ever, if I could help it.
“I’m going to go grocery shopping right now. Then I’m coming home to make you guys the biggest dinner you’ve ever seen. How does that sound?”
Relief flooded their faces as they nodded. And there it was—that look that said I was their whole world. The look that made me want to simultaneously wrap them in bubble wrap and run screaming into the night.
Behind Jessica, something small clattered to the floor.
Before I could even process what it was, Ryker was there, smoothly retrieving a cell phone that had fallen from the counter.
He handed it back to Jessica with a gentle smile, his eyes meeting hers without the look most people got when they saw kids like us.
Kids who hunched their shoulders like they were expecting a blow, who struggled to hold anyone’s gaze, who’d learned that looking “different” made adults uncomfortable.
Weird was the most frequent (and infuriating) term we got called.
But Ryker didn’t flinch or glance away. He smiled and held Jessica’s eyes, patiently waiting as she fumbled to take the phone back.
In his act of kindness, in treating her like she wasn’t different at all, I watched something shift in Jessica’s posture.
Just a fraction, but enough to tell me it meant something to her, that he’d looked at her like she wasn’t broken.
And damn it if my heart didn’t tumble even more for him.
He fit here. In my kitchen, with my kids, in my chaotic little world.
And it terrified me how much I wanted him to stay.
Ryker didn’t look at these kids like they were damaged goods.
Like they were problems to be managed or pitied.
And if he could look at them with that kind of acceptance, that genuine respect despite everything they’d been through …
maybe he wouldn’t look at me like I was broken either when I finally revealed my truths.