Chapter 24 Faith #2
Fear gripped my voice. Maybe it was best to skip ahead past some sections for now.
Because right now, I needed to focus on the parts that mattered to the case.
The other stuff … maybe if we survived all the case-related confessions, maybe then I’d have the luxury of revealing the rest. Slowly.
Carefully. The way I should have been able to do from the beginning.
“When I was sixteen, this wealthy foster family took me in. I thought I’d finally made it. New clothes, promises of a car, fancy parties. Turns out, they just wanted the image of fostering a troubled teen for political points.”
The familiar ache in my chest made me want to punch something. But I kept my voice level. Gave him the sanitized version.
I didn’t mention the fights I’d gotten into at that school. The way I’d learned to use my fists because words never worked. That could wait. That could stay buried.
“The neighbor—Daniel, the man in the woods—he was my age. Started hanging around the pool, finding excuses to be near me. I thought he liked me at first.” I laughed bitterly. “Turns out, he just thought he was entitled to me.”
Ryker had stopped painting again. Just stood there, roller raised.
“He was aggressive. Kept pushing boundaries. When I told him no, that I wasn’t interested, he completely lost it.” I swallowed hard. “Started screaming at me by the pool. Called me ‘pathetic foster trash.’ Said I should be grateful someone like him even looked at me. That I was nothing. Nobody.”
And that, ladies and gentlemen, planted some serious self-esteem issues. A stronger person wouldn’t have let that loser get under their skin, but he’d preyed on my biggest insecurity.
“He. Said. WHAT?”
I took a deep breath. “He told me I was lucky he even wanted me.” The memory tasted like bile. “That girls like me—damaged, broken, throwaway girls—we don’t get to say no to guys like him.”
Ryker’s roller hit the floor. He didn’t pick it up.
He pressed his palms against the unpainted section of wall, head bowed, shoulders slumped, breathing ragged.
Oh God. This was too much. I’d said too much.
“I’m sorry,” I said quickly. “I shouldn’t have—”
“Don’t.” His voice was raw. “Don’t you dare apologize.”
But he still wouldn’t look at me.
Why won’t he look at me? He didn’t agree with that guy, right?
Or was this it? The moment where Ryker’s mental math finally added up all my broken pieces and decided the sum wasn’t worth the trouble?
I picked up his roller and set it in the tray. Gave him space. Gave myself space to figure out how to backtrack, how to make this okay, how to be the version of Faith that didn’t make him look like he wanted to put his fist through the wall. Or look at me like I was … different.
“He started making my life hell after that,” I continued, softer now. “Little things at first. Spreading rumors at school that I’d slept with half the football team. Then it escalated. Dead animals left in my locker. My homework destroyed.”
Ryker finally turned. His eyes were dark, his jaw still grinding.
“My counselor said it sounded like erotomania: a delusional belief that I was meant to be with him. Mix that with narcissistic injury from my rejection, and you get a dangerous combination.”
Ryker’s eyes sharpened. “You saw a counselor about this? Is there documentation?”
“I don’t know. Maybe? It was years ago.”
“I’ll see if we can track it down. A professional assessment of his obsessive behavior, on record, years before his death?” He nodded slowly. “That’s gold for establishing a pattern. That he was the threat, not you.”
I moved to smooth out the uneven patches Ryker had left on the wall. Anything to avoid looking at him, to avoid seeing whatever expression was on his face now.
“When I aged out and moved away, I thought it was over. But he kept surfacing every few years. In person.”
“Anything with phone records?” he suddenly asked.
I blinked. “I deleted all his messages as soon as they came in. Kept blocking the different numbers they were coming from.”
“Deleted doesn’t always mean gone.” His voice had shifted into lawyer mode, clinical and focused. “Carriers keep records. And if he was using different numbers, that’s a pattern of harassment we can document. I’ll have my tech guy dig into it.”
Something in his eyes was already calculating.
“A year ago, he came back. Started showing up here, at the blue house.” The blue house. My sanctuary for aged-out foster kids. The one pure thing I’d created from all my pain.
“Here?” Ryker’s head snapped toward me. “Did you report it? File anything with the police?”
I shook my head. “I didn’t want to drag the kids into it. Cops asking questions, scaring them …”
His jaw tightened, but he didn’t lecture me. “Any witnesses? Anyone who saw him here?”
“I’m not sure. I don’t think so?”
“We can interview neighbors. Anyone who can corroborate that he was stalking you, that he came here, uninvited.” He pulled out his phone and typed a quick note. “This establishes that he was the aggressor. That you had reason to fear him.”
I was afraid. Which was why what happened next happened.
I set down the roller and faced him, needing him to understand this part. This was safe. This was the heroic version of me.
Wasn’t it?
“These kids have been through enough without some stalker contaminating their safe space.” My hands clenched. “The week before he … died … he came here again. Said things. Graphic, disgusting things about what he wanted to do to me. About how I owed him.”
Ryker’s hands curled into fists at his sides.
I didn’t want to tell him the next part. If there was any way to sweep it under the rug like my other past sins, I would have. But Ryker was my lawyer, and this had to do with the case. It might come out, and I didn’t want him to hear it from anyone but me.
“I was so scared he’d do something to me in front of the kids to traumatize them and so angry at him that I couldn’t see straight. I screamed at him on the lawn, calling him a psychopath.” I closed my eyes, trying to pull the memory into focus. “I shoved him. Hard.”
The fights I’d been in flashed through my mind. I’d have to tell Ryker about those too, wouldn’t I? Because those might come up in court. Would he understand?
Not now. Save it. He doesn’t need to know everything right this second.
But even as I told myself that, guilt twisted in my chest. Every omission felt like a lie. Every piece of myself I held back was another brick in the wall between us.
Ryker deserved better than my half-truths. But the whole truth might destroy us before we even had a chance to begin. And I needed him to hear the worst part of this case.
“And then I told him if he ever came around the blue house again, I’d fucking kill him.”
The words hung in the air between us.
Ryker stared at me, and I couldn’t read his expression. Couldn’t tell if this was the moment he decided I wasn’t worth it. That the real me—the angry, violent, glad-when-people-died version of me—was too much.
“Did anyone hear you say that?”
His question hit me like a punch to my heart. It was ridiculous to feel hurt; Ryker was my lawyer. He needed to ask if anyone had overheard potential premeditation.
“No,” I said. “I don’t think so.”
I waited for him to say something. I mean, my God, I’d threatened to kill the victim!
Before he could come up with any kind of response though, his phone buzzed. I wanted him to ignore the call because this was the most vulnerable I’d felt in as long as I remembered, and I needed Ryker to stay, to assure me that nothing had changed between us.
“I need to …” He gestured vaguely at his pocket, already stepping backward. Away. Creating space where, seconds ago, there’d been none.
The warmth between us evaporated so fast, it left me cold.
I watched him answer, watched him turn his back to me, and knew with crushing certainty what was happening. He’d heard enough. Too much.
And he was pulling away, just like I’d been terrified he would.
The lime-green wall blurred in front of me as I realized what a naive, stupid dream it had been to think this might’ve been different with him.
Just like Jason. Just like the Hendersons. Just like everyone who’d ever gotten close enough to see the real me.
The worst part wasn’t losing him. The worst part was that I’d been so goddamn close to believing that this time, maybe the ending would be different.
That we were inevitable.
Now I knew the truth. The only thing inevitable about me was the leaving.