Chapter 53 - Faith
FAITH
“Care to explain,” Ryker snarled after exploding through the front door, “why you’ve been lying to me?”
Ryker’s voice cut through the living room like a blade, and my breath caught. I’d never seen him this angry, and honestly … it terrified me.
He filled the doorway, and something in his stance made my body remember. My third foster brother. The way he’d tower over me just like this, shoulders squared, fists clenched. Right before he’d grab my hair and slam my head into the wall for eating the last of the cereal.
Ryker wasn’t him. I knew that. But my body didn’t.
The man who usually wore suits with easy confidence looked wild. Tie yanked loose. Hair disheveled, like he’d been running his hands through it. Those eyes that normally looked at me with such patience now burned with something that made my stomach drop.
“You know where I just came from?”
Based on his body language, he expected me to cower, but I was done being weak. Done being the scared little foster kid who took whatever the world threw at her.
I stood, squaring my shoulders despite the tremor in my hands. “By the looks of it, court?”
“My office. Met with the ADA, Faith.” He slammed the door behind him, and I flinched despite myself. “Bennett Wolfe just showed me everything you didn’t tell me.”
Oh shit.
He crossed to me, crowding into my space. “Did you think I wouldn’t find out? All those violent incidents? The hospital records? The interviews with other foster siblings? Their injuries? Theft?”
“That was years ago.” The words tumbled out, desperate and deflecting. “I was a kid, Ryker. It doesn’t matter—”
“It doesn’t matter?” His laugh was harsh, incredulous. “It doesn’t matter when it happened? If the ADA has it, the jury will too. And if I don’t know everything, I can’t defend you.”
He dragged both hands through his hair, pacing now like a caged animal.
“Your life is at stake here. Do you get that? Twenty-five to life, Faith. My career is at stake too. I put my reputation on the line for you.” He whirled to face me, and the raw pain in his eyes knocked the breath from my lungs.
“And worst of all, I was falling for you. Hard. And you lied to me.”
Was falling for me?
Something inside me cracked. “I didn’t lie—”
“Omission is lying!” he roared, the words echoing off the walls. “Every time you kept something from me, every half-truth, every deflection—those were lies, Faith!”
Each accusation dragged me backward through time.
“You punched someone?” My foster mother’s voice was shrill and disgusted. “Pack your things. You’ll be out by morning.”
“You threatened another student?” Principal Jackson said, looking at me like I was something stuck to his shoe. “Get out of my office. You’re nothing but trash.”
I didn’t realize I was shaking until I noticed the change in Ryker’s face. The rage evaporated like fog burning off in sunlight, his gaze tracking over my body, cataloging every tremor.
But I refused to tremble anymore. I was not pathetic, and I would not be pitied. Those experiences had shaped who I was, and he needed to understand that.
“You want to know why?” The words exploded out of me, years of pain erupting like a volcano.
“Why I keep pieces of myself locked away? Because every time I’ve told the truth, people left!
” My voice broke, but I couldn’t stop. “Foster homes. Friends. They all walked out the second they saw all of me. The broken parts. The desperate parts. The parts that did whatever it took to survive.”
“So, you thought lying to your defense attorney was a good survival strategy?” His voice dripped sarcasm, bitter and cutting. “Real smart, Faith. Real fucking smart.”
The words hit like a slap. “That’s not fair—”
“Fair?” He barked out a laugh. “You want to talk about fair? I told you I need to know EVERYTHING!”
Tears burned my eyes, but I blinked them back. “I was scared—”
“Scared of what? Me doing my job? Me having all the information I need to keep you out of prison?” He stalked closer, and I retreated a step. “Or were you scared I’d figure out what you really are?”
“Stop—”
“A liar. A thief, apparently. Someone with a history of violence, going back to childhood.” Each word was a hammer blow.
“Seven foster siblings willing to testify against you. Seven, Faith. And there’s video of you threatening someone with a broken bottle at a bar.
‘I’ll fucking end you.’ Ring any bells?”
My stomach lurched. That night. God, that night at Murphy’s when I was twenty-one and some drunk woman kept pushing and pushing until something inside me snapped.
“There’s context—”
“There’s always context!” His voice rose again, filling the room. “But context doesn’t matter if I don’t know about it beforehand. Context doesn’t help me when the prosecutor ambushes me in front of a jury with evidence I’ve never seen!”
“I was going to tell you—”
“When? After you were convicted? Or were you banking on me being so in love with you that I wouldn’t care?”
The accusation hung between us like smoke.
“That’s not …” I couldn’t finish. Because maybe there was some truth to it. Maybe I had been counting on his feelings for me to outweigh my sins.
“I told you about my last client.” His voice went quiet now, deadly soft. “The one who played me. Who fed me sob stories while hiding evidence. Got him acquitted, and then he killed three more.”
Ice flooded my veins. “I’m not him.”
“How would I know?” The pain in his eyes was worse than the anger. “You’ve been lying to me from day one. How do I know what’s real? How do I know you’re real?”
“Because I love you!” The words ripped out of my throat, raw and desperate.
“Love.” He said it like the word tasted bitter. “You love me, but you don’t trust me. You love me, but you lie to my face. What kind of love is that, Faith?”
He was right. My love was warped, wasn’t it?
Twisted into something unrecognizable by years of survival instincts.
I hadn’t meant for it to be. I was honestly doing the best I could, stumbling through life with a broken compass.
But the realization that my shortcomings had hurt him …
well, that cut deeper than any prison sentence ever could.
“The only kind I know!” Tears streamed down my face now, hot and humiliating.
“I just got my brother back, and then you came along, and for the first time in my life, I had something I couldn’t bear to lose.
So, I did the only thing I’ve ever known how to do.
I hid the parts that make people leave.”
“Everyone leaves you—is that it?” His voice was hard. “Ever think maybe it’s because you never give them a chance to stay? You’re so busy hiding and lying that no one ever gets to know the real you.”
The words struck something deep and true, and I wrapped my arms around myself. “No one loves you when they see all of you, Ryker. They leave. They always leave.”
“So, you thought you’d just … what? Keep lying forever? Hope I never found out?” He shook his head. “That’s not love, Faith. That’s cowardice.”
I physically recoiled like he’d struck me.
“Tell me about the scissors. The girl you stabbed over a boy.”
Maybe I didn’t play this right. Hell, I knew I’d made mistakes. But that’s what we do as humans, isn’t it? We stumble. We fall. We get back up and hope we’ll do better the next time.
Letting someone see all of you is terrifying. Especially for someone like me, whose past was riddled with moments that still made me want to disappear.
“It wasn’t like that.”
“Then tell me what it was like!” He exploded. “Because right now, all I have is Wolfe’s version. And in his version, you’re a violent sociopath who’s been hurting people since you were a teenager.”
“I was defending myself!” The words burst out. “I was jumped. Three girls cornered me in the bathroom because one of them thought I was flirting with her boyfriend. I wasn’t. I never even talked to him. But she decided I was a threat, and she brought backup.”
Ryker’s jaw clenched, but he didn’t interrupt.
“I grabbed the only thing I could reach. A pair of craft scissors from art class in my bag. I didn’t want to stab anyone.
I held them out as a threat, something to make them back off.
” My voice shook. “But they jumped me anyway. All three of them. And in the struggle, the scissors …” I swallowed hard.
“We both got punctured. Both of us. That’ll be in the medical records, too, if Wolfe cared to look. ”
Something shifted in his expression. Not quite belief, but the anger dimmed slightly.
“I had defensive wounds,” I continued. “Bruises all over. A cracked rib. But the foster family I was with … they didn’t want a ‘problem child.’ So, they painted me as the aggressor. Said I was violent and unstable. And the system believed them because it was easier than investigating.”
Ryker ran a hand over his face, and I could see him processing, lawyer brain working through the evidence.
“The fights,” I pressed on, needing him to understand.
“All of them. I was injured too. Every single time. Stitches. Broken bones. Once, a rib that punctured my lung. But nobody cared about that. Nobody asked why a ninety-pound foster kid kept ending up in the ER. They just labeled me as trouble and moved me along.”
“Faith—”
“And the threats?” I cut him off, voice rising.
“When you’re a cornered animal, you make yourself look as big as possible.
It’s survival instinct. You snarl and snap and hope they’ll back off before you actually have to fight.
But if they don’t …” I met his eyes. “You do what you have to do to survive.”
The silence stretched between us, heavy and suffocating.
I pressed my palms against my thighs, anchoring myself. The fabric of my jeans felt rough beneath my fingers—real, solid. Unlike the words I was about to say.
“I’m ashamed.” My voice cracked on the second syllable. “I’m ashamed of the person I was.”