Chapter 59 Faith
FAITH
“I want to give myself a makeover.”
Harper’s face lit up like I’d just announced free champagne for life. She jabbed a finger at me enthusiastically. “Now that’s what I’m talking about.”
I spun around, struck by a sudden realization. “You know, if I move in with Ryker, I’m going to miss you.”
“I do own a car,” she said, arching an eyebrow.
I laughed. “Fair point. And I’ll be getting mine back from police evidence. And I’ll come back and visit. A lot.”
Turning back to the mirror, I studied my reflection. Same old Faith staring back at me.
“So,” Harper said, moving closer, “define makeover.”
“Well …” I traced my fingers through my hair, imagining the possibilities. “Eventually, I’d like to cut my hair, add highlights and lowlights. I just want to feel different, you know?”
“So, let’s do it now.”
“I’m supposed to be packing.”
“Packing is boring.” Harper waved a dismissive hand. “The ship isn’t going anywhere. This sounds like way more fun.”
“I told Ryker I’d stay here today.”
“Up to you.” She shrugged, but her eyes gleamed with mischief. “But you throw him a text, and I promise I’ll take good care of you.”
I pulled out my phone and typed: Need a few hours to become stunning. Heading to the salon. See you at dinner?
His response came almost immediately: You’re already stunning. But okay. Can’t wait to see you, Warrior.
I showed Harper the screen, and she grinned. “Girl, he’s got it bad.”
“Yeah,” I said softly, warmth spreading through my chest, “he really does.”
We spent hours getting made over, and it was as financially irresponsible as it was glorious.
The stylist worked magic with my hair, adding dimension I didn’t know was possible.
Rich caramel highlights caught the light.
Deeper lowlights added depth, making the whole effect rich and dimensional.
She cut away the damaged ends, leaving it healthier and bouncier than it had been in years.
Harper insisted on makeup next, dragging me to a counter where a woman with impeccable winged eyeliner taught me techniques I’d never mastered on my own.
“You look like a whole new woman,” Harper said as we climbed back into her car.
I checked the mirror again. She was right. I looked like me, but the best version of me. Confident. Beautiful. Like someone who deserved a fresh start.
We returned to my place just in time for dinner prep.
“You’re coming, right?” I asked as we walked inside.
“Oh, yeah. I have an outfit in mind.”
“Good. You’re going to love the rest of my friends.”
My friends. I had true, deep friendships.
“Okay, I want to go get ready.” She squeezed my arm. “I’ll be back over in, like, half an hour, okay?”
“Perfect. That gives me exactly half an hour to pack all the stuff I was supposed to be packing earlier.”
She laughed and headed out, and I immediately attacked my closet with renewed energy. The suitcase filled quickly. Clothes, toiletries, my favorite books. Evidence of a life about to change.
But as I worked, my thoughts drifted to Harper. How easily she’d let herself into my world. How little I actually knew about her. She never mentioned family or friends. In fact, I’d never seen anyone visit her place. And while she hadn’t been here long, it struck me as odd. Lonely even.
I wondered what secret she was keeping. Who had hurt her. Who she was running from.
More importantly, I worried for her. What if she couldn’t outrun her past? What if the right thing to do, for now at least, was to stay here? To protect her as best we could?
I’d talk to Ryker about it, I decided, but before I could plan more than that, the sound of my front door opening pulled me from my thoughts.
It was odd. Harper was welcome to come in, of course, but she usually knocked.
“Harper?” I called out.
No answer.
“I’m almost ready!”
Still nothing. Silence pressed against my eardrums, thick and wrong.
Then it hit me. Cold and sharp as a knife to the ribs.
I’d locked the door after she left, and I’d never shown Harper where I kept my spare key.
My pulse kicked into overdrive. The house suddenly felt different. Colder. The air heavy with something I couldn’t name, but recognized in my bones.
Danger.
I was in the back bedroom. Whoever was in my home with me wasn’t announcing themselves. If it was Ryker, he would’ve called back by now. Would’ve come to help me.
It wasn’t Ryker. And it wasn’t Harper.
Moving slowly, I grabbed the baseball bat I’d kept in the corner since this nightmare began.
The wood was smooth under my palms, and my stomach turned as memories tried to surface.
Memories of Blake’s hands gripping a bat just like this one when I was a little girl, and he’d used it to stop my foster father from killing me.
The sound it had made when Blake swung it at my foster father’s skull. The blood.
No. Focus.
My hands shook as I reached for the window blinds. I wasn’t going to be one of those idiots in horror movies who goes to investigate the scary noise.
I was going to be the bitch who escaped out the window long before Sir Von Killer slashed my throat.
When the blinds rattled, I froze. A floorboard creaked. Then nothing.
My heart hammered so hard, I could taste copper in my mouth. Another creak, closer this time. The hallway groaned under someone’s weight.
I raised the blinds, the metal chain cold against my fingers, each click of the mechanism thunderous in the silence.
Another step. Heavy. Ominous. Sending my heartbeat racing so fast, I felt dizzy.
My fingers fumbled with the window’s first lock. The metal was slick with sweat.
Another step. He was approaching my doorway now.
The second lock stuck. I pushed harder, panic making my movements jerky.
Another step.
The window slid up slowly, inch by agonizing inch, cold air flooding in like the dread snowballing through my body.
A shadow appeared in the doorway.
I pushed the window all the way up, but just before I could pop the screen out, a figure lunged.
I spun, swinging the bat. The crack of wood against mass reverberated through my arms, but it wasn’t enough.
He was on me. Massive hands yanked the bat away and sent it clattering across the floor. His weight crushed me to the ground, pinning my arms, while his broad shoulders blocked out the light.
“Get off me!” I screamed.
His hand clamped over my mouth, fingers digging into my jaw. The taste of salt and dirt invaded my senses.
A blade appeared, glinting in the fading sunlight. My eyes locked on to it, watching it descend toward my throat.
“You’re going to die the same way you killed my son.”
Judge Kearns. The realization slammed into me.
Terror crystallized into a single, impossible thought: After everything I’d overcome, this was how it ended?
I squirmed and kicked, but couldn’t free myself from this monster. The knife pressed against my jugular. Cold metal bit into my skin, a razor’s edge away from ending everything. I stared into the eyes of my killer, watching the hatred burn there. Feeling the sharp sting as the blade punctured skin.
A bead of warmth trickled down my neck.
This was it.
Suddenly, his head jerked. Something warm and wet splattered across my face, and his grip loosened, his hand slipping off my mouth.
Then he jerked backward like a rag doll.
That’s when I realized another person was now in the room.
Ryker.
Holding my fallen baseball bat.
The judge was still conscious, blood streaming down his face.
“Tomorrow, everyone will know what you’ve done and what you really are,” Ryker said. “How you used your position, your connections, and your power to cover up every bad act your son committed. And in the process, you created and protected a monster that tried to take what wasn’t his.”
“I have the whole police department on my side.” He spat blood. “This will get buried.”
Ryker’s face went pale. “Your son’s death was self-defense. He stalked Faith for years. He tried to kill her.”
Judge Kearns’s voice cracked. “She killed my boy. My only child.”
“He hunted her like an animal. Terrorized her. Tried to—”
“I don’t care!” The judge’s composure shattered.
“I don’t care what the evidence says. I don’t care what some jury decides.
The courts might call it self-defense. The law might exonerate her.
But I’m his father.” His eyes were wild, unfocused.
Grief twisted into something darker. “No verdict will ever give me my son back. No jury will ever make this right.”
Ice slid down my spine. This wasn’t reason. This was a man who’d already decided the outcome.
“So, what?” Ryker kept his voice level, even as his hand moved protectively toward me. “You’ll what? Become exactly what your son was?”
“My son was good.” The words were desperate, pleading. Like if he said them enough times, they’d become true. “He was troubled, yes. He made mistakes. But he was trying to get better. He was seeing someone, getting help—”
“He left dead animals in her locker. Showed up at a house full of traumatized kids and—”
“Lies!” Judge Kearns’s face flushed purple. “Lies she told to justify what she did. My son wasn’t a monster. But her? Look at her record. Her history. The violence that follows her everywhere she goes.”
My gut twisted.
“You want to talk about history?” Ryker’s voice dropped to something dangerous. “Fine. Let’s talk about history.”
He took a step forward, the bat still in his hand.
“Faith survived a childhood that would have broken you. Broken your son. Hell, it would have broken me.” He locked eyes with Judge Kearns.
“She watched violence destroy everything she loved. She could have let it destroy her too. Could have become exactly what your son was: someone who uses their pain as permission to hurt others.”
Ryker’s voice dropped and became fierce.
Protective. “Instead, she became the person I admire most in this world.” My heart burst inside my rib cage as Ryker continued, “The only person I’ve ever met who took a childhood full of horror and chose to build something beautiful from it.
She turned her worst nightmare into someone else’s salvation. ”
Judge Kearns’s face twisted.
“Your son had every advantage,” Ryker continued.
“Wealth. Education. A father in a position of power. And what did he do with it? He stalked. He threatened. He terrorized a woman who’d already survived more than he could ever comprehend.
” Ryker’s jaw clenched. “He tried to destroy the one good thing she built from all that pain.”
“The person I admire most in this world.” The words wrapped around me like absolution. Like everything I’d never dared to hope someone would see in me.
Ryker took another step forward.
“So, yes, Judge. Let’s talk about history. Let’s talk about who uses their past as an excuse to hurt people and who uses it as fuel to help them. Let’s talk about which one of them is the monster here.”
My throat burned.
His voice became eerily calm. Almost rational, mirroring the judge’s earlier tone.
“Because from where I’m standing? The violence that follows Faith isn’t hers. It’s from people like your son. People like you. People who see someone who’s overcome hell itself and decide she deserves to burn anyway.”
I couldn’t begin to describe what Ryker’s words meant to me. Didn’t have time to fully digest them, but my God.
“She became the person I admire most in this world.”
If Ryker expected to get through to Kearns though, he was sorely mistaken. Kearns didn’t unclench any part of his rage. If anything, he looked even more disgusted that someone would see me as anything other than the monster he’d painted me in his mind.
“You’re both going to die for this.” Kearns struggled to his feet, the knife still clutched in his hand. “Then anyone else who helped her.”
Ryker’s hand clenched around the bat so tightly, his knuckles went white.
“Like father, like son,” Ryker whispered.
Judge Kearns smiled. It was the smile of a man with nothing left to lose.
Then the judge lunged at me. The knife flashed in the dying light, aimed at my chest, and as it did, time slowed. I saw it all: the blade descending, Ryker moving, the bat swinging.
The cracking sound was wet and final.
Just like when Blake had saved me all those years ago. The same sickening whack. The same sudden silence after.
But this time, I didn’t scream. This time, I didn’t fall apart. This time, I just breathed.
A few seconds passed.
Ryker stood over the judge’s body, gripping the blood-soaked bat. His chest heaving.
The man who’d just defended me with words had defended me with action, crossing a line he’d drawn for himself.
When he dropped the bat, it clattered against the floor, rolling to a stop near my feet. The same kind of bat that had saved me as a child. The same kind of violence that had haunted my dreams.
But I wasn’t that terrified little girl anymore.
He knelt beside me, his hands gentle as they checked my neck, where the knife had pressed. “You okay, Warrior?”
The gravity of the moment settled over us, and my throat swelled, but I didn’t cry. Not tears of fear anyway. Maybe tears of something else. Of finally being free. Of being protected instead of abandoned. Of being worth saving.
“Yeah,” I whispered, my voice stronger than I expected. “I’m okay.”
And for the first time in my life, I actually meant it.