11. Faith
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Faith
The drive to Mom’s is only twenty minutes, but it feels like I’m crossing a border.
Like I’m leaving one life, again, for another that I haven’t fully remembered how to live.
The patched-up car rattles every few miles, coughing like an old smoker on every incline, but it holds. Boone’s handiwork, Clay’s stubbornness, Nash’s… commentary, I’m sure.
And Dallas.
Mostly Dallas.
I can practically feel his hands on every bolt, every hose, every patched crack.
Trees blur by in white-tipped rows. At one point, the wind shakes the car hard enough that I grip the wheel until my knuckles turn white.
But the roads are clearer here, plowed by the county this morning, and eventually snow-covered pastures give way to the clusters of houses I grew up knowing by silhouette.
Mom’s neighborhood.
Mom’s street.
Mom’s tiny, yellow-sided house with the Christmas wreath she’s used since I was nine. The one with the pinecones that keep falling out because she refuses to replace it.
My breath catches.
Home.
Or something that used to be home.
I pull into the driveway, cut the engine, and sit as silence rushes in.
The porch light flicks on.
The door flies open.
And then Mom’s there. Hair still wrapped in the messy bun she sleeps in, wearing a giant sweatshirt and fuzzy socks, hand pressed to her chest. She’s afraid I might vanish if she blinks.
I stumble out of the car.
She meets me halfway.
“Faith,” she whispers, and then her arms are around me, pulling me into the warm, soft, familiar space between her shoulder and her neck.
“I’m okay,” I say, but the words shake.
She squeezes tighter. “No, you’re not. But you’re here.”
We stand like that for a long moment, snow falling in soft flakes around us, melting on her sweatshirt, catching in my hair. And then she cups my face, brushing away a tear with her thumb.
“Let’s get you inside, sweetheart. You must be frozen through.”
I grab my bag and follow her in.
The house is always the same.
Same faded rug by the door. Same cluttered bookshelf with her dog-eared romances. Same old couch with the lumpy left cushion. The same ceramic owl clock on the wall that ticks too loudly. It all smells faintly of cinnamon and old lemon cleaner.
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
I need the feeling of same now more than ever.
“Sit,” she says, shooing me toward the couch like I’m eight again and came in from sledding. “I’ll make cocoa.”
I obey, sinking into the cushion I’ve sunk into a thousand times before.
The upholstery smells of home, and faraway holidays, and too loud family dinners.
My eyes drift to the mantel, where pictures sit in their mismatched frames.
There’s me and Charlotte as kids, me and Mom on my high school graduation day, one of the three of us at a fall festival two years ago.
No photos of my father anywhere.
There haven’t been for years.
The cocoa arrives steaming, topped with exactly three marshmallows. She hands me the mug and settles beside me, pulling one leg up under herself the way she always does when she’s bracing for a hard conversation.
“All right,” she says softly. “Tell me.”
So I try.
I start with the wedding. How big it was, how strange it felt, how every detail had been decided for me. How the walls were closing in. How I couldn’t breathe in that dress, now stuffed into the canvas bag dropped by the front door.
How I ran.
How I ended up in Dallas’s house in the middle of a snowstorm, sobbing and freezing and choking on all the things I’d been pushing down for years.
Mom listens without interrupting. She has always been the listener in our house. The one who let her daughters talk, ramble, cry, unravel. The one who stitched us back up afterward.
When I finish, she blows out a long, shaky breath.
“Oh, sweetheart.”
Her hand finds mine and squeezes.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I’m so, so sorry.”
“It was my choice,” I say, staring into the cocoa. “I should’ve seen it sooner. Should’ve stopped letting him run my life.”
She shakes her head. “Faith… you’re not the first woman he steamrolled.”
I meet her eyes.
“He wasn’t cruel,” she continues. “Not in the ways people expect. But he chipped away at me. Little cuts. Little criticisms. Little demands. And I let him. For too long.”
I look down at my hands.
I know those cuts.
I feel them every time I check my phone, expecting to be yelled at. Every time I apologize too quickly. Every time I make myself small.
Mom sighs, brushing my hair behind my ear. “He’s worse now. Harder. More rigid. Maybe success made him that way. Maybe age. Maybe losing you and Charlotte’s patience over the years. But it’s not new, Faith. It didn’t start with you.”
Tears sting my eyes again. “I didn’t realize how much I let him control.”
“You were trying to please him,” she says gently. “You always did. My sweet girl who hates disappointing people. You were never the problem.”
I want to believe her.
I want it with an ache that goes bone deep.
“But you’re out,” she says firmly. “You walked away. You’re here. That means something. And it doesn’t matter how much he tries to call me, or how often he speaks to your sister, we won’t let him know where you are. We’re on your side. Always.”
I nod, because that’s what she needs from me right now.
But I know him.
He doesn’t let things go. He doesn’t forgive humiliation. And he definitely doesn’t forgive disobedience.
I won’t be able to hide forever. Not from a man who built his entire life on control.
Soon, I’ll have to face him. Say the words I’ve never said out loud. Tell him no and mean it.
The thought makes my stomach knot.
Her fingers tap mine thoughtfully. “So… Buckhorn.” Her tone shifts, nervous yet hopeful. “I imagine you’ll want to stay here a while?”
The cocoa cools too fast.
My stomach twists.
She isn’t asking maliciously. She isn’t trying to force a plan. She’s just assuming I know what I want.
But I don’t.
“Mom,” I say softly. “I… I don’t know.”
She goes still. “You don’t know… about Buckhorn?”
“I don’t even know what I’m doing tomorrow,” I admit, trying again not to think about Dallas. “I don’t know what I want. Maybe just a shower.”
She smiles. “Now that, I can do.”
Later, after a long shower and a dinner of grilled cheese, the way she knows I like it, I drift down the hall toward my old bedroom.
It’s exactly as I left it.
Dustier. Colder. But the same.
The faded blue walls. The posters of barrel racers and vintage movie quotes. The corkboard cluttered with old ribbons and ticket stubs. The twin bed with the quilt Mom made when I turned thirteen. Yellow patches, blue patches, horses stitched into the corners because she knew I liked them.
Sheets washed. Lights dim. A ghost of who I used to be lingering in the air.
I flip on the lamp and see them immediately.
Pictures.
So many pictures.
Me and Dallas at the lake, soaked and laughing, covered in mud because he pushed me first, and I retaliated by tackling him into the shallows.
Me and Dallas at homecoming, my curls too frizzy, his tie crooked because he didn’t know how to tie one yet and refused help.
Me and Dallas leaning on the old McCoy fence, our shoulders touching, the sun setting behind us. I remember that day, he’d just gotten his permit. I’d written a stupid poem in my English notebook about boys who smelled of hay and hope.
There are pictures of me and Jet, too.
Jessie Alvarez.
My best friend before life got messy and distance pried us into different shapes.
Jet with her big grin and bigger personality, sarcastic even at sixteen, fast talking, already dreaming of singing at the rodeo someday.
She’s got her arm slung around my shoulders in the picture, her eyeliner smudged from laughing too hard, both of us holding milkshakes from Spurs Diner like we owned the world.
A photo of me and Charlotte at the county fair. A photo of me and Mom at Christmas when I was fifteen, wearing matching peppermint pajamas.
So many versions of myself.
All of them real.
None of them the skittish, exhausted woman who crawled into Dallas’s guest room bed two nights ago, shaking like a leaf.
My throat tightens.
I sit on the edge of the bed and reach into the nightstand drawer.
My diary is still there.
Pink cover. Lock long gone. Pages scribbled with the earnest desperation of a teenage girl.
I flip to a random page.
April 11th
Age 15
Dallas McCoy smiled at me today when I beat him at pitching hay into the loft. Said he didn’t mind losing to a girl. Said I’m “stubborn in a good way.” Jet almost fell off the fence laughing because I turned so red I matched her hoodie.
Best day.
I put my hand over my mouth to smother a helpless sound and flip further on.
June 2nd
Age 16
Jet and I skipped studying and walked to Spurs instead. She made the waiter take our picture because she said, “This is our era.”
Dallas showed up after feeding the calves and stole half my fries, but he brought us free milkshakes, so Jet said he could stay.
We watched the sun set from the bed of his truck. Everything felt possible.
Another page.
August 19th
Age 17
I think this is what being alive is supposed to feel like.
Dallas taught me how to downshift on the old ranch road and didn’t even yell when I stalled twice. We laughed so hard we almost cried.
My breath stutters.
I skim more pages, faster, my eyes catching on snippets:
Jet is dragging me to karaoke night.
Dallas held my hand when I freaked out about college letters. Said I could go anywhere and still be “my Faith.”
We spent all day at Buckhorn Lake. I swam in my jeans like an idiot. Jet filmed it.
I love this town. I love these people.
I hope we never grow up enough to lose this.
The words blur.
A lifetime of belonging.
A lifetime of being chosen.
A lifetime of sunlight, I somehow stepped out of.
I shut the diary, hands trembling.
I’m not the girl I used to be. But I’m not the woman I want to be yet either.
I sit there in the quiet, snow pressing against the window, and wonder where she went. That girl who believed in joy and bravery and small-town magic.
And whether she’s still somewhere inside me, waiting.
Whether I’m allowed to find her again.