25. Faith
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Faith
By the time my knuckles hit the McCoys’ front door, I’ve rehearsed three different apologies, all of which sound pathetic in my head.
Hi, sorry I emotionally ghosted your five-year-old after she braided my hair and trusted me with her tiny heart….
No. Too honest.
Wow, time flies, haha, been sooo busy not having a job or a plan.
Absolutely not.
Hello, it’s me, Faith “Runaway Bride, Professional Disaster” Ross.
Okay, I’m not allowed to speak anymore.
The door swings open before I can run away.
Dallas fills the doorway, all broad shoulders and quiet blue eyes and that stupid, calming presence that my nervous system recognizes before my brain catches up.
He’s in a soft blue button-down, sleeves rolled, jeans, socked feet.
Home clothes. The kind of clothes that make me want to stay too long.
For a second, we just… stare.
“Hey.”
“Hey,” I echo, because apparently, I’ve lost the ability to form original thoughts.
Then something barreling and small slams into my legs.
“Miss Faith!”
I look down just in time to catch an armful of Lila.
Her arms lock around my waist, face pressed into my coat. Relief slams into my chest so hard it stings.
“Hi, baby,” I breathe, bending to hug her properly. “Oh my gosh, I missed you.”
“You didn’t come back,” she says, muffled and wobbly. “You said you would, and you didn’t.”
Cue the guilt tsunami.
“I know,” I say, throat tight. “And I’m so, so sorry. That was on me. Things got… messy in my head, and I didn’t mean to break my promise. Can you forgive me?”
She leans back enough to look up at me, eyes shiny, assessing. It’s a look that reminds me so much of Dallas, it’s almost painful.
“You came now,” she says finally. “So maybe.”
I huff out a wet laugh. “I’ll take ‘maybe.’”
“Come in,” Dallas says gently. “Before you both freeze.”
The warmth of the house wraps around me as I step inside.
It smells of rosemary, butter, and something sweet in the oven.
The table in the dining room is set with a kind of crooked, overexcited precision.
Placemats a little off-center, forks multiplying in strange patterns, construction paper signs taped to the chairs. One says WELCUM FAIFH in purple marker.
My heart does a very embarrassing swoop.
“Wow,” I breathe. “Is this all for me?”
“It’s for us,” Lila corrects immediately. “For dinner. It’s fancy.”
“It’s perfect,” I say. “You did all this?”
She nods, cheeks pink. “I helped Daddy. I picked the candles and the napkins and the plates that aren’t chipped.”
Dallas coughs softly. “Some of them are still a little chipped. Don’t look too close.”
“I wouldn’t dare,” I say, glancing at him.
Our eyes meet. A live wire flickers between us.
It isn’t just attraction anymore. It’s memory…
Two nights that didn’t stay neatly in the past. New Year’s Eve outside the barn, the way we couldn’t stop touching even after we’d both agreed we should.
Then the lake after the rodeo, when I told myself it was just heat and impulse…
and ended up feeling more seen than I have in years.
We haven’t said a word about either of them since, but my body doesn’t seem interested in pretending.
Abort, abort. Focus on the child.
“Oh!” I straighten, suddenly remembering the bag in my hand. “I brought you something.”
Her whole face lights up. “For me?”
“For you,” I confirm. “A very, very late Christmas slash I’m-sorry-I-disappeared present.”
She bounces on her toes as I pull out the gift bag, small, pink, tissue paper poofing from the top.
She peeks inside, then lets out a squeal that probably rattles the windows.
“It’s sparkly!”
“It is,” I agree, grinning.
She pulls out the sequined denim jacket I found in town. Kid-sized, covered in tiny stitched stars and ridiculous glitter. It’s the kind of thing my father would have called “tacky.” Which makes me love it more.
Lila gasps excitedly.
“It has stars,” she whispers. “Like the sky.”
“It looked like you,” I say. “And I felt really bad about forgetting my promise, and I wanted to bring you something that said ‘I love you and I’m not going to vanish again without telling you. Pinky swear.’”
She thrusts her pinky out immediately.
I hook mine around it. “Deal?”
“Deal,” she says solemnly.
Dallas is quiet behind us, and when I glance back at him, he’s watching us with an expression that makes my lungs forget their job.
Soft.
Wrecked.
Hopeful.
Scared.
That look is the part that keeps me up at night.
The wanting was easy. Reckless and hungry, uncomplicated in the moment.
It’s the afterward that’s terrifying—the way Dallas looked at me like I could become a permanent fixture in this house, like I could matter to his daughter, like this could turn into a life instead of a secret.
We all pretend none of that is happening.
Dinner is warm. Lila gives me a full tour of every decoration she and Dallas “curated,” her word, which makes me suspicious about her YouTube history. Dallas serves roast and potatoes and cornbread, all of it comforting and a little too much.
We talk about school. About Ellie and her uncles. About how Rusty once stole an entire ham off the counter, and Maggie apparently “almost died” from yelling.
Whenever conversation lulls, Lila fills it. She tells me in great detail about a book she’s reading. “It’s about a horse detective, Miss Faith, he solves mysteries with his nose.” And then asks if I’ve ever been to a real city museum. When I say yes, her eyes go wide.
“I wanna go someday,” she says. “Daddy says maybe when I’m older, we can go see dinosaur bones.”
“He also says they’re probably haunted,” Dallas adds dryly.
Lila giggles. “He does not.”
“Tell her the truth, Dad.”
Dallas lifts one shoulder. “I said if any building was haunted, it’d be the one full of dead giant lizards.”
“They’re not lizards,” Lila and I say at the same time.
We blink at each other, then burst out laughing.
For a little while, the knot in my chest unravels. See? says a small voice in my head. You can exist here. You can laugh. You can eat food at a table where no one is silently evaluating you.
After dinner, Lila insists we all go to the living room to watch “just one cartoon” before bed, which turns into three because she’s very persuasive and I am very weak.
The rest of the ranch is quieter than I expected.
Boone and Rose are in the guest house with their kids.
Nash is “in town,” which could mean anything from helping at the feed store to flirting with the mayor’s office.
Clay’s gone back to the bunkhouse after practice.
He likes his space when he’s in rodeo mode.
And Maggie… Maggie apparently “turned in early,” probably not wanting to witness any awkward romance in her kitchen.
Lila falls asleep halfway through the third one, head in my lap, hand still tangled in the sleeve of her new jacket. Dallas appears with a blanket, and we coordinate a careful transfer—him scooping her up and me sliding out so she doesn’t wake.
He carries her down the hall, murmuring words I can’t hear. My heart squeezes at the sight of it. This big, capable man cradling his entire world in his arms like she’s nothing but air.
I hover awkwardly in the living room, suddenly hyperaware of how quiet the house is without her chatter.
When he comes back, he looks around automatically for something to do, some task, some distraction. When he doesn’t find one, his gaze lands on me instead.
“Drink?”
“Yes,” I say too fast. “Please. I mean… only if you’re having one.”
He huffs a little laugh. “Yeah, I could use one.”
We end up at the kitchen table with two mismatched glasses and a bottle of amber liquid.
“To Lila,” he says, lifting his glass.
“To Lila,” I echo, clinking mine against his.
The first sip burns, then settles warm. Courage in liquid form.
He watches me over the rim of his glass. “She was really happy you came.”
“I was really happy to come,” I say, then wince. “That sounded… you know what I mean.”
His mouth curves. “Yeah. I do.”
Silence folds between us. Not uncomfortable. Just heavy with everything we aren’t saying.
“I’m sorry I didn’t come back sooner,” I blurt. “I wanted to. I kept thinking about it and then talking myself out of it and then talking myself back into it and then… panicking. Which, fun fact, is not a productive cycle.”
He nods. “I get panic cycles.”
“I hated the thought of Lila thinking I forgot her,” I add. “I know what that feels like. To be forgotten. Or pushed aside. I never wanted to make her feel that way.”
“You fixed it,” he says simply. “You showed up. That counts.”
I stare down at my glass. “I’m trying to be better at that. Showing up.”
“How’s that going?” he asks gently.
I huff a humorless laugh. “You’re looking at the work in progress.”
He tilts his head, studying me, reading a file he’s had open for years and just found a new page.
“How’s Charlotte?”
I smile, softer. “Good. Back at school. She fills entire rooms with energy and then just exits, and it’s like someone turned the lights off. I miss her.”
“You could call her,” he says. “FaceTime. Whatever the kids are doing these days.”
“I do. But it’s not the same.” I sigh. “She’s forward. She has this clear sense of what she wants. Fashion design. Moving to New York, maybe. She has a path. And I’m wandering around in the dark with a busted flashlight.”
His mouth twitches. “You always liked a metaphor.”
“I always liked dramatic metaphors,” I correct. “Big difference.”
He taps the rim of his glass with one finger. “Did you ever have a path? Before all this?”
I think back.
“I thought I did,” I say. “When I first followed my dad to the city, it was like stepping into this huge, shiny machine. He got me a job with his friend’s company, in event planning.
Weddings, corporate parties, charity galas.
I told myself I liked it because I was good at it.
I could make things look perfect. Perfect place settings, perfect lighting, perfect backdrops for perfect Instagram photos. ”
I pause, remembering the endless checklists. The “fix this, Faith,” emails at 2 a.m.
“But?” he prompts softly.
“But it was all for other people’s stories,” I say.
“Other people’s versions of special. I was just arranging things.
Making sure the champagne bottles all turned the same way, and the centerpieces matched the client’s brand aesthetic.
” I make a face. “Do you know how many times I’ve heard the phrase ‘on brand’ in the last two years?
My soul evaporated and didn’t even leave a note. ”
He smiles, small and real. “Yeah. Sounds like you.”
“What, sad and dramatic?”
“Creative and underappreciated,” he corrects.
The words land somewhere low.
I toy with the stem of my glass. “I liked the parts where I got to design stuff. Color palettes, themes, table layouts. Tiny, pretty details that made people feel something when they walked into a room. But there was never time for that. Not really. It was all rush and polish and smile for the cameras.”
“And now?” he asks. “What do you want?”
That’s the question, isn’t it?
“I don’t know,” I admit. “I thought I did. I thought I wanted the life my father approved of. I thought I wanted… safe. Fancy safe. Respectable safe. And then I stood in that room in my wedding dress and realized I’d built an entire life I didn’t even recognize.”
I take another sip, the burn welcome.
“I want…” I try again. “I want to do something that feels real. That doesn’t just look good from the outside but actually is good. I want to use my brain and my creativity for something that isn’t just… a glossy brochure.”
He’s quiet.
Then, with a playful smirk, “You could run social media for the ranch.”
I blink. “What?”
He lifts a shoulder, like it’s no big deal. “We’ve been meaning to get better about that anyway. Nash keeps threatening to make a TikTok for the cows. Mom doesn’t know what a TikTok is, but she’s already against it.”
A laugh escapes me. “She should be. Nash plus the internet is a threat to national security.”
“Exactly,” he says. “We could use someone who knows what they’re doing. Someone who can make things look pretty and… what’s the word… marketable.”
I raise a humorous brow. “You want me to post pictures of you mucking out stalls with inspirational quotes?”
“I was thinking less of that and more… promoting the rodeos, the guest cabin, the seasonal events. The stuff that keeps this place running.” His gaze softens.
“You know this town. Better than half the people in it. You know what makes it special. You could help show that off. In a way that actually fits you too.”
The idea hits me as a sudden shaft of sunlight.
I picture it: photos of Buckhorn Lake at sunrise. Stories of rodeo days and barn dances. Videos of Lila feeding a foal, of Ellie at the cookie swap, of Rusty stealing someone’s biscuit. Captions that don’t sound like press releases, but real people talking about a real place.
“People like that small town, cozy, ‘wish I lived there’ stuff,” I murmur, brain already whirring.
“We could build a calendar of content. Seasonal posts, event highlights, behind-the-scenes ranch life, family spotlights. You could do collaborations with the bakery, the diner, the church, the motel…”
I catch myself mid ramble, cheeks heating.
“Sorry,” I say quickly. “I went full marketing goblin there. I know it’s a joke.”
Dallas is watching me, a slow, genuine smile spreading across his face. Not the polite one. Not the guarded one. The one that hits me straight in the knees.
“Don’t apologize,” he says. “I like seeing your brain light up.”
Heat crawls up my neck. “It’s just an idea.”
“It’s a good idea,” he says. “And for the record? I didn’t say it all as a joke.”
“What?”
“The social media,” he says. “I was only half-teasing.”
I look down at my glass, fingers pressing a little too tightly around it.
Stay, the idea whispers.
You could stay.
You could build something here that’s yours.
You could wake up and know what you’re doing and who you’re doing it with.
I picture mornings at the ranch, coffee on the porch with Dallas before chores, Lila sleeping warm in her pajamas. Afternoons taking photos of the horses with a real camera instead of a cracked phone, evenings scheduling posts while Dallas finishes paperwork across the table.
I picture having roots that aren’t just in other people’s expectations.
I picture him.
The future doesn’t look like a locked door or a blank wall. It looks like a road. A messy one, with potholes and snowdrifts and probably Lawson-related drama, but a road I could pick.
Running back to the city, to my father, to the life I walked away from, feels like putting the veil back over my face and pretending I didn’t already tear it off.
Staying, figuring everything out, that feels like the bravest, most reckless thing I could do.
And Lord help me…
It’s never appealed to me more.