29. Faith
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Faith
My phone is vibrating like it’s personally offended by my existence, which is rude considering I just convinced my body to sleep for five whole hours without waking up in a cold sweat.
Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.
I roll over, blink at the pale morning light leaking through my old curtains, and reach for it with the delusional optimism of a woman who briefly forgot she is currently the main character in a scandal my father is going to use as a weapon.
My thumb unlocks the screen.
And the air goes out of the room.
Notifications stack on top of each other like a Jenga tower built by someone with a grudge.
Wedding photos.
Not the beautiful ones. Not the soft focus “winter wonderland” shots the photographer probably charged enough to buy a small yacht. These are the kind taken by people who don’t care if the angle is flattering because the point isn’t to capture love.
It’s to capture evidence: me in the makeup chair in the early hours of the morning, me in the dress, smiling like a compliant, polished daughter.
And then newer shots, grainy and zoomed and cropped like someone’s trying to prove a crime, catching me in Buckhorn with Dallas at the diner, laughing with Jet, sitting in the rodeo bleachers.
This is a verdict.
And the accusation is perfectly packaged, perfectly simple, perfectly cruel:
Faith Ross is a life ruiner.
A cheater.
A humiliation.
A messy, unstable daughter who embarrassed her father in front of his clients and colleagues, and the kind of people who use the word “optics” without irony.
I lock the phone, like that will make it disappear, and stare at the quilt pooled over my legs. My hands are cold. My chest is tight. My heart is doing that frantic, rabbit-in-a-trap thing again.
I knew.
I knew this was coming the moment I walked out of that hotel.
The moment I drove away in my old navy pickup with my dress stuffed around me like a ridiculous snowdrift and my father’s calls buzzing, buzzing, buzzing, until I threw my phone out the car window because I couldn’t survive another second of his voice yanking on the leash.
I knew William Ross wasn’t going to let me leave quietly.
He doesn’t do quiet. He does control. He does narrative. He does consequences, and the worst part is that my brain still wants to call him Dad, like that word isn’t complicated enough to choke on.
I can hear him without even looking at the screen.
You humiliated me, Faith.
Do you understand what you’ve done?
Do you know who was in that room?
Do you know what this cost me?
Me, me, me.
His favorite hymn.
I press my fingertips into my eyes until I see stars.
Don’t panic. Don’t spiral. Don’t do that thing where you start calculating how to fix this like it’s a seating chart and not your entire life.
But my body is already reacting like it’s back in the city. Back in that glass and steel world where everything is bright and expensive and sharp-edged, and there is always a camera somewhere, watching, recording, documenting whether you’re behaving appropriately.
I feel sick to my stomach.
The phone buzzes again. I flinch like it’s a wasp.
I don’t look.
I can’t.
Because if I look, I’ll start doing what I always do: scrambling, fixing, apologizing, and finally shrinking.
And I am so tired of shrinking.
A soft knock comes at the door.
“Faith?” Mom’s voice is gentle, careful. Like she’s approaching a skittish horse.
I clear my throat. “Yeah.”
The door eases open, and she steps in, already dressed, hair pulled back, face lined with worry she’s trying to hide.
Her eyes flick to the phone. Then to my face.
She doesn’t ask what happened.
She already knows.
“He’s trying to scare you,” she murmurs.
My eyes burn. “It’s working.”
She squeezes. “Of course it is.”
I swallow hard. “I don’t want to leave the house.”
Mom’s mouth presses into a thin line.
“Okay.”
I blink at her. “Okay?”
“For right now,” she clarifies. “You’re allowed to be afraid. But you’re not allowed to let him trap you in this room.”
The panic spikes. “Mom—”
She cuts in softly, “Faith, sweetheart, listen to me.”
I look at her, and it’s like my body remembers what safety feels like.
“You are not a life ruiner,” she says. “You are a woman who finally stopped letting a man run her life.”
A sob catches in my throat. “He’ll tell everyone I cheated.”
Mom’s eyes flash. “Because the truth makes him look like the villain. And he can’t handle that.”
She stands and holds out her hand.
“Come on,” she says. “We’re taking a walk.”
My whole body recoils. “Mom, no. I can’t—”
“You can,” she says gently. “We’re not going far. Just air. Just movement. Just proof to your nervous system that the world outside this house is not your father.”
I stare at her hand like it’s a lifeline and a threat at the same time.
And because I am still her daughter in the way that matters, because she has always been the one person who could tell me I’m stronger than I feel, I take it.
Ten minutes later, I’m bundled in a coat, scarf wrapped up to my nose, hat pulled low, like I can disguise myself.
Mom walks beside me, her arm linked through mine, as if she’s physically anchoring me to the earth.
The cold hits my lungs and helps a little. Buckhorn winter is honest. It doesn’t pretend to be glamorous. It just is: sharp air, snow-crusted sidewalks, the smell of woodsmoke and someone’s breakfast bacon drifting from a chimney.
I keep my head down, eyes scanning for threats that aren’t really threats. Every passing truck feels like a spotlight.
My phone is still buzzing in my pocket. I refuse to touch it. It might as well be a live grenade.
We turn down Main Street.
And there it is.
Spurs Diner.
Red door chipped. Neon horseshoe sign flickering like it’s held together by pure stubbornness. Windows fogged from heat and coffee and people who have lived here their whole lives and still show up for pie like it’s church.
My heart stutters.
Because part of me wants to run.
And part of me wants to collapse into that booth like a woman coming home.
Mom squeezes my arm. “We’re going in.”
“I don’t—”
“You do,” she says. “Because if Jet finds out from someone else, she’ll drive her car through our house.”
That gets a laugh out of me. Small. Wobbly. But real.
We push through the door.
Warmth spills over us. Bacon grease and coffee and cinnamon and comfort.
The bell jingles overhead, and suddenly every nerve in my body lights up, convinced the whole diner is going to turn and point and shout: There she is.
But instead…
“Faith?”
Jet’s voice slices through the noise.
I look up, and she’s already moving, towel slung over her shoulder, curls escaping her messy bun, eyeliner perfect.
Her eyes lock on mine.
And for a half second, her face does something complicated. Shock, anger, worry, all of it colliding.
Then she’s across the space and grabbing me by the shoulders like she’s checking for broken bones.
“Are you okay?” she demands. “What the hell is going on?”
I open my mouth, but what comes out is, “I’m… trying. It’s… my father.”
Jet makes a sound in the back of her throat that is pure protective fury.
She looks past me to Mom, nods once like she understands everything she needs to, then turns back to me and says, very clearly, like she’s addressing my father through the universe:
“Okay, well, tell me everything. Let me know what that man has done now.”
My eyes sting.
Martha Lou appears from behind the counter like an avenging angel in an apron, her hair pinned up in its usual tornado pattern.
She takes one look at my face and the tremble in my hands, and her expression hardens.
“Oh, honey,” she says gently. “Come here.”
I flinch, because I’m not used to being offered softness without conditions.
Martha Lou ignores that flinch like she’s been dealing with stubborn women for fifty years, and she’s not impressed by my trauma responses.
My fingers tighten around my phone like it might bite. I hesitate, shame flaring automatically, then unlock the screen and angle it toward Jet.
“This,” I say hoarsely. “This is what he’s doing.”
Jet’s jaw goes rigid. She scrolls once. Twice. Her thumb stops hard against the screen.
“Oh,” she says quietly.
That’s the sound she makes right before she burns something down.
My stomach drops.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper automatically, because my body still thinks apologizing is how you survive.
Martha Lou’s eyes narrow. “Don’t you apologize to me.”
Jet plants her hands on her hips. “Or to anyone in this diner.”
Mom is quiet but firm. “Faith.”
I swallow, throat tight. “I just… everyone—”
Jet cuts in. “Everyone can choke.”
Martha Lou nods approvingly. “Amen.”
A laugh breaks out of me, small, startled, damp with tears, and Jet’s face softens like she’s won something.
She steers me toward a booth without asking, sliding in beside me like she’s physically blocking the world.
Mom sits across from us. Martha Lou hovers for one second, then slaps a menu down in front of me like it’s a protective talisman.
“You’re eating,” she declares. “And if anyone looks at you sideways, I’ll throw hot coffee on ’em.”
I blink. “Martha Lou—”
“I mean it,” she says, dead serious. “I’ve been waiting my whole life to use violence for justice. Don’t deprive me.”
Jet leans in. “Also, for the record, half this town hates your father on principle.”
My heart jolts. “What?”
Jet snorts. “He’s a suit. He talks down to people. He treated your mom like an inconvenience. And he looks at Buckhorn like it’s a stain on the map.”
She taps the table, eyes fierce. “This is not the city, Faith.”
And that lands like a full-body shiver, because she’s right.
In the city, I was always alone.
There were crowds everywhere, but nobody belonged to anyone.
Everyone kept to themselves. Everyone was busy.
Everyone was polished. If you were messy, you hid it.
If you were scared, you swallowed it. If you were hurting, you smiled and showed up anyway because no one cared unless it inconvenienced them.
My father thrived there, while I disappeared.
But here…
Here, the diner smells like safety and grease and people who will yell at you and feed you and protect you in the same breath.
Here, my mother sits across from me like a shield.
Here, Jet’s knee bumps mine under the table like she’s reminding me I exist.
Here, Martha Lou is prepared to commit mild assault in my honor.
It’s absurd.
It’s overwhelming.
It’s… everything I forgot was possible.
I stare down at the menu, but I can’t read the words because my vision is blurry.
“What if he comes here?” I whisper, because my fear doesn’t disappear just because someone offers pie. “What if he shows up and—”
Martha Lou’s hand plants on the table with a decisive thump.
“Then he’s gonna learn Buckhorn has rules,” she says.
Jet nods, eyes bright with the kind of anger that has always made her dangerous in the best way. “And rule number one is: we don’t let rich men bully our girls.”
Mom reaches across the table and covers my hand.
“You’re not alone,” she says softly.
My throat closes.
Because in the city, I always was.
Even when I was surrounded by people. Even when I was dressed up. Even when I was engaged and technically “winning.”
Alone in a glass building, staring at my father’s reflection in every window.
Alone in ballrooms, making other people’s happiness look effortless while mine disappeared.
Alone in a wedding dress, trying not to faint.
But here, in this booth, with coffee and heat and Jet’s outrage and Martha Lou’s blunt protection and my mother’s steady hand…
I feel my chest loosen.
Maybe I’m not going to be swallowed whole.
I lift my chin and inhale the warm air.
Okay, Dad, I think. You don’t get to own me just because you’re loud.
Not anymore.