5. Faith
CHAPTER FIVE
Faith
I jolt upright.
My heart is pounding so hard it hurts, my lungs dragging in quick, shallow breaths that don’t seem to do anything. Sweat sticks my shirt to my skin, my hair to my neck. I don’t know where I am, only that I’m trapped under something heavy.
I claw at the covers like I can fight my way out.
The room swims into focus.
Faded quilt. Low dresser. A crooked rodeo poster half peeling off the wall. The window is rimmed with frost, winter light leaking around the curtain. I know this room, even though I’ve never slept in it before.
McCoy Ranch.
The breath I suck in is sharp enough to hurt.
“Oh,” I whisper, and flop back against the pillow. “Right. That.”
It’s not a nightmare. Or, it is, but it’s the kind that doesn’t end when you wake up.
I squeeze my eyes shut, press the heels of my hands into them until tiny white bursts bloom behind my lids.
I let myself pretend I’m back in my tiny apartment with the ugly beige carpet, the humming mini fridge, and the faint smell of burned coffee.
There’s a silk dress hanging on the back of the closet door, but I haven’t put it on yet. I still have time.
But when I open my eyes, it’s not my apartment. The air is cold in that particular old-house way, and the sheets smell of detergent and hay and something that’s just… McCoy. My grandmother’s locket lies cool against my skin, the chain twisted from sleep.
Yesterday slams into me all at once.
The dress. My father’s fist on the bridal suite door.
Evan’s card. The way my chest felt like it was caving in, the walls closing in with it.
My own face in the mirror—a stranger in tulle.
My hand on the doorknob. The bite of winter.
Headlights and snow, and that horrible slippery moment where the car stops listening to you and starts listening to gravity instead.
Dallas’s face, looming over me in the dark and steam, blue eyes wide.
“Oh no,” I say to the empty room. “Oh shit, what did I do?”
I shove the covers down and sit up too fast. The room tilts before it rights itself. My head throbs dully, a hangover without the fun part. I swing my legs over the side of the bed.
The floor is cold against my socked feet.
My wedding dress lies in a heap on a chair, a white, crumpled rejection of an entire life. The sight of it makes my stomach flip. It’s ridiculous that a pile of fabric can look wounded, but this one does. I’ve broken some sacred, frilly oath.
I don’t know what time it is. The light says late morning or early afternoon; my body says I could sleep another twelve years if someone let me. My brain says absolutely not, get up, fix this.
I search for my phone automatically, then remember the arc it made when I hurled it out the window, and the satisfying, stupid finality of it disappearing into the dark and the snow. My stomach drops.
“Right,” I mutter. “I did that too.”
Without the phone, there’s no buffer between me and all the people whose lives I just detonated.
Evan.
My father.
The guests. The florist. The caterer. The hundreds of tiny cogs that went into building that glittering, perfect day I walked away from.
I press my fingertips to my temple and breathe, but the panic is already rising.
Evan is unpleasant, but predictable. He’s going to be furious, humiliated.
He’ll talk about his reputation and optics and how hard it is to rebuild trust with investors when your fiancée vanishes minutes before the wedding.
He’ll probably send some long, beautifully structured email about my “emotional volatility” and how it’s best we go our separate ways.
He’ll repaint the whole mess as his decision. For control. For appearances.
I can handle Evan.
It’s my father I’m terrified of.
He loves to punish.
I don’t mean he’s going to hit me. He never has. That would be too simple, too crude. William Ross doesn’t raise his voice or his hand if he can help it. He hurts people with strategy and patience.
Images flick through my mind, fast and ugly.
The time his business partner of fifteen years dared to say no to a deal he wanted.
The man’s son was up for a promotion at the firm.
Dad didn’t yell. He just made a few calls, and the promotion disappeared.
Suddenly, there were whispers about “attitude problems,” and the guy was moved to some windowless office in accounting.
Dad poured himself a drink that night and told me, almost cheerfully, “No one gets to walk away without understanding what they’ve lost, Faith. That’s how you keep order.”
Order.
Or the time our neighbor in Dallas, Mrs. Collins, got into a legal dispute over a property line with him.
She was in the wrong, technically. The fence had been a few inches over on his side for years.
He could have let it go; they’d been friendly, in that country club kind of way.
Instead, he took her to court. He won, of course.
She lost a strip of land, thousands in legal fees, and every one of her friends who didn’t want to risk choosing the losing side.
“She’ll think twice before trying to outmaneuver me again,” he’d said at dinner. I was young and still thought, somewhere in my stupid heart, that being on his good side meant I’d never end up like Mrs. Collins.
Then there was the intern who had respectfully corrected him in a meeting once. Dad smiled, thanked him, and afterwards told his assistant not to renew the kid’s contract.
“He can be right somewhere else,” he said. “We don’t reward people who embarrass me.”
My chest tightens.
I didn’t just embarrass him yesterday. I humiliated him. In front of his friends. His colleagues. Investors. Half of Dallas high society.
I didn’t show up to the life he picked, after he spent months bragging about what a perfect match he’d arranged.
“What is he going to do?” I whisper, and the fear that’s been lurking under the adrenaline finally sinks its teeth in.
He can call every contact he’s ever handed my name to and pull it back. He can poison wells I didn’t even know I was going to need to drink from. He can make sure no one in his world touches me professionally again, and in his world, that’s basically the whole map I’ve been living on.
And then there’s Mom. Charlotte.
What has he told them?
I swing my feet restlessly, my heel bumping the nightstand beside the bed. There’s a little bottle there. Water. And Ibuprofen.
My throat tightens. Dallas must have left it there.
The small, practical kindness almost undoes me. I unscrew the cap with trembling fingers and swallow two pills with half the water, the coolness sliding down and settling in my stomach like a stone.
I can’t stay in this bed. If I stay here, I’m going to spiral right down into some hole I won’t be able to crawl back out of.
My brain keeps offering me different angles on the same disaster, like it’s flipping through channels.
My father’s face when he realized I had left, Evan’s expression cooling from confusion to fury, guests whispering about the runaway bride as the music kept playing.
Somewhere in the midst of that, another smell sneaks in, soft and insistent.
Cinnamon. Sugar. Something savory. Ham, maybe? And coffee. Definitely coffee.
Christmas.
The realization hits in a weird, disjointed way. I know it’s Christmas, technically. I knew it last night, in the truck, in the snow, in the panic. But feeling it is different. The house hums with it, with that crowded, cozy energy of too many people and too much food and not enough chairs.
Once upon a time, McCoy Christmas meant I’d already be here by dawn, helping Maggie.
I’d watch her roll dough and tell stories about the boys as kids while Rusty, younger and less gray, lurked around the table, hoping for scraps.
There’d be music playing from that same radio on the windowsill, some old crooner or a country Christmas album on repeat.
My chest aches in a different way now.
I stand slowly, testing my balance. The room tilts only a little this time. My body feels heavy, like every muscle is sore from clenching. I pull my fingers through my hair, wincing at the tangles, and catch sight of myself in the dresser mirror.
I look better than last night, which isn’t saying much.
My mascara is gone, either cried, washed, or pillow-smeared away.
The freckles across my nose are more visible without the makeup.
My cheeks are still too pale. The T-shirt and flannel hang off me, the sweatpants rolled twice at the waist and cuffed at the ankles.
I look like I’ve been playing dress up in someone else’s life.
I blow out a breath.
“Well, Faith,” I tell my reflection. “You wanted real. This is about as real as it gets.”
I grab my locket, thumb brushing over the tiny hinge.
“Gran,” I whisper, because it makes me feel less alone, “if you’ve got any more of that wisdom tucked away, now would be a great time.”
Don’t let anyone talk you out of your own heart, sugar.
Her voice echoes in my head, soft and matter-of-fact. It doesn’t magically fix anything, but it steadies me just enough to open the door.
The hallway is cool, the wood under my socks smooth and familiar. The smells are stronger out here, rich and comforting. Somewhere, a clock ticks. Somewhere else, someone laughs—high and bright and unmistakably a little girl.
I freeze.
Of course there are kids here. I saw the stockings and everything. But hearing them is different. Hearing them now, on this day, in this house, when my own life is in pieces at my feet, hits me in a strange, tender place.
Voices drift down the hall as I move quietly toward them.
“…told you, if you eat another cookie before lunch, your stomach’s gonna hurt.” That’s Maggie, stern and fond all at once.
“But Nanaaa, Santa would want me to,” a little voice argues.
Rusty barks. Something clatters. Nash swears softly, then corrects himself when Maggie snaps his name. Someone else laughs. Boone, I think, that low rumble like distant thunder.