33. Faith
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Faith
The first thing I notice is the silence.
Not the peaceful kind. Not Buckhorn snow hush, where the world feels padded and soft around the edges. This is the kind of silence that happens when you’ve stepped into the wrong room at the wrong time, and your body knows it before your brain catches up.
Evan isn’t yelling yet.
That’s how I know I’m in real trouble.
His hands are locked around the steering wheel like it’s the only thing keeping him from coming apart. His jaw is clenched so tight I can hear his molars grind when the car hits a bump.
The inside of the SUV smells like his life. Clean leather. Expensive cologne. That faint, sterile scent of “success” that always made me feel like I needed to sit up straighter and stop taking up so much air.
I’m in the passenger seat with my coat still on, purse in my lap like a shield that wouldn’t stop a Nerf dart, let alone a man who has decided he’s entitled to my existence.
Outside the windows, Buckhorn slides by in little flashes. Dark houses, snowbanks, a lamppost haloed in ice. Familiar and suddenly far away, like I’m watching my life through glass.
My heart is doing that awful sprinting thing again. Like it thinks that if it beats fast enough, it can outrun this.
“You know what’s funny?” Evan says.
His voice is calm. Controlled.
I swallow and taste metal. “Evan—”
“No.” He doesn’t even look at me. His eyes stay on the road. “Let me talk. You’ve not earned the right to talk.”
I open my mouth anyway, because I’ve always been stupidly hopeful that the right sentence will make men like him soften.
“I didn’t mean to—”
“You didn’t mean to?” His laugh is short and sharp, like a snapped branch. “You left me at the altar, Faith.”
My throat tightens instantly. My eyes burn.
He keeps going, still calm, still measured, like he’s presenting quarterly results.
“You didn’t just leave. You humiliated me in front of everyone that matters.”
There it is. The word.
Humiliated.
Like I’m not a person. Like I’m a press release that went wrong.
“I didn’t do it to you,” I whisper. “I didn’t leave to hurt you.”
Evan finally turns his head. His eyes are bright, furious, and somehow offended, because I’m refusing to keep playing my part.
“Do you have any idea what people are saying about us?” he snaps. “Do you know what your father is dealing with because of you?”
My stomach drops. My father’s name always does that to me, like gravity lives inside it.
“I don’t… I don’t want to know.”
“Well I do,” Evan says. “Because I’m the one cleaning up after your tantrum.”
Tantrum.
I flinch like he hit me, because that’s the word my father uses when I have an emotion that inconveniences him.
Evan’s hand lifts off the wheel for half a second, palm up, like he’s explaining something simple to a child.
“You don’t get to do that,” he says. “Not when there are real consequences.”
The car makes a turn I don’t recognize. The streetlights thin out. My palms go damp inside my gloves.
“Where are we going?”
“Home,” he says.
My pulse spikes. “My mom’s house is home.”
He smiles without warmth. “Don’t be dramatic.”
I look down at my phone in my lap, thumb hovering. My mom. Dallas. Someone. Anyone.
Evan notices. Of course he does. Evan notices everything that affects him.
“Don’t,” he warns.
I freeze, my thumb suspended above the screen.
My whole body goes cold.
I hate this part.
I hate the part where my nervous system turns into a small animal, and the world becomes a list of exits and threats and thoughts on whether it would be better to scream now or wait until there are other people around.
“You followed me,” I whisper, because the truth has been clawing at me since the second his car rolled up beside me.
Evan’s jaw flexes. “I found you.”
“No. You tracked me.”
He makes a sound like he’s tired. Like I’m exhausting.
“I had to,” he says. “Do you know how long it took? You disappeared. You think you can just vanish and people don’t look for answers?”
My stomach twists. “Why were you taking pictures?”
That finally cracks him.
His calm fractures at the edges, and heat comes through.
“Because you lied,” he snaps. “Because you were going to make me the bad guy. Because you were going to spin some story about how I’m controlling or insensitive or—”
“I wasn’t!” I protest. “I was trying to leave quietly!”
He laughs again, harsh. “Quietly? You ran out of a Christmas wedding in a gown my mother watched you pick out.”
My chest tightens so hard it hurts. “Don’t bring your mother into this.”
Evan’s eyes flash. “You don’t get to set boundaries now.”
The words slam into me.
Because he’s right about one thing: I haven’t set boundaries with him. Or with my father. Not until the wedding. Not until Buckhorn. Not until my body finally screamed loud enough that I couldn’t ignore it anymore.
I force air into my lungs. “I didn’t cheat on you.”
Evan’s grip tightens on the wheel. “Oh?”
His tone turns sweet.
Poison sweet.
“Because the pictures say something else.”
Ice floods my veins.
Evan’s eyes flick to me with satisfaction, and that makes my skin crawl.
“Your cowboy,” he says, as if the word is dirty. “Your little nostalgic fling. You really went for it, didn’t you? Nothing says ‘emotionally unstable’ like running from a wedding and then sleeping with the first person who made you feel special.”
My breath stutters.
The barn wall. The heat. Dallas’s mouth on mine. The way I had felt safe and wanted and alive.
Shame crashes over it, hot and suffocating, not because I regret Dallas, but because Evan is dragging it into the light like a trophy he stole.
“You don’t get to talk about that,” I whisper.
Evan’s laugh is sharp. “I do when you made it my problem.”
My vision blurs. Tears spill before I can stop them, and I hate that my body always does this, betrays me. Gives men like him a visible sign they’ve landed a hit.
He glances at me, and his mouth twists. “Damn. Here we go.”
“I’m not…” I choke. “I’m not crying because of you.”
“Sure,” he says. “You’re crying because you feel guilty.”
“I don’t feel guilty for leaving,” I say, and it comes out stronger than I expect. “I feel guilty that I ever let myself think I owed you…”
Evan slams his palm against the steering wheel.
The sound makes me flinch so hard my shoulders jerk.
“You owed me respect,” he snaps. “You owed me basic decency. You don’t get to waste a year of my life and walk away like it’s some cute self-discovery journey.”
Year.
He says it like a contract term.
Like he paid for access.
My throat tightens. “I didn’t waste your life.”
“You did,” he cries out, his control slipping. “Because I built a future around you. I made room for you. I defended you to people who thought you were just…”
Just what?
A small-town accessory? A daughter with connections? A pretty thing with a last name that looked good next to his?
I don’t ask. I don’t want the answer.
My phone buzzes in my lap, but Evan grabs it before I can do anything about it.
“No,” he growls. “You’re not answering it. And you’re not calling anyone. You’re going to listen to me.”
“Give it back.”
His eyes flare. “Faith—”
“Give it back.”
For a split second, I think he might actually do it.
Instead, he looks at it like it’s an insect, and then he brings it down against the dashboard. The screen spiderwebs instantly.
I make a sound that doesn’t feel human. “Evan!”
He slams it again. Harder.
The phone goes dark.
My whole body goes numb. My hands fly to my mouth. I’m shaking so badly my teeth chatter.
He tosses it into the cup holder like it’s nothing. Like he didn’t just cut my last thread to safety.
“You don’t get to summon reinforcements,” he murmurs. “Not tonight.”
Terror blooms in my chest, fast and hot.
“I… I didn’t want to hurt you,” I whisper, and I hate how small I sound.
Evan’s face turns toward me fully now, and his expression is not of love or hurt. It’s entitlement.
“You did everything to me,” he says. “You ruined me.”
I inhale, ragged. “You’re not ruined.”
He laughs, sharp and cruel. “Easy for you to say. You don’t have a reputation to protect.”
Something snaps inside me.
Maybe it’s exhaustion. Maybe it’s survival. Maybe it’s the last shred of the girl my grandma kept trying to preserve.
“I do,” I whisper. “I had one. I just didn’t realize it was never mine.”
Evan’s eyes narrow. “What does that mean?”
It means I built my whole life around making other people proud of me.
It means I confused obedience for love.
It means I’m sitting in a car with a man who thinks he can punish me back into place.
“I’m scared,” I say before I can stop myself.
Evan scoffs. “Of what? Consequences?”
“No,” I whisper. Tears slide down my cheeks, unstoppable. “Of you.”
Emotion flickers across his face.
Not regret.
Offense.
“How dare you?” he says quietly.
I let out a broken sound. “I didn’t want this. I never wanted it to be like this.”
Evan turns icy. “This is your fault.”
My throat burns. “Stop.”
“Your father is done with you,” he says, like he’s delivering the final verdict. “Do you understand that? He said if you don’t fix this, he will never speak to you again.”
The words land like a punch.
Even though I know my father’s love has always had conditions. Even though I know he’s only “proud” when I make him look good.
It still hurts.
Because a part of me is still ten years old, holding up a report card, waiting for him to smile.
My chest caves in. A sob tears out of me. I can’t hold it back.
Evan’s lip curls. “Damn, Faith. Crying again. You’re always like this. You always have to make yourself the victim.”
“I’m not a victim,” I whisper, shaking. “I’m just… I’m human.”
Evan shakes his head like I disgust him. “You’re a liability.”
The car turns again.
My stomach drops.
“Take me back,” I say quickly, desperation rising. “You need to take me back to my mom’s house.”
“You’re not in a state to make decisions.”
The exact phrase my father used the last time I cried in front of him.
I press my forehead to the cold window, breath fogging the glass.
My body is screaming at me to do something. To fight. To jump out. To claw.
But the roads are dark and empty, and I don’t have a phone, and I don’t know where we are, and fear makes you calculate in horrible, silent math.
I force myself to breathe.
In. Out.
Don’t panic. Don’t give him more.
Somehow, I need to get out of this.