Dallas
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Bad news doesn’t usually arrive with a siren.
Today, it’s my phone buzzing in my pocket while I’m halfway through a stack of invoices Boone swears are “simple.”
Nothing about this week has been simple.
I stare down at the screen, and my stomach tightens, like it already knows whatever’s on the other side is going to hurt.
It’s Faith’s mom.
Caroline’s voice is tight when I pick up, careful in the way people get when they’re trying not to crack.
“Dallas,” she says.
“Caroline.” I clear my throat, push back from the desk. Lila’s crayons are scattered near the edge, a half-finished drawing of a horse and a stick figure of me with a too-big hat. I keep my eyes on it. “Any news?”
There’s a beat of silence. Too long.
My heart drops anyway.
“Charlotte called me,” Caroline says finally. “She… she heard from William.”
The name hits. Even just hearing it out loud makes my insides go hard and sharp, a switch flipping.
“And?” My voice comes out rougher than I mean it to.
Caroline exhales. “He says Faith is back in the city.”
I stop breathing.
Just… stop. The air locks up in my lungs because my brain can’t decide if it should take that as relief or panic.
Back in the city could mean she’s alive. It could mean she walked out of this. It could mean she chose to leave. Chose to go back.
It could also mean…
“Dallas?” Caroline wavers. “Are you there?”
“Yeah.” I swallow. “I’m here.”
“She didn’t call me,” Caroline says, the words sharp with disbelief. “She didn’t text. She hasn’t…” Her voice catches, and when she speaks again, it’s lower. “William’s saying she went back willingly. That she… missed Evan.”
My grip tightens on the phone until my knuckles ache.
Missed Evan.
I picture Faith’s face on my porch in December. White with cold, eyes wide, lace tangled around her legs, panic shaking through her. I picture her flinching every time her phone buzzed. I picture her mother turning that phone face down. She was closing a box on a venomous thing.
Missed Evan.
It doesn’t fit.
It doesn’t fit so hard that it makes my teeth grind.
“Do you believe him?” I ask, even though I already know the answer.
“No,” Caroline says instantly. “No. I don’t. Charlotte doesn’t either. But Charlotte’s scared. She said William sounded pleased.”
My stomach turns.
Pleased is not a word that belongs anywhere near Faith. It means he’s got control again.
“Where exactly is she?” I ask. “Did he say?”
“He didn’t give an address,” Caroline says. “Just that she’s ‘home’ and they’re ‘handling it privately.’ He told Charlotte Faith is happy. He said she asked for space.”
Space.
That word again. It’s a blanket you throw over a problem until it stops looking so bad.
My jaw clenches hard enough to hurt. “Faith didn’t ask for space. Not from you.”
Caroline’s breath hitches on the other end. “I know.”
The office suddenly feels too small. Too warm. The walls are pressing in. I shove my chair back and stand, pacing between the desk and the window, boots thudding on the worn wood.
Outside, snow drifts, the world pretending it’s calm.
Inside me, everything is a storm.
“Dallas,” Caroline says, quieter now, “I don’t know what to do.”
That does something to me. Hearing it. Because Caroline Ross isn’t weak. She’s not soft in the way people mistake for fragile. She’s a woman who survived William Ross and still managed to raise two daughters with gentleness in her hands.
If she doesn’t know what to do, it’s because something is wrong enough to shake her.
“I’m going to call Faith,” I say.
Caroline hesitates. “What if… what if he’s watching her phone?”
“I’ll call anyway.”
“What if she did go back?” Caroline asks softly, and I can hear how much it costs her to say it. Letting the possibility out loud makes it more real. “What if she…”
What if she chose it?
What if she’s decided Buckhorn was a mistake, and I was a distraction, and she’s gone back to the life that fits on paper?
My chest constricts.
I could survive that. Maybe. I’ve survived a lot.
But surviving and being okay aren’t the same thing.
“She wouldn’t vanish like that,” I say, because I have to believe it. “Not without telling you. Not without… something.”
Caroline’s voice breaks just a fraction. “I hope you’re right.”
“I’ll call you back,” I promise, and hang up before the knot in my throat turns into something I can’t hold.
I don’t give myself time to think.
Thinking is dangerous right now. Thinking turns into pictures I don’t want. Thinking turns into blame.
I just… need some air.
I’m halfway to the front door when Boone stops me.
“Where are you going?”
He’s in the doorway, broad shoulders filling the frame, a mug in one hand, his expression already alert. Rose is behind him, Wyatt on her hip, Ellie tugging at her sleeve with a paper snowflake.
My throat tightens at the sight of them. Life continuing, kids asking for snacks, the world refusing to stop spinning just because mine might. I think of Lila at home, my mother keeping her busy so that she doesn’t see the mess I am.
“Caroline called,” I say. “William’s claiming Faith is back in the city.”
Boone’s face goes still. Rose’s eyes widen.
“Back?” Rose repeats.
“Yeah.” I drag a hand over my jaw. “He says she went willingly.”
Boone’s mouth hardens. “Bullshit.”
“I know. I just… I need a moment, then I’ll call her.”
“What’s the plan?”
I shrug at Boone helplessly. “I guess I just need to see where her head is first. Then I’ll plan.”
If Faith answers, I don’t know if I’ll be relieved or wrecked. I don’t know if she’ll be crying or calm. I don’t know if she’ll tell me to leave her alone.
I don’t know if it’ll be her.
“If she answers,” I say slowly, “I’m going to ask her one question.”
Boone nods once. “Are you safe?”
“Yeah,” I breathe. “That.”
Rose’s gaze softens. “Dallas…”
I don’t let her finish, because whatever she’s about to say will crack me when I’m barely holding together as it is.
I step outside into the cold and dial.
Straight to voicemail.
My hands start shaking, and I hate it. I hate that I can fix a fence line in a blizzard and wrestle a thousand-pound animal out of a bad situation, but I can’t stop my own body from reacting when I think about Faith being on the other end of a phone and not being able to reach her.
“Come on,” I mutter into the cold, breath fogging. “Come on, Faith.”
I call again, and again, until I can’t pretend I’m doing anything but torturing myself.
The last time it goes straight to voicemail, I just stand there, staring at the snow-covered yard, the ranch quiet around me, trying to remind me how solid feels.
My fingers hover over the screen.
I swallow hard and hit record before I can talk myself out of it.
The beep sounds too loud.
I close my eyes.
When I speak, my voice comes out low and rough. It’s been scraped raw by the last forty-eight hours.
“Faith.” I pause, because saying her name is stepping onto thin ice. “It’s me.”
My breath shudders out.
“If you’re back in the city because you want to be…” The words catch in my throat, and I force them through anyway. “Then… okay. I won’t chase you. I won’t make this harder. But you need to tell your mom. You need to tell her yourself.”
I swallow, throat burning.
“And if you’re not there because you chose it…” I stop, the truth heavy as lead. “If you can’t talk, if someone’s listening, if you’re… if you’re stuck…”
I open my eyes, staring out at the snow, the pale sky, the fence lines stretching toward the trees.
“You don’t have to explain anything,” I say, turning steadier, because I can’t afford to fall apart on a voicemail. “Just give me something. Anything. Call me and hang up. Text one word. Use someone else’s phone. I don’t care.”
My chest aches, a deep, dull pain that doesn’t have a place to go.
“I’m not mad at you,” I add, quieter now. “I’m just… scared. And I don’t want you alone.”
My fingers tighten around the phone.
“If you want me to come get you, I will. If you want me to stop, I will. But you have to tell me you’re safe.”
Another pause, longer this time, because I can’t say the next part without it wrecking me.
“I can take you leaving,” I whisper. “I can’t take not knowing.”
My throat constricts. I swallow hard.
“Faith,” I say again, and this time her name is a prayer. “Please.”
I end the message and just stand there, staring at my screen as if it might light up with her name.
It doesn’t.
I honestly don’t know if it ever will again.