I can do that.
Right?
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Faith
January 22nd
My phone is vibratinglike 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 whodon’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?
