“Yes.”
“And he’s angry.”
“Yes.”
I pace a short line across the rug and back. “Do you think he came for her?”
The color drains out of her mom’s face. “We need help.”
“You mean?—”
“Yes,” she says firmly. “We need to call the police.”
My instinct flares. Part of me wants to keep this contained, to search every road myself, to fix it with muscle and persistence the way I fix everything else. But this isn’t a busted fence or a missing cow.
This is Faith.
“You’re right,” I say. “We do.”
She reaches for the phone again, hands steadier now that the decision’s made. I stay where I am, close enough to feel useful, useless enough to hate it.
As she dials, my gaze drifts to the window, out toward the quiet street. Snow drifts down, softening everything it touches.
Come on, Faith,I think, the worry finally breaking through all the restraint.Wherever you are… just be okay. Just at least let us know you’re okay.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Faith
January 23rd
The first thingI 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.
