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.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Dallas
January 24th
The sun comesup whether you’ve slept or not.
That’s the first lesson ranch life teaches you, right alongside don’t stand behind a horse you don’t know and never trust a gate latch that looks “mostly fine.” Morning doesn’t check in. It doesn’t ask if you’re okay. It just shows up, pale and cold and relentless. It’s got a job to do, and your feelings aren’t on the schedule.
I’ve been awake for every damn minute of it.
The night at the station plays on a loop behind my eyes. Fluorescent lights that made everyone look tired and guilty, a desk that smelled of old coffee and bad decisions, and an officer with a practiced voice telling us things such asprotocolandwaitandshe’s an adult.
As if being an adult makes you harder to disappear.
As if being an adult means no one can take you.
“Mr. McCoy,” he’d said, leaning back in his chair, settling in for a story he’d heard too many times. “We need to give it some time. People cool off. They take a drive. They come back.”
Faith’s mother had gone so still beside me I could feel the air change. Her hands were clasped tight in her lap, knuckles pale.
“She didn’t take a drive. She was waiting for Dallas.”
The officer had shrugged. “Sometimes it’s best to give a young woman space.”
Space.
Now it’s morning, and the sky outside my kitchen window is a washed-out gray-blue. The cold is sharper than yesterday, the kind that makes your breath feel like it’s scraping your throat on the way out.
Rusty thumps his tail once from his bed near the mudroom, then sighs. He’s disappointed in me for still being upright.
I’m disappointed too, buddy.
My hands shake when I pour another mug of coffee, the bitterness hitting my tongue as a dare.
Get up. Move. Act.
