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.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Faith
January 25th
Nothing feels real anymore.
That’s the strangest part. Not the fear, not even the bone-deep exhaustion, but the way everything around me feels like it’s happening to someone else. Like I’ve stepped a half inch to the left of my own life, and now I’m watching it play out through thick glass, muffled and distorted. Sounds come late. Sensations feel dull. My body moves, but I don’t quite feel like I’m inside it.
The city looks wrong.
It’s all sharp angles and mirrored surfaces, glass buildings scraping at the sky like they’re trying to prove something. Traffic hums below in a constant, aggressive rush, horns snapping at one another like teeth. Everything here is loud and fast and unforgiving, but at the same time, I feel frozen. Stuck in place while the world keeps moving without me, like I missed a step and fell out of sync.
My father’s office occupies the top floor of a building so tall it makes my stomach dip when I look out the window. I used to think the view was impressive. Proof of success. Power. Now itjust makes me dizzy, like if I stare too long, I might tip forward and disappear.
William Ross’s world is built to remind everyone that gravity bends toward him.
