This is bad.
This is very, very bad.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Faith
December 26th
I wake to wind.
Not the gentle kind that whispers at windows. No, the kind that punches the house with open palms, rattling the siding, whistling through old seams in the wood. The kind of wind that meansstorm.
I roll onto my side and brace for the panic that slammed into me yesterday morning.
It comes. A sharp, bright rush:Evan. Dad. The wedding. The fallout. The fury.
I’m frozen in that feeling, heart throbbing against my ribs. My fingers clutch the quilt like someone might swoop in and pry me out of the bed.
But it doesn’t last as long as it did yesterday.
Hopefully, every day it’ll get a little easier.
I sit up, pressing my palms to my eyes until the worst of the adrenaline drains out of me. When I lower my hands, my breath fogs in the chilly air. The storm must’ve dropped temperatures even lower overnight.
Eventually, I gather up the effort to climb out of bed, tug on the sweats Dallas gave me, and pad to the window. The cold bit of the floorboards shoots fire up my calves, waking me fully.
I pull back the curtain.
My breath catches.
The world is white. Not “winter postcard” white. Not “light dusting” white. The ranch is buried under drifts that swallow the yard fences. Snow still whips sideways in sheets, thick and ferocious.
The barn roof looks half-blurred by wind-driven snow. I can’t even see the road.
“Oh wow,” I whisper.
A figure trudges through the snow toward the barn, shoulders hunched against the gale. Even from here, the gait is unmistakable. Heavy. Determined.
Dallas.
Behind him, another shape, Boone maybe, hauls a bale of hay through the drifts, snow crusted to his beard. Farther out, two more figures, Clay and Nash, probably, are working to clear a path or dig something out.
I stare, transfixed.
This. This right here is what I always loved about this place. The way the McCoys move as a unit when things get rough. The way they shoulder responsibility without question. The way they’ll face down nature itself with nothing but grit and whatever tools they can carry.
My chest squeezes painfully, a hot sting behind my ribs.
I used to stand out there with Dallas sometimes, back when we were kids. Not helping, not really, I was small and soft and more trouble than assistance, but he’d let me shadow him anyway. He’d toss hay to younger horses while I perched on fence rails, boots dangling, face split with joy. I’d always lovedthe barn, the smell of hay and leather, the rumbling quiet of big animals, the organized mess.
Dad hated it.
He hated Buckhorn in general. Said it was too slow, too simple, too limiting.
“It’ll suck you in if you’re not careful,” he’d tell me sharply. “You’re meant for bigger things, Faith.”
He never meant “you.” He meanthimself, and whatever version of me he needed to prop his image up. I know that now. I didn’t at the time.
