“That’s for Knox.” Her voice wavered. “For when he comes home. So all five of you can be together again.”
The frame went still in my hands. I had to set it down carefully on the desk before I dropped it. Faith believed Knox was coming home. Not if. When. She saw my mission to free him not as some impossible quest, but as an inevitability.
She believed in me.
I pressed my palms flat on the desk, trying to steady myself.
“Ryker?” Her hand touched my back.
“I’m okay.” My voice came out rough. “Keep going.”
She reached into the bag again, and when she pulled out the fourth frame, her lips twitched. “This one is of the most beautiful creature to ever walk the earth.”
I took it from her.
Rainbow stared back at me from the photo, and I barked out a laugh that broke the tension in my chest. “Jesus Christ. She’s somehow even uglier in pictures.”
“I know.” Faith giggled, the sound bright and unexpected. “I think it’s the way her tongue hangs out. She’s not photogenic. But she’s pretty on the inside.”
“Pretty might be generous.” Still chuckling, I set Rainbow’s photo next to the others, this ridiculous dog who’d become as much a part of my life as anyone else in these frames.
Faith grew quiet. She pulled out the last frame, but didn’t hand it to me right away. Instead, she stared down at it, her teeth catching her bottom lip.
“This one,” she finally said, “is from one of the first times I met everyone.”
I remembered the night. Dinner at Axel’s. Faith had been nervous, out of place. She’d sat at the edge of the group, like she wasn’t sure she was allowed to be there.
She handed me the frame.
It was a group shot. All of us, except Knox, crowded around Axel’s dining table. Blake had taken it on a timer. Everyone was looking at the camera, smiling.
Everyone except Faith.
In the photo, her face was turned toward me. Not the camera. Me. And the look in her eyes …
Christ.
It wasn’t casual. It wasn’t friendly. It was the look of someone completely captivated by another person. The kind of look that stripped away pretense, that said everything without saying anything at all.
“I was looking at you from day one too, Ryker.”
The words hit me square in the chest.
I stared at the photo, at her face captured in that moment before either of us understood what we’d become to each other. She’d been falling for me even then. While I’d been so busy trying not to notice her, trying to maintain professional distance, she’d already been gone.
Just like I had.
She was just afraid to acknowledge it.
I kissed her forehead, then her temple, then her mouth. Soft and slow and full of everything I couldn’t find words for. When I pulled back, I kept her close. “Thank you. For this. For seeing me. For loving me enough to show me I’m not doing any of this alone.”
She buried her face in my chest, her arms wrapping tight around my waist. Her fingers gripped the back of my shirt like she was anchoring herself. Or maybe anchoring me. I held her there in my office, surrounded by the evidence of the life I was building.
But none of it meant anything compared to the woman in my arms.
“I love you,” I said into her hair.
“I love you too.”
