Every muscle in Ryker’s body tensed more, cording beneath his shirt, and when his eyes met mine, something dangerous flickered in their depths. Something that would’ve scared me, coming from anyone else.
But I wasn’t scared. I was watching. Cataloging every micro-expression, every breath, every twitch of his fingers. Waiting for the moment his face might shift from anger to something else.
“Why didn’t you tell Blake?” His voice was carefully controlled.
Was he judging that choice? “I wanted to protect him. We were already living in hell, and there was nothing Blake could do about it anyway. Telling him would’ve just made his life harder. Besides,” I added, “he threatened to hurt Blake if I told anyone.”
Ryker turned to face me fully, and the raw fury in his expression should’ve made me flinch. Instead, it wrapped around me like armor.
“All these years,” he said slowly, “you’ve kept that inside.”
It wasn’t a question, but I nodded anyway.
“And you’re still standing here.” His voice broke slightly. “Still fighting. Still protecting kids who need you.”
Something shifted in his eyes then. Not the disgust I’d been bracing for. Not even pity. It was something else entirely. Like he was seeing me for the first time and couldn’t look away.
“You know what I remember most clearly?” I forced myself to continue to look at him, to gauge his reaction. This was the test. The moment that would tell me if he could handle the real me. “I was glad he was dead.”
Ryker said nothing.
“Not relieved. Not grateful Blake saved me.” The words felt like shards of glass in my throat. “Glad. Happy even. I looked at his body and thought,Good. You deserved it.”
Ryker’s knuckles were white again, his grip on the roller so tight that I thought it might snap. He turned away, attacking the wall with renewed vigor. Painting the same spot. Once. Twice. Three times.
There it was. That look.
Not disgust at me maybe. But something. Something that made my stomach twist. It was happening. He was pulling away already, and it hurt like hell.
I guess I’d been hoping he’d be glad the guy was dead, too, but shit. Of course it was fucked up that I wasglada person was dead. Glad! And of course it was too much that I’d been abused; maybe that made him look at me differently too. Jason had written me off easily.
How much more could I tell Ryker before I lost all of him?
I thought about the other homes. Eleven in total before I aged out. The ones where I’d learned to steal food because they “forgot” to feed the foster kids. Or when I’d aged out and learned how to steal whatever I needed just to survive. Would he understand that? Or would he see those as unacceptable choices? Me making excuses for not finding therightsolutions to my problems?
The Hendersons hadn’t understood. They’d been good people. Really good. The kind who made pancakes on Sunday mornings and asked about my day like they actually cared. I’d let myself hope with them. Let myself believe I’d finally found something real. Then Mrs. Henderson found the cash I’d hidden under my mattress. Money I’d stolen because I’d learned the hard way that you needed an escape fund.
She’d cried when she asked me about it. Actually cried.“We would have given you money, Faith. All you had to do was ask.”
But I hadn’t known how to ask. Hadn’t known how to trust that asking wouldn’t get me thrown out faster than the stealing eventually did. I’d tried to explain, but a week later, I was in a new home. The kind without Sunday pancakes.
That was the thing about my past. It wasn’t just what I’d done. It was how I’d failed to explain it. How the shame made me prickly and defensive when I needed to be soft. How the people I’d cared about never got to see the reasons behind my choices because I was too proud, too scared, too convinced they’d leave anyway to let them all the way in.
And you know what? Maybe they were right. Maybe it would have been better to go hungry than steal to eat. Maybe it would have been moral to not have any cash and find myself out in the streets without a dollar to my name. Maybe it would have been better to not fight back when I was physically attacked.
Maybe I’d gone about everything all wrong.
Either way, I couldn’t change my past. The best I could do was bury those shameful parts of me beneath a rug and never let anyone see them.
“After that night, I decided I’d survived for a reason,” I continued. “There had to be meaning to all of it, right? So, I endured whatever came next. Emotional abuse, verbal abuse, physical abuse. But I was lucky—no sexual abuse.”
“Lucky?” The word came out as a snarl. He spun to face me, and the raw fury in his eyes made me take a step back.
But it wasn’t directed at me. It was … protective. Like he wanted to reach back through time and destroy anyone who’d ever laid a hand on me.
Or was I wrong?
“I’ve seen what sexual abuse does to people, Ryker. Bruises heal. What those survivors go through …” I shook my head. “So, yeah, lucky.”
