“Oh, sweetheart.” Her arms tightened around me. “That could never happen. Never ever, ever.”
“Promise?”
“I promise.” She kissed the tip of my nose. “There is nothing—nothing—you could ever do that would make me stop loving you. Do you understand?”
“What if I’m bad?”
“You’re not bad, baby.”
“But what if I am someday?”
Mom smiled, and it was like being wrapped in sunlight. “Then I’ll love you anyway. When you’re good, when you’re bad, when you’re happy, when you’re sad. When you make mistakes and when you do everything right. I will always, always love you, Faith.”
She held me until I fell back asleep, her hand stroking my hair, her voice humming something soft.
“Always,” she whispered. “I promise. Always.”
Butalwayshad ended the next day. Christmas Eve. A drunk driver and a patch of black ice, andalwaysbecamenever again.
Snapped back to the present, standing in my broken-down house, surrounded by my broken-down dreams, the absence of that love felt like a physical wound. Mom had loved me unconditionally, had promised me nothing I could do would change that.
And I’d believed her because she’d never given me reason not to.
But nearly everyone since had proven the opposite. That love was conditional. That there were things you could be, things you could do, things you could survive that made you unlovable.
I’d stupidly let myself believe Ryker might be different, but today proved otherwise. He’d gotten a glimpse of the real me, and he couldn’t get away fast enough.
I felt myself curling inward, pulling back from Ryker and away from the naive belief that anyone would ever be able to fall in love with me. As that familiar shield slammed back into place around my heart, so did the anger.
Because fuck this. I was broken—no shit. But I wasn’t worthless garbage.
If Ryker Kincaid had such a perfect life that he was going to reject me, then he could go find someone else to play savior for. Someone easier. Someone cleaner. Someone who didn’t make him look like he wanted to scrub himself clean after hearing her story.
So what if my heart still wanted to reach for him? It would learn soon enough to stand down. I would make sure of it.
“You’d better go then,” I managed, proud that my voice came out steady.
It was all I could say.
And then Ryker did exactly that—he left, taking all my foolish hopes with him.
26
RYKER
I’d never felt this level of rage before.
Not even when Tessa told me what happened to her in college. Not even when Blake and I hunted down that piece of shit, ready to make him pay for what he’d done to my sister.
But this. This was different.
Faith had been a child. A small, defenseless kid with no one to protect her. There was something sacrilegious about hurting children. Something that went far beyond criminal law and into the realm of unforgivable.
Every person who’d hurt a kid deserved to rot in prison for the rest of their miserable life. That wasn’t the lawyer in me talking. That was the human being. I’d nearly lost my job more times than I could count for refusing to represent those monsters. Made enemies. Burned bridges. Pissed off senior partners who cared more about billable hours than morality.
I didn’t care then. I sure as hell didn’t care now.
But with that white-hot fury came something else. Something I didn’t want to acknowledge.
