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But I couldn’t move. Not yet. I buried my face in the space between Noah’s neck and shoulder, and he held me tighter, his hand curling protectively around the back of my head.
“You’re here,” I whispered, the words breaking.
“I told you I’d come back,” he murmured into my hair. “Didn’t I?”
I nodded against his chest, my tears soaking into the warm, battered fabric of his shirt.
We stood there a long moment, just breathing each other in.
Finally, I leaned back enough to see his face.
“You don’t have to go to the funeral,” I whispered. “You just got back.”
His eyes searched mine, quiet and steady. “I do have to go. I want to be there. I need to be there.”
I nodded again, fresh tears rising. But this time they weren’t from grief.
They were from something else.
Hope.
Anna returned a few moments later with Claire and Isabel behind her, all of them breathless and bright-eyed from the reunion news already traveling the halls.
Anna crossed the room, her voice soft. “You good, Hallie Mae?”
I looked at Noah—bloodied but whole—and I found the strength to nod.
“I’m good now,” I whispered.
Anna’s smile was small but knowing. “We’re still going to the funeral. We’ll meet you there. Your daddy deserves a full house.”
Emotion clogged my throat, too big to swallow. I reached out and squeezed her hand, holding on tight.
“Thank you,” I managed. “For everything.”
She just squeezed back, steady as a heartbeat. “Family shows up.”
And I turned back to the man I loved, knowing this was the moment we’d crossed through fire and found each other on the other side.
Together.
Alive.
Unbreakable.
28
NOAH
The funeral was softer than I’d expected, a quiet affair under a gray Estill sky, the kind that held its breath like it knew the weight of what we carried.
Hallie Mae stood beside me, her hand in mine, her black dress swaying in the breeze as the preacher spoke—someone new, stepping into her dad’s shoes, his voice steady.
She didn’t cry, not like she had in the morgue, but her grip tightened during the hymns, her fingers digging into mine like I was the only thing keeping her upright.
I held on, steady, letting her lean into me, my chest aching with how much I loved her, how much I’d fought to stand here for her.
The church was packed—congregation, friends, faces I didn’t know but could feel loved her dad, loved her.