10
Amelia.
The church was packed.
Word spreads quickly when there’s scandal to witness, and Sunday morning felt more like a trial than a service. The women’s stares were sharper, whispers fluttering like moths behind veiled hands. My mother’s face was stone. My father’s jaw was set, his Bible clenched so tightly the pages bent.
And Nathan—he stood at the front of the choir, expression carefully blank, every muscle in his body strung tight, like a man about to walk into the fire.
I’d thought shame would swallow me. Instead, I felt untouchable.
Something had cracked open inside me in that bell tower—fear burned away by the wild, desperate way he’d held me, by the way I’d screamed his name to the sky.
Now all I wanted was to live in the light, unafraid, to let the world see exactly who
