ROWANNE’S POV
Twenty-five. They said I was too young to be a widow.
Ro, you can’t keep mourning a man. We get that you want to respect him, but you’re too young to stay mourning.
The words replayed in my head like an echo I couldn’t turn off, pitiful and invasive. I didn’t even notice when the tears began to fall, slipping down my cheeks and soaking into the silk of my gown.
It wasn’t sadness anymore. It was something heavier. Bitterness. Guilt tangled with a kind of anger that had nowhere to go.
Even with the softness of how Eli kissed my cheek last night, my chest was still tight still aching from Jennifer’s words, still burning with things I could never say aloud.
I had wanted to pull him in, to hold him, to tell him not to stop. To tell him I needed him to kiss me again harder t
