Page 89 of Sweet Silver Bells
He was stuck—caught between two worlds, and two versions of himself. One was the man who had known a normal life, who had loved Sarah too deeply and mourned her for years. Theother lived in a new reality, one shaped by the woman who made him think of the moon, who made darkness feel like the very source of beauty and power.
He could never see the night the same way again. His entire worldview had shifted, and there was no going back.
How do you move forward? How do you wrap yourself in that darkness? In her world of trees and stars?
“Thank you, thank you for coming to honor our departed beloved, Tom.” A minister moved toward the casket, a microphone on his lapel.
A large sob erupted from Nina.
Everyone who could reach put their arms on her for comfort.
He hated how sadness permitted people to touch you. He’d never understood why that was a comfort. That was why he’d quickly disappeared into his house, into his hobbies. He couldn’t stand the compassionate touch on the shoulder, the arms out wide embrace offered, but felt like he had to accept it.
I won’t touch you, Nina,he promised her, though she would never hear it.I will leave you be so you can find your own way. So you won’t be confused.
Hunter, on the other hand, was finding so much clarity in those moments of collective grief. The support given was so wrong. He gripped his hands into fists, sitting there through the rest of the funeral, through the strangers who stood on the stage, saying their public goodbyes and giving the families their condolences.
It was such a show.
This just cannot be how you say goodbye.
For the rest of his time there, Hunter only dreamed of the night sky, of the shine of the stars that reminded him of Olivia’s hair, the awkwardness of her words that brought so much clarity to him, her social graces gone from her time away from humans, from ceremony.
That woman was so strong. She knew what she wanted, and even though it was absolutely terrifying, she went for it. People got hurt in the process, and perhaps they always would.
Hunter shook his head and chuckled to himself. The naked woman in the forest, the one that needed his help, the damsel, was anything but. She was so complex that now he had no choice but to rethink his entire life, all of his choices.
I can’t wait to get back to you.
As sniffles and tears flowed through the gathering, Hunter’s mind wandered to her. This was a funeral for Tom, yes, but it felt like more than that, a funeral for who he was once, a door closed on the chapter that he had been working these past few days to leave behind.
Poetic, that thought, with bodies cold in their caskets.
So was the person that Hunter once was. That person had loved so differently, needed so differently. The person who hadn’t been an individual, but a part of a marriage. He’d been no one outside of that.
Now he was different. Now, he had a job to protect and to love Olivia.
It was a job he couldn’t abandon—no matter how bloody it might get.
Sarah had shown him obsession, but Olivia had taught him how to love so imperfectly, filled with mess and iron and mischievousness. She showed him to love with his soul, not his brain.
She was with his mother right now, being dressed to look like someone else’s doll. She was no doll, but the moon, the stars, the crimson red of blood against pine.
Dread and anxiousness filled him, a macabre sense that told him to run, to get out of this place filled with someone else's loss—that he had a full life to live with the woman who had wrapped herself around his heart, his bones, his organs.
Never before has there been more beauty in my life,he thought to himself as the crowd rose, as bodies around him hugged one another in comfort. They all moved to the front of the church, forming a line of dread and mourning, white flowers with large petals coercing their hearts towards the dead body that they were all there to say goodbye to.
I have to get her out of here.
The realization dawned on him.
Darius pushed Hunter out of the pew and into the line.
Olivia couldn’t be here.
She couldn’t be in this town.
She couldn’t build a life where she knew nothing, where everything was foreign to her. She would never have peace if she were always a danger to people.
