Chapter 1 — Prologue: The Grave

Jaclyn

The cemetery was quiet, the kind of silence that felt alive—pressing against my ears, amplifying the sound of my own breath as if it wanted to remind me I was still here. The winter air scraped against my cheeks, sharp and unforgiving, while the bare branches of the sycamores reached skyward like brittle arms, veins etched into the gray expanse above. The ground beneath my boots crunched with each step, the frost-covered earth resisting me. In my hand, a white rose trembled, its fragile petals starkly bright against the muted landscape.

When I reached the grave, my breath hitched. The letters carved into the granite loomed before me, as sharp and fresh as they had been nine years ago, though the edges of the stone had begun to wear under the relentless weight of time.

Noah Reese

Beloved Son, Friend, and Dreamer

1989 – 2014

The inscription felt like a stranger’s summary of him, as if the Noah I’d loved—the stubborn, reckless, infuriating, beautiful man—had been boiled down to something neat and palatable enough for public consumption. It was a lie—not in what it said, but in what it failed to say.

My knees folded as I knelt on the damp soil, the chill seeping through my coat and into my bones. The rose trembled again in my fingers before I laid it gently at the base of the headstone. My hand lingered there, brushing the icy granite, tracing the letters as if touching them could make him real again.

The rose wasn’t just a gesture. It was a promise. White—the color we had chosen together for the mismatched bouquet of wildflowers at his mother’s funeral. “Simple, but meaningful,” he’d said, his voice uncharacteristically soft. It had been one of the rare moments when Noah had let me see beneath the bravado.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, my voice a thread of sound lost in the cold air. “I’m sorry I couldn’t save you. I’m sorry I couldn’t let you go.”

The apology hung between us, unanswered, endless. My throat tightened as my fingers curled into the frost-covered grass.

A memory rose, unbidden and sharp, like smoke slipping beneath a doorframe. The fire—that relentless fire. Flames devouring wood, choking the air, illuminating his face for one agonizing second before the darkness swallowed him whole. My chest tightened as it always did when the memory struck, the phantom heat of the flames curling against my skin. It wasn’t just the fire I remembered. It was his laugh, that unruly, unsteady laugh, echoing in the summer air when we’d trespass onto the high school football field to watch the stars.

“Where’s the Big Dipper?” I’d asked once, squinting at the sky.

Noah had laughed, his voice rich and teasing. “Right there. How do you not see it?” He’d grabbed my hand, tracing the pattern against the expanse of night. “You have to stop overthinking, Jacs. Just look.”

I clenched my coat tighter around me, shaking off the frost that had settled into my marrow. The world didn’t stop for grief. It didn’t care how deep or sharp the loss was.

My hand brushed my wrist as I stood, the cold metal of my silver watch pressing against my skin. The sight of it glinting in the pale light made me pause. "To the one who keeps my heart ticking," read the engraving. When Mark had given it to me on our first anniversary, his steady brown eyes had been filled with a kind of certainty I envied. He had believed so fully in us, in what we could build together.

And I believed… enough.

I adjusted the watch absently, its weight suddenly unbearable, and turned back to the grave. The rose lay there, delicate and vulnerable against the stark granite. It looked out of place, almost absurd in its singularity.

“Why do I still come here?” I murmured, the words catching in my throat. My parents would have said it was indulgent to linger on the dead, to carry their shadows when the living needed tending. Even Mark didn’t understand this ritual, though he never said so outright.

Nine years. Long enough to rebuild. Long enough to find someone who loved me with the kind of quiet devotion that promised safety and stability. Long enough to convince myself that I was okay.

But grief doesn’t measure time the way the living do. It clings, it waits, it seeps into the corners of your life when you least expect it.

As I straightened, a flicker of movement caught my attention—a shadow shifting beneath the sycamores. My heart stuttered, my breath catching midstream. I turned sharply, my pulse hammering in my ears.

The space between the trees was empty, save for the slow sway of a branch in the wind. I scanned the area, every muscle in my body taut, but there was nothing. Just the stillness of the cemetery, the hum of distant traffic barely audible against the quiet. I shook my head, forcing my shoulders to relax. Get a grip, Jaclyn.

But the unease lingered, curling in my stomach as I made my way back to the car.

The drive to the city was long, the heater humming softly to combat the biting cold. The skyline loomed ahead, stark and glittering, its lights cutting through the haze of winter. I should have found comfort in its familiarity, its steadfastness. Mark would be waiting when I got home, with his easy smile and warm arms.

A life that should have felt perfect.

But as I glanced in the rearview mirror, the grave lingered in my vision like a shadow I couldn’t escape. The white rose, fragile and fleeting, had already begun to wither in my mind.

The cold inside me refused to thaw.