Chapter 17
HALLIE MAE
I t was the next morning. The first sunny one we’d had in days.
Golden light spilled through the window of my apartment, pooling on the hardwood floor like it had been waiting for its turn to come back. It made everything look warmer than it felt. Brighter, cleaner, like the world hadn’t just tilted sideways and shattered.
I didn’t move at first. Just lay there, eyes open, head turned toward the window, letting the sunlight stretch long across the bed. It should’ve felt like hope.
It didn’t. Not exactly.
It felt like the world was trying to move on without me. Like the sky had decided enough was enough, and I was the only one who hadn’t gotten the message.
Daddy’s funeral would happen soon. Charles said he’d take care of everything—the arrangements, the order of service, even the pallbearers. Said I needed to rest. Said Mama would need me soon enough.
But I didn’t know what rest looked like anymore. I didn’t know what I looked like anymore .
So I didn’t call Noah.
Not because I didn’t want to. I did—so badly it almost burned. I wanted to hear his voice again. Low. Steady. That anchor in the middle of all this drifting. But I didn’t want to seem needy, either.
Too clingy. Too much.
I didn’t know what we were now, or what yesterday had made us. And I was too raw to ask.
So instead, I got up.
Pulled on a soft sundress with tiny blue flowers and slipped my sandals on without thinking.
My movements felt quiet. Careful. Like I was afraid to disturb the fragile balance between grief and whatever came after.
I packed a canvas bag with a half-finished novel and a bottle of water, then grabbed my keys before I could talk myself out of it.
I drove toward Isle of Palms, windows down, warm air curling through the car. It was early still, the world not quite awake, the roads soft with morning light. The marshes shimmered gold and green, and for a second—just one—it almost felt like the Lowcountry hadn’t changed at all.
But it had.
I parked along the street near The Soundline, a weatherworn little bar and grill that clung to the sand like it had been holding its breath through every storm since the '70s.
The shingles were sun-bleached and uneven, the porch slouched with age, and faded concert flyers fluttered in the salt breeze.
I’d been coming here since I was a kid, back when Daddy would bring us on his days off from church, when he let me run barefoot in the tide while he sipped sweet tea under the awning.
Ever since I moved to Mount Pleasant, I’d found myself here more and more.
Sometimes with friends, sometimes with a book.
Sometimes just to sit and let the sound of the waves and the low thrum of a guitar spilling out from the back deck drown out the rest of the world.
It was the kind of place where the air smelled like coconut sunscreen and fried shrimp, and the past never seemed all that far away.
I used to dream about living here one day—right here on Isle of Palms. Owning a little beach cottage where the wind always smelled like salt and jasmine, and I could fall asleep to the sound of waves brushing the shore.
I pictured myself in cotton sundresses and wide-brimmed hats, walking barefoot down the sand to grade papers or sip sweet tea under an umbrella.
Dreams like that weren’t made for teachers. Not on the kind of salary that barely covered rent and lesson supplies and secondhand cardigans. Still, I let myself imagine it sometimes.
The beach behind The Soundline stretched long and pale, the sand warm beneath my soles as I carried my bag toward the dunes.
I found a spot near the edge, not too close to the water, but close enough to hear the waves roll in.
The tide was soft this morning—gentle, rhythmic, like it understood something I didn’t.
I spread out my blanket and sat cross-legged, the sun already warm against my bare shoulders. The novel stayed in the bag. I just … listened. To the waves. The gulls. The distant laughter of early risers dragging chairs into the sand.
The ocean had always soothed me. Even as a little girl, it had made more sense than scripture. More sense than sermons. Daddy used to say that the sea was a kind of prayer all its own—wordless, endless, washing over whatever you carried until it came out clean .
I wasn’t clean. Not today.
I thought about the heat of Noah’s skin. The weight of him above me. The way I’d come apart in his hands like something sacred and wild, like I’d never been touched before because I hadn’t.
He’d known. He’d felt it. Still, he hadn’t gone soft with me. He’d taken everything I gave and made it feel like fire. I didn’t know what to do with that. Because it wasn’t just the act. It was how much I liked it.
How I’d begged. How I’d opened for him like I’d been waiting my whole life for that exact kind of ruin.
How I’d let him put his mouth on every part of me and hadn’t once asked him to stop.
Not even when I knew I probably should’ve.
I didn’t feel ashamed during. That was the part that rattled me most.
I’d always thought if I ever gave that part of myself away—if I crossed the line I’d drawn in marker when I was fifteen and pink-cheeked in youth group—it would feel like loss.
Like handing over something holy to someone who didn’t deserve it.
But it didn’t feel like that.
It felt like claiming. Like he’d reached inside me and flipped a switch I hadn’t even known I had—lit it, fanned it, fed it until it burned through every rule I’d been taught.
And I’d let it. I’d ridden that fire straight into something that looked a lot like bliss.
Who did that make me?
A good girl wouldn’t have gone to his bed after identifying her daddy’s body.
A good girl wouldn’t have begged for more when the first time made her cry .
A good girl wouldn’t have let a man with a gun under his mattress bury himself in her like she was his to take.
But I hadn’t been a good girl.
I’d been hungry.
Raw.
Desperate to feel something that wasn’t grief—and I’d taken it from him with both hands.
Even now, with the salt wind in my hair and the sounds of the ocean smoothing the edges of my thoughts, I could still feel him. The stretch of him inside me. The scrape of his stubble along my thigh. The way his voice had gone rough when I broke open beneath him and said his name.
He’d said it wasn’t wrong.
That I hadn’t given something away—I’d shared it.
Maybe that was true.
But it was hard to silence the voice in the back of my head—the one shaped like my mama, or my daddy, or every modesty lecture I’d ever sat through on a folding chair in the youth room.
Sex before marriage is sin. Desire is temptation. Once it’s gone, you can’t get it back. Blah, blah, blah.
If that was true, then why had it felt like freedom? Why had it felt like I was finally inside my own body for the first time?
Maybe it was grief.
Maybe it was Noah.
Maybe it was something deeper—something cracking open inside me that didn’t want to be put back together the same way.
Either way, the girl who walked into Dominion Hall wasn’t the same one who’d walked out.
I hugged my knees to my chest and closed my eyes, letting the breeze lift my hair, salt-kissed and tangled. The sunlight flickered through my lashes, the kind of light that felt almost holy.
Maybe this was what healing looked like—messy, confused, stretched out on a blanket with the taste of a man still lingering on your lips and the grief of your father lodged somewhere deep in your ribs.
I didn’t have the answers.
Then I felt it—that tickle at the base of my neck. The one that said eyes were on me.
I opened my eyes slowly. Not dramatic. Not obvious. Just a blink, a glance, like I was watching the ocean and not scanning the stretch of beach that curved past the dunes.
Two large men stood maybe forty yards off.
Not close enough to be intrusive, but not far enough to be casual, either.
One leaned against a wooden piling at the edge of The Soundline’s porch, sunglasses pushed up into close-cropped sandy hair.
The other sat on the low wall near the boardwalk, a half-empty cup of iced tea sweating in his hand like he wanted you to believe he’d been there for hours.
They didn’t look like beach people. Didn’t look like locals, either. Too still. Too clean. No towels, no chairs, no books or coolers or sunburned shoulders. Just ... waiting.
And watching.
The one against the post shifted, like he could feel my glance, and I dropped my gaze quick, heart knocking once against my ribs. I wasn’t being paranoid. I knew that kind of stillness. Stillness with purpose.
Stillness that had nothing to do with sand and saltwater and everything to do with control.
A sick feeling stirred in my stomach, low and slow and sour.
I’d seen them before. Not here, but somewhere more familiar—more private.
My parking lot. Yesterday? The day before?
I couldn’t say exactly, but it was there now, clear as day.
That same angular jaw. That same too-neutral stance.
One of them had been by the dumpster, pretending to check his phone.
The other near the mailbox bank, leaning on the hood of a car he didn’t unlock.
I’d clocked it then and dismissed it. Told myself they were contractors or new neighbors or one of the million little things that could go either way and usually didn’t matter. But now?
Now it mattered.
I sat up straighter, blood rushing in my ears. My book still untouched. The ocean no longer soothing—just loud. Covering sounds I maybe needed to hear.
I didn’t want to be the girl who jumped at shadows. But I also didn’t want to be the girl who ignored her gut and ended up a headline.
I looked down at my bag, fingers curling around the strap. I could leave. Walk back toward my car like nothing was wrong. Call Noah. But what would I even say?
Hey, remember that day I let you turn me inside out? Cool. So I think I’m being followed now.
God.
I swallowed hard, mouth suddenly dry.
I needed to move. Not fast. Not frantic. Just enough to put space between me and whatever this was.
I slid my book back into the bag and rose to my feet slowly, like I was just stretching. Just shifting position. Just another girl enjoying a morning on the beach.
Then I saw him.
Not one of the two. Someone else. A third man.
He wasn’t near them—wasn’t even looking at them.
He came from the opposite direction, fast and stumbling like he was in a hurry and didn’t quite know what to do with it.
He wasn’t dressed like them either. Jeans too dark for the heat, jacket too heavy for the sun, face red and slick with sweat like he’d jogged from somewhere far.
I froze.
He made a beeline toward me, eyes locked in, something crumpled and white clutched in his hand.
“Miss—Miss Calhoun?” His voice was loud, too loud, and cracked at the edges like he wasn’t used to talking to strangers.
I took a step back. “I’m sorry, do I know you?”
But he didn’t answer. Just shoved the paper toward me, shaking now, like his hand had forgotten what it meant to be steady.
“You need to see this,” he said. “They lied to you. He lied.”
The paper hit my chest, and I caught it on instinct, staring at it. Flimsy cardstock. Like the kind you’d see on cheap flyers.
I opened it.
Noah’s face stared up at me.
Grainy. Below it—my father. Jamie Calhoun. His church photo. The same one we’d used for the obituary announcement.
Two pictures. One above the other. And beneath them, in plain black type:
TARGET & ASSOCIATE — PRIMARY & PAYOUT.
I felt the bottom fall out of the world.
“What is this?” My voice came out thin, warped, barely there. “Where did you get this?”
The guy backed away slightly, like even he didn’t know what he’d just delivered. “Your man? He has secrets. ”
My stomach turned violently.
Noah?
Noah, who held me like I was the last soft thing in his world. Noah, who whispered that I was brave. That I wasn’t dirty or used up.
My pulse stuttered.
And then chaos.
The two men who’d been watching me moved—fast, coordinated, like wolves on the scent. One was suddenly between me and the sweating man, arm clamping tight around his chest, dragging him back like he weighed nothing. The other stepped to my side, hand brushing my elbow, his voice calm but firm.
“Don’t worry, Ma’am. You’re safe.”
The nervous man flailed, the paper fluttering from my hand to the sand, his voice rising in a slurred panic. “I didn’t touch her. I just gave her the message! That’s all they told me to do!”
The man who’d stepped beside me glanced at me now, sunglasses still on, jaw tight. “You okay?”
“I—” I nodded, too fast, too dizzy. “Who are you?”
He held up a hand, palm out in reassurance. “We’re with Noah. He sent us. To keep an eye out.”
The one restraining the messenger wrestled him down into the sand, knee on his back, arms twisted behind him as the guy cursed and sputtered.
My knees gave a little. I felt the blood drain from my face.
“He—he said Noah?—”
I looked down at the page again, the corners catching the breeze. Noah’s face. Daddy’s.
It looked so official.
I bent to pick it up again, but the man stopped me with a hand on my shoulder .
I stared at him, breath shallow, thoughts spinning too fast to hold. My eyes flicked to the man still pinned in the sand, squirming now like he knew his part in this was over.
I didn’t know what was true.
Noah had held me through my worst day. Could he have been the one who caused it?