Then he looked toward the wings where I was standing with my hands clenched in front of me.
“I said I’d sing something new,” he said. “But I’m not going to sing it alone.”
The crowd turned as one to the wings. I swear the entire back row—press included—leaned forward, the way deer do when they hear a twig crack. Rosie tipped her chin at me and Harper squeezed my hand. Esther shoved me hard enough to send me two steps forward, and I glared at her over my shoulder.
“Go,” Esther mouthed.
I walked out.
The cameras at the back rose like a glittering tide, even though the locals turned to growl at them. I saw their lenses, their black glass, the awful hungry attention of them and for a second, my legs wanted to turn and bolt straight through the cardboard stable and into the cold. Then I found Noah’s eyes. The years fell away. He looked exactly like a boy in a freezing garage offering me a chord.
He held out the second mic.
I took it with trembling hands.
He started the progression we’d built on the rug. Soft, with room around it. I heard the first line in my head like a dare and then I said it out loud, into a microphone, in front of the village and the press and the universe and my gran.
“I’m not the girl who held your chorus while the kettle learned to sing.”
A ripple went through the room—not surprise, not shock—but recognition. Noah picked up the next line like a kindly echo.
“We’re not the kids who ran for corners when we felt the edges sting.”
I sang again and my voice didn’t break. He sang under me and our harmony fit without ceremony. The bridge came like a door we’d left ajar and we walked through together. A little girl in the front row put her chin on the stage and just watched. The press leaned forward, their lenses humming.
I didn’t die.
I didn’t even wobble. My hand shook once, but Noah kept the tempo steady like a promise. Our words were simple and so was the melody, which is why it hurt less than it might have and more than I expected.
Then the room did that astonishing thing where it stayed quiet a heartbeat longer than necessary. There’s a special kind of silence that colors in around you. And then, like someone let breath back into the world, it cracked and applause spilled up from the front row, bursting in the middle like confetti.
Noah reached for my free hand and I put my hand in his. Heat zinged up my arm and broke softly inside me, and then we lifted our clasped hands to cheers. The cameras caught it and I made the choice I hadn’t made fifteen years ago.
I didn’t let go.
We stood there in a worn village hall with tartan bunting and cardboard hay and a sign that said “No Flash Photography” while flashbulbs popped likefireworks. Noah bowed a little. I bobbed, awkward, and laughed at myself.
In the back room, I slumped against the wall, my breath coming out in soft little pants. Noah leaned beside me, our shoulders brushing.
“Okay,” I whispered. “Okay.”
He turned his head. “Okay,” he said back, the word full of everything left unsaid. The noise from the hall swelled again—Esther was announcing the raffle winners—and the world returned to ordinary magnitude.
But it wasn’t ordinary.
I looked at Noah and didn’t look away.
This time, if my name was caught in a song, it was because I’d put it there. And if the cameras took me with it, they could take me standing up.
Ten
NOAH
The pub was already loud when we walked in, but not the bad kind. The good kind—glasses clinking, a rumble of conversations, and somebody laughing too hard in the corner. The fire was going, the tree lights were on, and Harper and Reed were manning the bar.
“They’re here,” Shannon sang from her table, holding up her phone. “Have you seen?”
“Seen what?” Skye stiffened next to me, and I tugged her into the warm pub, the crowd parting for us like we were a hot knife slicing through butter.
