Chapter 1
Gran whispered apologies as she slid into the pew, dragging her handbag across fellow mourners’ knees. We were late—not late-late, but late enough to earn a few glares from the oldies who were probably thrilled to have a day out.
I didn’t care. I just wanted to be here for Brad. But being crammed in the back of the church, squinting over heads, didn’t exactly scream supportive friend.
Burr wasn’t a big town. Compared to the tangle of rooftops and traffic back home, it felt miniature—like a postcard someone had forgotten to send. I’d been coming down every half term since Mum died, and it still felt like a world away. Four hours in the car, three podcasts, and a family-sized bag of crisps just to reach a place where everyone seemed to know each other by name.
And today, it looked like all of them had squeezed inside St. Jude’s Church to say goodbye to Colin Lawrence-Finch.
Gran managed to find us a spot, one row from the back. The pew creaked as I slid in beside her, the varnish worn smooth by decades of elbows and sorrow. I ended up wedged next to Tom Greenthorn—a farmer from the next village over whose frame rivalled a tractor. I’d never once seen him out of his wellies, yet here he was in a shiny black suit, his thick neck bulging against the collar, eyes red-rimmed and fixed on the coffin.
It hit me then. This wasn’t just a funeral—it was a farewell from a community. A goodbye to Colin: Brad’s quiet, stay-at-home dad, the one who baked flapjacks and drove the quad across the fields for fun. Brad once told me Colin had retired from some high-profile job after he was adopted. We used to joke it was James Bond stuff—secret service, or something equally cool. Brad never got the full story. For both of us, he’d just been Colin. Friendly, dependable, the heart of the farm’s kitchen.
But I wasn’t really there for Colin.
I was there for Brad.
Stretching up as discreetly as I could, I craned to see over the rows of bowed heads. I spotted him at the front. Barely. His brown hair was wavy—more than curly, but not quite wild—and it refused to lie flat, even in the damp church air. His dad, Peter, sat beside him with a hand on his shoulder, fingers curled in comfort.
It made something ache inside me, seeing him like that. So still. So quiet.
Poor Brad. He didn’t do quiet. He did sunshine, reckless ideas, and laughter that made you want to bottle it.
I sank back into the bench, my view now a crown of frizzy grey curls from the lady in front. Still, I couldn’t stop thinking about him—how he must be feeling. To hold it together while the town watched you unravel.
I knew that pain. Every jagged edge of it.
Bradley Lawrence-Finch was the adopted son of two men—Peter and Colin—who had built a life and a legacy of warmth and hard work. Now half of that was gone, stripped away by the same cruel disease that had taken my mum three years earlier.
I pulled my coat tighter around me, suddenly cold. A strand of hair clung to my cheek in the damp, and I tucked it behind my ear with shaking fingers.
The Reverend’s microphone gave a high-pitched crackle overhead, jerking me out of my thoughts.
“Family and friends,” he began, “I welcome you into this gathering which is made sacred with the spirit of light and friendship…”
My eyes slid shut. I didn’t need the words. I’d heard them before—the hollow comfort of hymns and hope.
Instead, I focused on the pressure in my chest, the rising tide of emotion threatening to spill. My fingers curled into a tight fist, nails biting into my palm until my whole arm trembled. It was the only way to keep the tears in check.
Losing Mum had broken something in me. I was thirteen, watching her slip away one day at a time—her body shrinking, her skin greying, her breath turning to rattles. I remembered pressing my hand to her forehead, willing her to stay, knowing deep down she was already halfway gone. The terror, the exhaustion—it lived in my chest for months after, like grief had pitched a tent and refused to leave.
I think that’s why I understood Brad.
Why I was here.
After Mum died, I started spending school holidays with Gran in Burr. Dad worked too much, and I think he couldn’t bear to look at me sometimes—like my face reminded him too much of her. Money had always been tight, but Mum’s death made it worse. Her little holistic shop had closed. All the incense and healing crystals still sat untouched, coated in dust. I’d begged Dad to let me open it back up, even just at weekends, but he always said no. Like it hurt him too much to imagine life continuing without her.
I sat back, tuning out the vicar, thinking about the contrast between Brad’s life and mine. The Lawrence-Finch farm was something out of a storybook—four hundred acres of cliff tops, fields, and forest trails he probably knew as well as the lines on his hand. He once told me that was the size of three hundred football pitches. I’d laughed then, trying to picture it from my flat above Mum’s shop in Coldrick, Portsmouth. No garden, no view. Just rooftops, a sagging sofa in someone’s front yard, and the smell of the takeaway down the road.
Brad had everything. Charm, freedom, a place to belong.
But here he was now, as hollowed out as I had been when I was thirteen.
And in that moment, I loved him—not for the hurt carved into him, but for the way he carried it. Because he saw me. Understood me. We were stitched from the same grief-torn cloth. And that bond, whatever it was, kept tugging tighter each time our eyes met.
Somewhere along the way, I’d fallen for him. Not loudly. Not perfectly. Just… helplessly.
I hadn’t always been. At first, I’d boxed him into the “just friends” category and taped the lid shut. He even asked me out once—when we were thirteen. I said no. Nicely. Stupidly.
But something had shifted—gradually, then all at once.
Even now, across a sea of mourners, I could feel him.
Not that I’d told him, of course. Maybe he didn’t feel the same anymore. But whenever we spoke—whenever his fingers brushed mine, or he shot me that lazy grin like I was the only one in the room—I wondered.
Was I?
A quiet sniffle came from somewhere up front, and I blinked, realising someone had stepped up to speak.
“Colin had the ability to always make you feel good. It was a gift he used with all he met...” a woman said shakily, standing near the altar. Her voice wavered as she glanced down at a small, crumpled slip of paper in her hand. I didn’t recognise her—maybe a friend of the family, maybe just someone Colin had once helped. Either way, she looked like she didn’t want to be up there, her nerves as clear as the tears in her eyes.
I dropped my gaze and clenched my fist again, letting the burn in my palm ground me. Anything to keep the emotion from rising too fast. Anything to stay steady. I looked back at the head of the lady in front of me—hair like steel wool. Definitely overdue a box dye. I focused on that.
Not on the ache in Brad’s face when I’d caught a glimpse of it.
Not on the way every word spoken about Colin rang a little too true about my own mum.
When the congregation stood for the hymn, Gran passed me a sheet of lyrics. She gave me a look that said, don’t you dare stand there in silence. I mouthed the words, but she sang them with all the strength in her small frame. Her voice cracked and wavered, but it carried, raw and heartfelt, filling the cold church air with something close to love.
She’d loved Colin—deeply. She had been part of their family almost as long as Brad had, living in the little static caravan tucked just behind the farm’s eastern field. It might’ve been small, but it had a window box she tended religiously and a wind chime Brad had made her that never stopped tinkling.
I tried not to think about the fact that she’d cared for Colin in his final weeks—held his hand when Peter and Brad couldn’t anymore, when the feeding tubes and sores and the rattling in his chest had become too much. Gran was made of something stronger than the rest of us.
I hated funerals. Hated the ache they created in the room, the smell of damp coats and lilies. I let my gaze wander instead. The stained-glass windows spilled muted colour over the stone floor. The wooden beams creaked quietly overhead. The Virgin Mary stared down from her alcove with the same miserable expression I wore.
That’s when I noticed them.
Up in the narrow wooden balcony that overlooked the main hall—barely visible from most pews—stood six figures, all dressed in black. They didn’t sit. Didn’t shift. Just watched. Statues with sharp eyes and colder energy. One woman leaned slightly, whispering to the man beside her.
He was young—twenties maybe—with sandy blond hair and a smirk that didn’t belong in a church. Like none of this mattered.
Beside him stood a kid. Eight or nine, maybe. Pale and thin. Long red scars slashed across the right side of his face. He didn’t fidget. Didn’t blink. Just stared at the coffin like he could see through it.
The woman next to the smirking guy looked at me.
And I felt it.
Like a drop of oil spreading through clear water. Cold. Heavy. Sharp-edged dislike.
I snapped my head away, my heart suddenly thudding like I’d been caught doing something wrong. That hadn’t been intuition. It felt stronger. Clearer. Like the weight of her gaze had pushed something dark straight into my bloodstream.
Gran’s singing drowned it out for a moment. Loud. Wavering. Full of love. I clung to it.
The last time I’d seen Colin was October. He’d looked like a ghost then—sunken cheeks, skeletal hands, eyes too big for his face. He wore a beanie to hide the patches of hair loss. At the time, I’d known we were saying goodbye, even if we hadn’t said the words out loud.
It was January now. At least Brad had gotten one last Christmas with him. One final day to pretend the world wasn’t tearing at the seams.
Brad had asked me on Halloween night, quietly, beside the hedgerow outside the farmhouse just as I was about to travel back home, “You’ll come to the funeral, won’t you?”
Three months later, here I was. Sixteen, still a year behind everyone else after losing almost twelve months of school when Mum died. Missing two tests and a coursework deadline didn’t matter.
I would’ve missed a whole damn year again if it meant being here for him.
The service wound to its close. As the congregation rose to their feet, I stood too. The pallbearers moved past, Colin’s coffin held steady between them. Heads bowed all around me. Peter followed, steady but aged in a way I hadn’t seen before. His frame looked more fragile somehow.
Then came Brad.
Eyes red. Shoulders drawn in. Face pale and serious. As he passed my pew, our eyes met. Just for a second. A flicker. But it was enough. He gave me a smile—if you could call it that. Just a small tug at the corner of his mouth. Sad. Grateful. Broken.
My chest ached.
That sad, brave smile clung to his face as he walked past, carrying the weight of goodbye all on his own.
