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He Said He’d Move the Stars for Me
Happily ever after wasn’t in the cards.
There were the heavens, and then there was hell I knew so well it burned, only for the earth between to carry the weight of both.
How odd, you might think — a preacher’s daughter talking blasphemy. Surely no life’s misstep could compare to the fires of eternal damnation. Shouldn’t I have known better?
I might have — if I hadn’t fallen in love with Jack Meadows.
Ours was the fruit of a summer crush coaxed into a fire we couldn’t — didn’t want to — control. His fingertips strayed along the sash of my yellow dress that first day, and I didn’t say a word to make his touch recede. Sin didn’t feel like sin in that moments — or the moments after.
Maybe I would be going to hell, but the path along the way would be filled with sweet and tender seconds that felt like a brush with heaven’s light.
“I’m going to make you a happy bride,” Jack told me, “the absolute happiest. Just you wait, Sadie Miller, till I get that ring on your finger.”
I knew Jack well enough that I didn’t think much of his promise at first. Other girls had been burned by him in the past, and I didn’t mind being one in a line of heartbreaks.
