Page 52 of The Sniper

“I just didn’t know it would feel like this after.”

Empty. Spent. Torn between two versions of myself—one who craved the way he made me feel, and one who was raised to believe that giving your body before marriage meant giving away something sacred.

Maybe they were both me.

Maybe neither one was right.

But in that moment, I felt like I didn’t belong to either. Just suspended in the quiet with a man I barely knew and a sheet wrapped around me like it could hide the fact that something irreversible had just happened.

I wiped my face with the back of my hand, trying to pull myself together.

Noah shifted beside me, close but not touching, waiting.

I felt like I didn’t know who I was anymore.

Grieving daughter.

Runaway preacher’s girl.

Sinner. Survivor. Something in between.

I wrapped the sheet tighter around my shoulders and whispered, “I don’t know what to do now.”

And I didn’t.

Not about Daddy.

Not about Noah.

Not about myself.

So I just sat there, quietly crying, while the world kept turning like it didn’t notice mine had stopped.

Noah shifted again, the bed creaking softly under his weight. I felt him hesitate—just long enough for me to wonder if he was about to get dressed and walk out the door.

But then his voice came, low and even.

“You know I don’t believe the same things you do.”

I flinched a little, but I didn’t interrupt.

He paused like he was choosing every word with care. “I didn’t grow up with pews and purity rings. My mother believed in God, but she also believed in paying the water bill first. When she left, no church folks came knocking. No casseroles. No sermons about saving yourself for someone who might not even stick around.”

I closed my eyes.

“That doesn’t mean I don’t respect what you believe,” he went on. “But I need you to understand something, Hallie Mae. I don’t think what we did was wrong.”

My breath caught.

“I don’t think sex is dirty. I don’t think it needs to be earned through rings or ceremonies or promises made in front of an altar. I think it’s real. Sacred, even, in its own way—but not because some preacher says so. Because you chose it.”

He leaned forward now, slow, resting his hand on my back again. “You chose me. In the middle of the worst pain of your life, you wanted connection. Comfort. Something alive to remind you that you are, too.”

I bit my lip, fighting another wave of tears.

“That’s not shameful,” he said. “It’s human.”

A silence stretched between us, filled only by the distant hum of his air unit and the faint whistle of wind at the window.

---