He Said Losing My Emotions Was Better, Then He Begged Me to Feel Again novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Moonrise on the Green
Miranda is chosen at the Stone by a man who lies, goes numb in front of the town, hands back the ring, and hears him beg her to take it back.
At moonrise, Orson Draper stepped onto the flat granite Stone in front of the whole town and said my name.
Four hundred people stood on the green with lanterns.
The moon was coming up orange over the river, and nobody was talking.
I was twenty-seven, the last Clendenin woman in her tenth year, and I had skipped this night nine times.
Here is the rule, since you won't have grown up with it.
A woman from one of our town's founding families has ten years after her eighteenth birthday to be chosen by someone who truly loves her.
It has to happen on Harvest Moon night, at the Stone.
The old tales say a false choice brings something terrible.
My grandmother had told me those tales until I stopped asking for them.
So I had hidden in the orchard every September, and Orson had let me.
Tonight I had come because he asked me to.
An hour earlier, in the Stone hall, his mother had pinned the back of my dress for me.
Her hands were steady and her gloves were off for once.
"You look lovely, dear," she said. "Orson has talked about nothing else all week."
I was shaking so hard that the pins slid.
"What if it isn't true?" I said. "What if the Moon knows?"
"Then the Moon would have taken me years ago," she said, and she smiled.
I laughed, because I thought it was a joke.
Gillian had caught me at the door of the hall after that.
She runs the diner, and she had flour on both arms.
"Mira, he loves you," she said. "I'd put my diner on it."
"You'd put the diner on anything."
"I'd put the diner on this."
So I walked out onto the green.
Now Orson stood above me on the granite with his hand held out.
His rust-brown hair was combed flat and his jaw was tight.
"Miranda Clendenin," he said. "I choose you. I love you. I have loved you since I knew what the word meant."
The crowd made a low, happy sound.
I had wanted him since I was eighteen, and I had stopped letting myself five years ago.
I took his hand and stepped up beside him.
"Yes," I said. "I'll be chosen."
The moon cleared the river.
Light hit the Stone, and something in my chest opened.
It did not hurt.
It simply went out of me, all of it.
The fear went first, then the want, then nine years of the small loud feelings I had never told anyone.
I stood there, and I was fine.
I looked at the lanterns, and they were lanterns.
I looked at Orson, and he was a tall man in a good jacket who was holding my hand too tight.
He was staring at my face.
I knew what my face was doing, because I could see his reading it.
It was doing nothing.
"Miranda?" he said.
"I can't feel it," I said. "Any of it."
My voice came out level.
Somebody in the crowd gasped.
Orson let out a laugh that was almost a cough.
"Then it's done," he said, quietly, so only I could hear. "It worked. Listen to me. This is better. No crying, no scenes, no waiting to be hurt. You'll never be hurt again."
I turned my head and looked at him.
"You lied," I said. "You don't love me."
"Of course I don't."
He said it fast and low, with his eyes on the crowd.
"It's a seat and a signature, Miranda. Nobody has to know. You've lost nothing worth having."
I knew I should want to hit him.
There was nothing there.
Behind him, his mother Odile Draper stood at the foot of the Stone with her gloves back on.
She was watching him, and her face did not change at all.
I pulled the ring off my finger.
It came off easily.
I set it in the palm of his free hand and closed his fingers over it.
"So I stepped out," I said, and I climbed down off the Stone.
I heard him make a sound behind me.
I kept walking.
The crowd opened for me, four hundred people, and not one of them said a word.
Then Orson's voice cracked across the green.
"Miranda, wait."
I stopped, because it was the first time I had ever heard that voice break.
I looked back.
He was on his knees on the Stone with his hand pressed to his cheek.
He took it away and stared at his fingers.
They were wet.
He had not cried once in all the years I'd known him, and he stared at his hand.
Then he was off the Stone and running.
He caught my wrist in both hands, and he was shaking.
Tears were pouring down his face, and his breath came in broken pieces.
"Take it back," he said. "Please. Take it back, I can feel all of it."
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