I Married a Man I Met at a Stranger’s Funeral

Prologue

I shouldn’t have been there.

The church was too quiet, filled with too much grief I hadn’t earned. I sat in the back row, legs crossed, sunglasses on, pretending my heart was shattered by the death of a woman I never knew. My dress was black silk. My lipstick was crimson sin. I looked like grief in high heels, and no one questioned me.

I didn’t come for the casket. I came to feel something.

Then he walked in.

Tall. Stark. Alone. Like a shadow dressed in flesh and secrets. He moved like he didn’t belong either — too composed, too silent, too beautiful. His suit was perfectly tailored, but his eyes held the ache of something lost long before this funeral.

He didn’t notice me, not at first. But I noticed him.

The way his jaw clenched when the eulogy started. The way he stared straight ahead like if he blinked, something would break. The way his hand gripped the pew like he was anchoring himself to this world. And then — as if pulled by a string no one could see — he turned.

And our eyes met.

It didn’t feel like a beginning. It felt like a memory. Like I’d looked into those eyes before, in another life, another skin. My breath caught, and in that second, I forgot the name of the dead woman. I forgot why I’d come.

Because he was the only thing that made sense.

After the service, people scattered like leaves in wind. I stayed behind, hovering near the exit, pretending to read the order of service, pretending to mourn. But I was waiting.

And he knew.

He walked straight toward me, his footsteps quiet, his gaze louder than any word I’d ever heard.

“You didn’t know her,” he said.

It wasn’t a question. Just the truth, laid bare.

I smiled, bold as a scar. “Neither did you.”

He studied me, like I was a puzzle he didn’t want to solve but couldn’t walk away from. “Why are you here?”

“I could ask you the same.”

He paused. “I wanted to remember something.”

I nodded. “I wanted to forget everything.”

A silence fell between us — not awkward, not heavy. Just... charged. Like the moment before lightning strikes. And then, with the ghost of a smile, he extended his hand.

“I’m Calder.”

I should’ve walked away.

Instead, I took his hand and gave him a name that wasn’t mine.

That night, we had coffee that turned into whiskey that turned into dawn. I learned that he had scars he never spoke of, a mother he never visited, and a voice that turned to gravel when he whispered. He learned that I danced in thunderstorms, lied like poetry, and had no fear of strangers.

By the end of the week, we were sleeping in each other’s arms like it was always meant to be.

By the end of the month, he was on one knee.

And I said yes.

Because love, when it burns fast, doesn’t ask for logic. It demands surrender. It doesn’t care if you’ve known each other for thirty days or thirty lifetimes. It only wants the fall.

But even in that fall, part of me wondered:

Why that funeral?

Why him?

Why did it feel like fate dressed in a funeral suit?

I didn’t ask. He didn’t tell. We chose silence wrapped in kisses, questions buried beneath moans. We married in a fever. Just the two of us. A courthouse, a white dress I bought that morning, and a promise we weren’t ready to make.

His kiss at the altar tasted like danger. Like secrets. Like goodbye.

But I kissed him back.

And when I moved into his home — a cold, beautiful place perched on a cliffside like it was daring the sea to swallow it — I found the first clue.

A photograph, hidden in a drawer. A woman who looked too much like the one in the casket. A date scribbled on the back. The same date as the funeral.

I asked who she was.

He said she was no one.

But his eyes — his haunted, desperate eyes — said otherwise.

Still, I stayed. I touched him like I could erase the lies. I loved him like he was already breaking. I told myself that secrets were just stories waiting to be told.

Until the phone rang.

Until the doorbell screamed.

Until I found the journal buried beneath the floorboards — and learned the truth.

The woman who died that day wasn’t a stranger.

She was his past.

His obsession.

His crime.

And me? I wasn’t just the girl who crashed a funeral.

I was the alibi.

I married a man I met at a stranger’s funeral.

And now I don’t know if I’ll survive the marriage.