The chapel sat at the very top of the mountain, quiet and weathered, its white steeple cracked with age. There was no paved road leading to it, only a gravel path overgrown with grass. Wildflowers bloomed at the edges, as if trying to reclaim the holy ground.
Mia climbed the final steps with her chest tight—not from the altitude, but from nerves.
This wasn’t a regular Sunday service.
This was confession.
Whispers in town spoke of the man who ran the mountain chapel. Preacher Abram. A man who didn’t ask for tithes. A man who didn’t judge. But the women who visited him came back changed. Quieter. Wetter. Hungrier.
And Mia needed that kind of salvation.
She pushed open the door.
Inside, it was candlelit. Dust swirled in the shafts of light through the high windows. There were no pews—j
