Obsession His Runaway Bride (Noelle and Adrian) novel Chapter 139

Chapter 139: Prayers

Chapter 139: Prayers

The car slowed to a stop in front of the estate’s towering gates. Black iron curled like claws around stone pillars, still as severe as

she remembered.

Grace took a breath and didn’t move right away.

The silence inside the vehicle was overwhelming until one of Keegan’s men in the front seat turned slightly, and spoke in a calm and respectful voice. “We’re here, Miss Blackwood.”

That name still felt like a coat she didn’t know whether to keep or turn. It felt too tight in the shoulders, too heavy in the sleeves.

Grace nodded as her fingers briefly curled around the door handle before she finally pushed it open.

The wind outside smelled like damp earth and iron. The gravel crunched beneath her as she stepped out slowly, like someone walking onto sacred ground, not because it was holy, but because it was haunted.

The front of the estate stood tall and unchanged. Stone walls were untouched by time, windows shut tight, the brass knocker on the front doors still polished like someone might be expecting guests. But the subtle signs were there. Dust settled on the corners of the steps. A few dry leaves collected under the archway. The hedges along the path weren’t quite wild, but they had lost the precise trimming she remembered.

She didn’t head toward the door right away.

Instead, Grace walked along the curve of the front path while the guards kept a respectful distance behind her.

i

She passed the marble birdbath that hadn’t held water in years and brushed her fingers lightly across the ivy that clung to the stone columns of the veranda. The blooms in the garden beds had withered, but the soil had been recently turned as if someone had cared for it half–heartedly.

Eventually, her steps brought her to the tree.

It was the same tall, a little lopsided tree with its roots still stubbomly cracking through the stone around it. She used to sit under it, tucked against the trunk with a book in her lap and dirt on her knees. It had been the only place that felt like hers.

There wasn’t joy in the memory, exactly. But there was something calming about it. Something familiar, like an old melody hummed under your breath unremarkable to others, but deeply woven into you.

Grace leaned back against the tree without thinking, feeling the rough bark press through the fabric of her shirt. Her fingers tugged at the hem, grounding herself in the moment. The wind shifted gently, rustling the leaves above her, soft and whispery like a voice just out of reach.

She closed her eyes.

For a moment, she could ask herself how did she ever manage to leave this place?

How had she found the strength to step beyond the gates, after all hose years of believing that this estate was where her story would end? She used to sit under this very tree, book in her lap, staring blankly at pages she couldn’t finish reading. The thought of escaping had once felt more like a fantasy than a real possibility And the thought of surviving, of actually wanting to, was even more impossible.

She had been waiting for permission to let go.

And yet here she stood now. Breathing and slowly healing.

If struck her then like light breaking through leaves that maybe….te had desired more for her. That maybe the story didn’t end here.

And Keegan… heavens, Keegan.

1/3

Chapter 139. Prayers

+15 BONUS

Her lips curved slightly, trembling as they did.

If he ever heard the thoughts she used to whisper into the dark about wanting everything to stop, about not being strong enough to keep going, he would frown. Not in disappointment. No, never that. He would frown like he always did when something hurt her. Like the very idea of her giving up would break him.

Grace chuckled softly to herself, breath catching on the edge of emotion. She looked up through the swaying branches overhead, into the shifting, dappled sky.

“Faith,” she whispered aloud, voice cracking as it met the breeze. If I could take back my words… would you let me live?”

Her eyes blurred, and the first tear rolled down her cheek. Then another.

“I want to live a long life. And be with him for a little while longer.

The words left her lips like a vow. Not of desperation, but of hope.

And with them, her tears kept falling but they didn’t sting. They weren’t bitter. These were not the tears she used to cry in silence, curled up behind locked doors. These were tears that tasted like freedom.

A prayer, plain and unadorned.

A prayer for forgiveness for all the times she hated herself.

A prayer of forgiving people who shaped her wounds, knowingly of not.

A prayer of release…for the girl who once sat under this tree and thought she would never feel anything again.

And quietly, gently, a prayer of request.

“Give me a new heart,” she whispered. “So I can give it to him. All of it. Every piece.”

She smiled through the blur, wiping her cheeks with the ends of her sleeves. There was no audience, no need to pretend. It was just her, the wind, and the truth.

And as her thoughts wandered back to the beginning, a curious little memory surfaced. The first time she met Keegan, all those months ago. She had called him Segen.

A word pulled from an old book. One she’d barely remembered reading at the time. She didn’t know why she’d said it then. It had just… slipped out.

Segen.

Blessing.

She hadn’t even known him.

Not really. Not his name, not his story, not the way his eyes crinkled when he laughed too hard, or the way his voice softened when she was too quiet. Back then, he was just a stranger. A strange man with sharp eyes and quiet strength who entered her life like a shadow and became her light.

But even so, she had called him a blessing.

She hadn’t planned it. The word had simply come to her, as if her soul had named him before her mind could catch up. She remembered thinking it sounded right and fitting,

Maybe it was foolish.

Or maybe some buried part of her, the small corner untouched by the coldness of her upbringing, had already hoped that in her quietest despair, she needed a reason to stay.

And Keegan… he had become that reason.

2/3

Chapter 139. Prayers

+15 BONUS

She hadn’t expected someone like him to come into her life, let alone stay. Let alone love her with such wild, gentle conviction. He never asked her to change. He never asked her to be easy. He just stood beside her and made her his world.

And now, when she thought of the name she’d given him…it didn’t feel like a stranger’s name.

It felt real, true, and earned.

Because that’s exactly what he had become.

He was her blessing.

Her second chance.

He was her redemption.

And maybe she had lost too much before she found him. Maybe life had carved too many scars into her. But he never asked for a flawless heart–only a whole one. A heart she was learning, slowly to rebuild.

And now… she just wanted to live long enough to say that name again.