REBEL SAINT

by Leigh, Adriane

  We were suddenly so alone in a space that’d been so full minutes ago.

  “I’ve found myself at a bit of an impasse, my dove. See, I can’t lose you, but I can’t keep you either.”

  My heart strummed as if his fingers played its heartstrings, adrenaline coursing through my veins when his second hand brushed my thigh, a fresh wave of addiction sending me a little higher.

  Lucy was right.

  I’d been a horrible fool thinking I could keep myself from falling.

  The damage was done, and the only way out would be through the darkness, driven by the promise of tomorrow’s light.

  “Bastien.” I sucked in a breath as his fingers tightened at my thighs, pulling me a little closer to him. His lips at my throat singed my nerves, butterfly-light kisses trailing down the hollow and hovering just at the top of my neckline.

  “My beautiful Héloïse. You and I destined for discontent from the start, and I your darkest sin.”

  His tender words pulled emotion from my eyes. I knew the story he spoke of, Héloïse the French nun, fated to spend a lifetime loving her very own philosopher and holy man, Abelard, from afar. I’d read their love letters in high school, the depths of their devotion and desperation still profoundly haunting to this day.

  “You’ve been doing your best to avoid me, and I’m supposed to pretend I don’t notice?” His tone turned firm, commanding. “Are you prepared to repent?”

  I swallowed, drugged by this touch. “Are you?”

  His thumbs worked my delicate skin, which grew more and more sensitive as he moved closer and closer to my core. “Don’t test me. I’ve already desecrated the sacred sacrament. By the edicts of the church, I am no longer in a state of grace.” The pad of his thumb brushed the seam of my pants, the damp heat beneath proof of how much my body craved him. “I’m already damned, precious dove.”

  I ducked my head, one of his palms spanning the expanse of my back before he pressed his hard body against mine, sliding us both against the cool brick walls and ensuring I felt every hard, raw inch of him.

  There was no mistaking how Father Bastien felt.

  And I certainly couldn’t pretend I didn’t think of him every waking moment of my day.

  “I just…” he whispered against the heartbeat at my throat, “I can’t see a way out of this that doesn’t involve eternal destruction.”

  His head bent, and my fingers stroked through the threads of his loose hair before he dropped to the floor, clutching at my thighs and pressing his lips against my abdomen.

  My strong lion, reduced to his knees.

  “Trust me, I’ve tried. I’ve tried to imagine a thousand different scenarios, but none of them are good, Tressa. And none of them involve you and me riding off into the sunset.” His voice was gravelly, delicious. I hummed because I didn’t know what else to do to keep my hips from bucking against his.

  “I’m not the shepherd in this scenario.” Desperate eyes held mine. “I’m the wolf.”

  I gulped, a spray of emotion webbing into my chest as I thought about how very wrong he was.

  He was my everything.

  I, the dark angel, and he, the saint who accepted without judgment. The man who’d fed me and sheltered me and brought my bruised heart back to life. He gave me purpose and he gave me motivation to be better, and for that, he would forever be priceless.

  I pressed my lips together, uncomfortable with the cascade of emotions welling inside of me, willing the levee to hold back my heartbroken tears before Bastien’s lips were on my skin.

  Littering my cheeks and temples with kisses, hovering atop each of my eyelids in perfect time.

  His devotion swallowed me whole. My mind and body lost their sense of sin in favor of giving myself to him in crashing waves of unconstrained bliss, the shockwaves lasting long after his touch.

  Lucy was right.

  So was Bastien.

  I was the one who’d so wrongly misjudged this situation.

  My heart fell, slivered into pieces on the floor at our feet.

  I would never recover from Bastien.

  “Tressa, if there were a way out for me…” He gulped at my neck, one hand digging into my waist, desperation running through his taut muscles. “If I could find a way to make this work…”

  My lips began a slow tremble.

  This.

  We’d been reduced to a this.

  Such a small word for such a big feeling.

  I pushed my hands against his wide chest, forcing my watery eyes to meet his for a moment.

  A quiet nod of knowing before I slipped out of the cage of his dominant arms and ducked through the door that led into the nave of St. Michael’s, quieter than a church mouse.

  Knowing filled my system when I realized that, by this, Father Bastien had meant love. This love between us was scarier and bigger, impossible to shake.

  At least those were the feelings I was desperate to escape.

  Just as I approached the vestibule doors, one of Bastien’s older catechism students barreled down the stairs from the choir, eyes locked on my approaching form with a wicked teenage boy grin.

  My heart clenched in my chest, wondering just what kind of view he’d had from the choir loft and if anyone else was with him. “Hi, Ronnie John.”

  “Ms. Tressa.” He winked once as a second boy came down the stairs, a wild laugh accompanying him, before he reached the bottom step and high-fived his companion.

  “Hey, Ms. Tressa. We’re lookin’ for Father Bastien. Did you just come from the sacristy?”

  I couldn’t reply, convinced they knew exactly where I was coming from and whom I was with. Could they smell my attraction to him? Was arousal from Bastien’s touch stamped on my face like a crimson A?

  I nodded awkwardly when I realized they were still waiting on my reply, waving my hand over my shoulder to indicate Father Bastien was, in fact, in his innermost sanctuary, the very place I’d just come from.

  They thanked me, buzzing by and down the silent pews of St. Mike’s, beelining for the holy man who’d just given me my first orgasm under someone else’s hand.

  The hand of God, in this case.

  I suppressed an audible groan at my own cliché.

  This brand of pleasure felt crushing.

  I pushed through the front door of the cottage a few minutes later, waving at Lucy with only a little bit of shame over everything that’d been unraveling around me these last few weeks.

  Without a word, I sidestepped into the kitchen, opening the small pantry door to get another bottle of wine down from the shelf where I’d obtained the last.

  White, this time.

  Didn’t want to send my liver into total shutdown with red another night in a row.

  I hadn’t drunk since…

  Well…

  I clamped down on my bottom lip, pulling a wineglass from the shelf and turning to find Lucy, arms crossed, one eyebrow arched and aimed at me.

  “Hey,” I said breathlessly.

  “Evening.” She smiled, glancing down at my prizes. “Celebrating something?”

  “Nope.” I shook my head, skirting around her and down the hall to my room.

  “Maybe.” Lucy was hot on my heels, hand snatching the wineglass from my hand before I could even begin to pour. “Just maybe we should rethink a second round.”

  I tossed the white on my bed and shrugged out of my coat. “You have no idea what happened tonight.”

  My cheeks thawed, and I rubbed my hands together, wishing we could turn up the heat in this place. But the leaks were plenty and the budget for the church was abysmal, so we froze most nights.

  “So, enlighten me on today’s events.” Lucy plopped down next to me, crossing her legs, ready for girl talk.

  “I’d rather not.” I reached for the glass, smiling politely when I wrested it from her sober little fingers.

  “You should talk to someone.”

  “Oh? Maybe I should go to confession, then?”

  He
r eyes widened, the impossibility of that option running like cold fire through my veins.

  I huffed, unscrewing the cap on the bottle and sniffing, the sharp smell of vinegar strong, but not something I couldn’t handle.

  I had an entire love affair to get over, after all.

  “You know you’re not alone.”

  “Excuse me?” I poured the first glass to the halfway mark, thinking I’d take it easy on Lucy’s advice. At least while she was monitoring me with that eagle eye.

  “You’re not the first woman to fall in love with a priest.”

  “Lucy!” I spat out the wine. “I’m not. That’s not what… I don’t think that’s the appropriate sentiment for what we are.”

  “Ha!” She laughed, pointing like a silly detective. “But there is a we.”

  I sighed, taking another long swallow. “There’s definitely a we.”

  Instead of smiling, she frowned, patting my knee with her hand before standing. “Just Google it, that’s all I’m saying.”

  “I’m not going to Google it. That’s ridiculous, Lucy.”

  She arched her eyebrow in what was now becoming her infamous look before backing out of the room, door closing quietly in her absence.

  I sighed, finishing the rest of the glass in my hand and then pouring a new round, to the brim this time.

  “This shit is terrible,” I sighed, already feeling a little buzzy in my head. “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.” I took a sip. “My last confession was…” I sipped again, pressing the rim to my lips as I thought back to the last time I’d confessed to Father Martin. The last time I saw him.

  My memory was hazy, partly because of the wine, mostly because I’d blocked out that period of my life.

  While I couldn’t remember much of anything around that time, my memory of that last confession was razor-sharp.

  It was late on a Sunday afternoon, sun just dipping under the horizon on Halloween night.

  I was dressed up as a witch, cheap tulle and a face mask.

  I’d only made it to the end of the block trick-or-treating, the October wind far too cold for me, when I realized I’d left the keys to our house in the house, and I’d have to wait until Mom was off work before I could get in.

  I’d wandered into St. Michael’s for the warmth, sliding in beside the few parishioners seated outside the confessional as I waited for Father Martin.

  After the last confessor had come and gone and Father Martin still hadn’t left his booth, I wandered in, more curious than anything else.

  He’d greeted me kindly, pretending not to know who I was, and behind that intricate woven screen, I felt freedom. I took off the witch mask and became myself. For the first time, I felt like I could admit all the things I hadn’t wanted to say out loud.

  I told him about the previous weekend, when mom’s boyfriend had woken me out of a dead sleep by getting into my bed in his underwear, asking me to get him another beer.

  I could tell he was sleepwalking, or so drunk that he might as well have been, but still, I’d felt more of a man’s body that night than I ever had before and had a zillion questions the morning after, starting with the male anatomy.

  When I told Father Martin I’d felt his sword, I hadn’t meant literally so much as…brushed against it.

  It wasn’t at all horrifying to say out loud, but thinking back on it, I could understand Father Martin’s alarm.

  When Mom had come wandering in after eleven that night, Father Martin had taken her into the rectory while I sat in a pew, eyes on the twelfth Station of the Cross.

  The resurrection of Christ.

  “Every time I let you out of the house, I regret it.” Mom stomped out of the rectory a moment after she’d entered, snagging my hand and pulling me along behind her and out of the doors of St. Michael’s. Father Martin stood on the top step, watching us as we scurried home in the cold night.

  I hadn’t known then what the problem was.

  But when Mom forbade me from ever going to St. Michael’s or seeing Father Martin again, I knew perfectly well what had happened. He’d expressed concern for my wellbeing.

  So she made sure I’d never see him again.

  TEN

  Tressa

  Words like temptation and deliverance weighed heavy on my thoughts as I spent the next few days operating on autopilot and hunkering down in the nursery with Lucy, my planner and notebook in hand and making notes and calls to organize a winter festival, a St. Valentine’s sock hop, and a spring fling.

  Instead of dancing, the version of the sock hop at St. Michael’s would be heavy on the games for kids and adults, plenty of potluck items for snacking and parish-made pastries. I’d already managed to convince a few sponsors to donate items, and the local community news section agreed to run some ads for us free of charge.

  Bastien and St. Michael’s had so much to contribute, I didn’t like seeing its parishioners suffer just because the budget was down.

  Ms. Watson, the retired church secretary, had even given me a hug after Wednesday night Mass, glowing with words of positivity about the good work I’d been doing for the parish and how lucky they were to have me. Bastien had hovered just out of earshot, lingering and aware of my every move, and I, his. I was so painstakingly conscious of every heartbeat that passed between us. When he entered the room, the air rushed out of my lungs, my knees shook, and my heart began an annoying, slow gallop in my chest.

  Prickling palms and words like love chugged through my brain.

  I hated every second.

  My resentment for the tender spot I had for him grew by the day.

  By avoiding him, I’d managed to make wanting him that much more forbidden.

  I’d done the very opposite of what I’d meant to do.

  Inwardly, I cursed him and then myself when I’d headed out the nursery doors one morning to pick up diapers and formula for a few of the younger kids and spied Bastien kneeling at the cross, heavy body swallowed by shadows. A play of golden light through one of the stained-glass windows created a halo effect around his head, and bent in pure benediction, lips moving silently, he nearly brought me to my knees.

  He prayed with fervor, as if in his own self-inflicted penance.

  My Bastien.

  I watched, enamored, thinking of what a man like him said to God.

  Did he ask for forgiveness for me?

  Had I corrupted him?

  Was I the siren sent to lead him to the pits of sin?

  A vise grip clenched around my heart as he made a silent sign of the cross on his forehead, and then above his lips.

  I wiped the tears off of my face with the sleeve of my sweater and turned the other way, escaping out of the door before he could see me.

  Heart sinking in my chest.

  ELEVEN

  Tressa

  Women Who Love Priests

  I typed the ominous four words into the world’s favorite search bar.

  I sighed when over a million results were returned in less than a millisecond.

  I scrolled down the results page, chin in hand, nearly laughing at the pitiful look I must have had about me at that very moment.

  Erasing the search, I tried again, this time typing, Jobs for Caregivers.

  It wasn’t like I didn’t already know that I was good at taking care of people. I’d been taking classes to be a social worker when I’d been at school, but it’d taken me far too many weeks to realize that just because I wasn’t in school at this time didn’t mean I couldn’t find a way to make money with the skills I did have.

  My hopes weren’t high. Frankly, my experience with jobs had been almost none. The school, as required by my scholarship, had supplied me an on-campus job for a minimum of twenty hours a week. I’d been assigned to the cafeteria my first semester, but once I’d taken an interest in the psychology department, the chair had submitted a special request to have me assigned to that department for the next semester.

  Dr. Grady had saved my life in many w
ays.

  And ruined it in others.

  I’d made peace with his small part in the destruction of my life, the bitterness no longer something that choked me and woke me up at night in terror and night sweats.

  I fully blamed myself for that poor reaction.

  Drugging myself numb would have been a better course of action in hindsight.

  I would have gotten a lot more sleep and done a lot more rational thinking that way.

  When Dr. Grady had offered to pay for dinner if I escorted him to a fancy meeting, I hadn’t known that meant introducing me to the city’s most successful entrepreneur and high roller, a man who recognized the smell of a young, broke chick and left his card if I ever “wanted to talk business.”

  I hadn’t known what it meant then. Hadn’t thought about the way Dr. Grady scooted his chair closer to mine and threw an arm over the back, my head already bubbly from my second glass of champagne.

  He’d been a perfect gentleman that night when he’d walked me home.

  It was every day after that he’d commenced the slow unraveling of my psyche.

  I’d thought circles around the situation in the months since it’d happened, what I could have done differently.

  The answer I’d come up with? Well, I still didn’t have one. I’d just shoved it to the back burner in favor of surviving.

  I mulled over the search results staring back from the screen, dialing into a database of caregiving jobs in my general vicinity. I spent the next hour familiarizing myself with the status of health workers in the area, trying to carve out a plan for the next few years of my life. If I knew anything, it was that I wouldn’t be sitting here riding Bastien’s coattails and begging for his time on the side for longer than I could help it.

  I wanted so much good for St. Michael’s.

  But I wanted good for me too.