“Is there someone you can count on to?”
“There’s nothing from my past worth holding on to. Not a single thing.”
“What calms you, then? What brings you peace?”
I swallowed. “I guess candlelight, soft music, a bath…”
“That sounds like a first date more than a spiritual practice.”
“I’m not sure when the last time was you had a first date, Father, but baths aren’t really a custom.”
His gentle chuckle filled the room and hollowed out my insides. “My point is,” he said finally, “you might find unloading some of those things to be beneficial.”
“And…you’ll be there when I’m ready?”
“I’m bound by a sense of honor to be.”
“How godly of you.” I hushed, sucking my bottom lip between my teeth as I focused on him. The soft glow highlighting the bow of his top lip, the sooty line of eyelashes that added dark mystique to his already otherworldly aura.
What would happen if he kissed me? What would I do if he launched this moment from innocence to sin with just the brush of lips? Would lightning strike us in retribution?
My breathing quickened when Bastien’s eyes narrowed, the side of his mouth twitching into a scant curve. He could probably hear the heart rattling within my rib cage, thundering beats dancing to the rhythm of his.
I swallowed, consumed by the imagined touch of his lips against mine. Tongue probing, hands cascading down my back until…
Boom. Boom.
The sound of the wind catching what sounded like a heavy door shook me from my fantasy.
Bastien’s hand settled over my palm, eyes darting across the span of my face before he pressed up on thick thighs and rose from the floor. “That sounded like the door into the nave.”
I felt my eyes close, reality settling itself into my bones.
“Stay here, keep yourself warm, and think about what I said.”
I narrowed my eyes, giving my head a quick shake to let him know I would not be doing that last part, before he paused, regarding me for another long moment.
I must have been a sight, curled up on the tiny couch, two quilts to hold in the body heat, my eyes faraway, in a land where girls didn’t dream of kissing the priests who saved them.
* * *
By the time Bastien was back fifteen minutes later, he wasn’t alone.
A teenager bundled in a dirty ski jacket, oversized flannel, with beat-up combat boots on her feet hung in Bastien’s shadow.
“Tressa, this is Lucy. The shelter has been at capacity all week with the storm. I told her we’ve got plenty enough heat to keep her warm.” His eyes cut to her with a small and encouraging nod at the fire, and she darted across the room, thrusting her hands toward the warm flames.
“Are you hungry? I can make you something?”
“Just the fire for now, thanks.” Lucy’s eyes focused on her own cool blue fingertips.
She couldn’t be more than eighteen, her eyes carrying shame and guilt far too heavy for her years.
Father Bastien rested a platonic hand on my shoulder and murmured that he was going to grab another few blankets from upstairs. In his absence, I watched her from across the room, the way all that clothing engulfed her frail body. She set to work untying her boots, worn and nearly frozen stiff. Her fingers stumbled with the laces, and before she could ask, I was across the room and bent, untying the laces for her.
“You don’t have to. Please, I feel so bad taking advantage already.” Tears began to form in her eyes.
“Taking advantage of heat in a blizzard?” I shook my head, eyes focusing on hers for long seconds.
She sucked her bottom lip between her teeth, embarrassment radiating from her when I pulled off her final boot and found frostbite had already started to kiss her toes. “I tried to sleep under a bench at the park last night, but I didn’t last more than a few hours before the cold forced me to keep walking.”
“Oh, honey,” I whispered, wrapping her still chilled hands in my own and giving her a squeeze. “I wish you’d come here last night.”
Bastien returned just then, a mound of wool blankets in his arms. “Is there anyone we can contact for you? You’re welcome to use my mobile.”
She shook her head swiftly, grateful when Bastien laid both blankets across her legs, tucking them under herself to prevent any heat from escaping. A minute later, she was curled up at the base of the fire, eyes falling closed and breaths deepening.
She looked so fragile, all the unfairness of the world settled on her young shoulders.
Bastien settled himself on the pile of blankets where he’d been, and not knowing what else to do with myself, especially now that it’d gotten so late, I did the same.
“Do you think she’ll be here when we wake up in the morning?”
“I think if she knows what’s best, she will be. I think we’ve got a few more days of this left.” His eyes turned to the bundle of softly sleeping wool on his other side. “This reminds me of Cuba.”
I shook my head, more than slightly confused. “Lots of snowstorms down there, huh?”
His grin deepened, eyes breathing fire into me when they grazed mine. “Not quite. But it does get cold. There were a lot of nights when all we had was the fire to keep everyone warm. The entire family would curl up in scratchy blankets near the wood stove, the same one Mamá made arroz con pollo on so many nights of my life.”
“Do you still have family there?”
“Sure, some extended family. Cousins and the like. We grew up surrounded by miles of verdant green tobacco fields. It’s beautiful.”
“But not beautiful enough to keep you there?”
“Not as much as I wanted to brave wild new horizons.” His dark eyes gleamed as he spoke.
“America has to be about the wildest new horizon.”
He chuckled, then nodded. “That it is.” Our eyes hung suspended until, finally, he continued, “Truth is, the Jesuits…I appreciate their honoring tradition, but my idea of God is something slightly different from theirs.”
“I thought they were about the same.”
He shook his head quickly. “Not at all. Certainly, it’s based on the same readings, but the meaning they take is an odd mix of progressive dogmatism. I wanted to be a part of the new Catholic church, the one evolving into the twenty-first century. Carrying the weight of those who came before feels…indulgent. So many need real and tangible help right now. The last thing I wanted was to be stuck in a confessional chastising everyone who came through my doors. That was a long time ago, though.”
“And you’ve lost your original motivation?” I whispered.
“Not lost, just evolved, I suppose.”
“So, you came out of Jesuit school a reformer?”
“Holy reformer.” The first cocky grin I’d ever seen of Father Bastien Castaneda tilted his lips.
“A rebel priest. I never would have guessed.” I regretted the words the second they were on my lips.
“Rebel priest, huh?” His devilish eyes ate up the small space. “First time I’ve heard that.”
I bit down on my lip, still working the foot out of my mouth.
“How many times are you gonna take me by surprise, Tressa Torrado?”
And with his velvety Cuban accent wrapped around the letters of my name, I buried myself deeper into the scratchy blanket at his side and quietly died.
FOUR
Tressa
Lucy tried to tell us she was leaving that first morning, but we’d both adamantly refused. Bastien explained the church was set up to help those in need, and I could already see the wheels turning as he thought of more ways we could be of help.
We.
So odd. At some point, I’d started thinking of Bastien and myself as a “we.”
But we had become a we. Hunkering down through the Northeast’s worst blizzard in a decade had connected us in some small way.
Worrying over Lucy, even more so.
Sh
e’d kept mum, even when I’d gently tried to probe her with leading questions. Whatever she’d been through had been dramatic; that much was written all over her face.
When Bastien had explained the church had a small fund set up to hire for odd jobs, tears had slowly begun to stream down her cheeks. Her shoulders shuddered as I pulled her into a hug.
“No one’s ever been this…kind to me,” she’d choked out.
That statement alone had sent me crying along with her before wrapping her in a giant hug. “People are in our lives for a reason—I’m so happy you find your way to mine.”
Now we stood shoulder to shoulder at Sunday morning mass, the pews only staggered with people as the storm had kept many home.
Bastien sat to one side, looking as calm as ever as the small choir ended on a high note. Then he stood slowly, nodding in appreciation to the loft, before we all sat and he stepped to the lectern to deliver his homily.
“Hardship, according to Saint Mary Magdalen, forges our souls in fire.” His heavenly accented words spiraled through me, rich in their tone and cadence. “For how can we know happiness without great sorrow?”
I followed the way his throat contracted with his wisdom, the way his broad chest flexed and moved with such calm resourcefulness. He was made to lead people, there was no doubt about that, but what’d struck me more with every day was the deep compassion with which he approached life. He lived and breathed God’s word.
It made tasting the forbidden fruit so much sweeter.
Or so I assumed.
The way his serene presence almost floated through the nave, honoring the Stations of the Cross or blessing a parishioner. I was enamored of Father Bastien.
My mind raced with thoughts of him at night.
It’d begun to feel like the word SIN was stamped across my forehead all day my thoughts had become so traitorous.
My cheeks heated instantly when Bastien’s eyes slid across the room and caught me watching him then. I bit down on my bottom lip and glanced away, and the tiniest twitch of a grin lifted the delicate bow of his mouth.
“Are you okay?” Lucy asked me at my side.
I cleared my throat softly, nodding and willing my thoughts to linger on anything but the man who stood liturgizing behind a pulpit at that very moment.
“God would ask that we remember our neighbor in times like these—let no man or woman be a stranger, but another one of God’s divine souls in need. It is in these times that we call on our faith most ardently. With free will and passion and wholeheartedness, we strike down sin and cast ourselves in His noble light. His light here on earth.”
Father Bastien paused, gaze traveling over the small group of parishioners one last time before he turned, closing his Bible, and returned to the small chair provided him. He settled the crimson filigreed book in his lap before heavy, hooded eyes picked across the pews, then landed on mine.
Without expression, our dark irises tangled together in some unspoken dance.
It wasn’t often that I caught him looking at me, but I had.
More often than a priest should linger on a parishioner.
I didn’t know Bastien in any other context outside of the four walls of this holy brick building.
But that didn’t stop me from fantasizing.
Nothing could stop me from that.
I swallowed, Bastien’s eyes finally releasing their grip on mine, a violent rush of air filling my lungs as I felt freed from his invisible bond.
Surely, he knew the hold he had? I had half a mind to think it was that very sense of warm charisma that landed him in this vocation.
I wondered if he’d always been so aloof, and maybe it was his very unattainable nature that fueled my desire.
Or worse, maybe it was simply that he listened.
I’d never been around a man long enough to say for sure, but I suspected they didn’t all have the compassionate shoulder Father Bastien did.
Maybe I’d fallen in love with his kindness.
Maybe it was as simple and as sad as that.
Within minutes, the parishioners were shifting out the front doors, pausing for long moments to shake the hand of the man who guided them. Lucy and I filed along, chatting quietly as I did my best to keep my mind off this man. It was impossible not to be drawn to him, but missing him…that was another form of torture entirely because I had no right to him at all.
I thought of my mother, so many years spent working double shifts and then collapsing on the couch, lonely, bottle in hand and chip on her shoulder. Her utter lack of love for so many years acted as a slow undoing. I vowed I would never live so isolated. Maybe star-crossed love was out of reach, but friends, family, neighbors, anything was better than sitting alone night after night.
“Thank you for coming, Lucy.” Bastien’s thick baritone jerked me into the present. Bastien cast his eyes over her shoulder and met mine with a pleasant smile.
I nodded, forcing a brave smile while my stomach churned with anxiety, anticipation, arousal—a mixture of all three.
“I hope so too, Father.” Lucy smiled.
“And, Tressa, would it be too much to ask if I keep you a little late this morning to discuss some things relevant to the day care?” Bastien moved closer, warm hand hovering at my back as he turned, guiding me back through the main doors of the church.
Back into his realm.
“Is Lucy getting along okay? What’s your professional assessment?” he asked as soon as we were out of earshot of anyone else.
“Professional assessment?” I laughed him off.
“Well, you’ve taken more counseling classes than I have.”
“I’m dozens of classes away from anything like that. But what’s my feeling? I think she’s better than she was. I think stability was the best thing we could have offered her.”
“You offered her that.”
I nodded, thinking about the morning after she’d arrived and I’d asked her, all but insisted, really, that she stay with me in the small, two-bedroom cottage next to the rectory. “I gave her a key last night. She’s so quiet, it’s almost unnerving.”
“She mentioned siblings at one point.” I remembered the very conversation, a tense look crossing her face when the word family came up at all.
“I don’t think she’s in touch with anyone, or even wants to be.”
“I shudder to think of the burden some of God’s children are asked to carry.”
I frowned, a twinge of righteous indignation pulsing through me. “How do you do that?”
“Do what?” Bastien paused, large body hovering over me, one foot resting on the step of the chancel. I did the first thing I thought to do and collapsed under the oppressive heat of his presence, my ass finding the cool wooden chair he’d been sitting in just minutes ago.
I vaguely thought this was probably a holy chair, one that my very unholy ass probably shouldn’t be desecrating, but locked in his gaze as I was, things like ambulatory movement paled in comparison.
“How do you stay so…faithful in the face of so much sin?”
He nearly barked out a laugh, one hand rubbing over the already dark shadow of his jaw and then hovering at the white collar at his neck. “Faithful, huh? Most days, I feel anything but.”
“Oh?” I couldn’t help my reply. His eyes flicked from my face, down the line of my neck, and then up again, as if catching themselves on the path to sin.
“Faith is a practice, Tressa.” His throat moved as he swallowed, as if tamping down something uncomfortable. “Even for me.”
“Well, what do you do when you feel like…” I didn’t have the words. I didn’t even know what exactly I meant to say, but I knew I wanted his answer.
Silence hung heavy between us, my eyes darting around like a pendulum, unsure and unsettled.
Finally, voice lowered an octave, he spoke. “Some days, practicing faith is a matter of avoiding temptation. Some days, it’s all I can do.”
I couldn’t process his words for
the chaos swimming in my ears. My heart rattled my rib cage, fighting its way out of my throat, tingles cascading over my nerves, skin on fire. “That sounds…”
Bastien’s warm eyes darkened. “Hard?”
I nodded, swallowing under his rapt gaze. Bastien moved closer, one fingertip grazing the shell of my ear and trailing down the soft hollow of my throat.
Was I making this moment up? Had I fantasized it into existence? Or was this a hallucination?
Either option seemed equally plausible.
My eyes darted below the line of where his belt would be behind the sacred vestments he wore during Mass. I swallowed the ball of pain settling at the base of my throat, crushing my thighs together like a vise as I willed every sinful thought boiling over in my rebellious brain to cease and desist. Cease and desist, for the love of all that is holy, I attempted to exorcise him from my thoughts.
I blurted the first rational thought to cross my cerebral cortex. “If I had any sense of avoiding temptation, I would leave St. Michael’s and never look back.”
The words filled the air with tension.
Tension unspoken, but tension felt in every bone of my body.
“Oh?” His dark eyes widened, jaw clenching into something harder than marble as an inner battle waged behind his eyes. He cleared his throat, as if suddenly aware his hands were on me and that his touch alone violated some ancient vow between man and woman. “Tressa, I couldn’t bear to think, through any fault of my own, that I had any sort of…” His eyes scanned mine, searching for something deeper. “…sway over you.”
I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t find a single coherent word.
“No matter how many times I’ve prayed that my thoughts go ignored, I see that they haven’t…”
Father Bastien kneeled between my thighs, his eyes clinging to mine like a life preserver. His gaze blinked me away then, one palm giving my knee a soft squeeze, so soft I could have imagined it, before he stood. “I see your desire to save people, Tressa. I see it because it’s in me.”
REBEL PRIEST Page 3
