“Blue,” he whispered, his voice choked and broken. “Blue…”
I pushed open the door of the confessional and he stepped out at the same time. I pressed the palm of my hand against his cheek and he leaned into it with a long sigh.
We kissed, and I swear that Gabriel had tears in his eyes, a long, slow kiss that tasted like goodbye.
“We have a saying in the SEALs,” he said, the words a low hum in his magnificent chest, as if the ink itself was speaking. “No plan survives first contact with the enemy. I was going to be a priest today. I thought I’d be strong enough if I saw you, but I’m not. I’m so fucking weak, but I’m not sorry. God forgive me, I’m not sorry.”
“Am I the enemy?”
He gave a humorless laugh. “Maybe. I don’t know anymore. I promised myself this would never happen again, but I can’t stop wanting you, Blue. Failure is not an option, but here I am, failing again.”
“It doesn’t feel like failing,” I whispered, telling the truth. “It feels like winning.”
“Yes,” he sighed. “I feel like I’ve won the fucking Lottery but only have one day left to enjoy it.”
“We have more than one day, Gabriel,” I said.
He hesitated. “Do we? Because I don’t see it, Blue. There’s no future for us.”
His prophetic words sucked the air from my lungs, and we were both silent for a long time.
I snuggled into Gabriel’s broad chest, trying to ignore how awkward it was, half in and half out of the confessional. But he didn’t stop me when I stroked his silky, freshly shaven cheeks, running my hands over his short hair and winding them around the back of his neck, tugging him closer. He sighed, part contentment, part regret.
I saw the gentle smile on his face melt away, replaced by the ever-present guilt that haunted him.
“Why can’t God just make things nice all of the time?” I asked, half seriously. “If he’s all-powerful. Why isn’t the world perfect?”
He stroked my cheek then ducked his head to press his lips against my hair, a gesture more intimate than when he’d pushed himself inside me.
“Would you appreciate all the highs if there were no lows? Would you even recognize them?”
“That’s your answer? Shit happens so we’ll know when we’re on a winning streak? And anyway, for some people, the only highs they have are from a baggie that you can buy for fifty bucks on the street. Does God want us to suffer?”
“Suffering helps us grow, it makes us better. It drives us out of the nursery into the world of others.”
“I didn’t have a nursery and I’m guessing you didn’t either.” He nodded. “Yeah, we’re too alike, Gabriel. We were on the street before we could crawl, so I call bullshit on that answer.”
He grinned and tugged my hair.
“Always my little fighter. Well, Father Michael said to me once that the blows of the sculptor’s chisel are what make us perfect.”
I shook my head.
“If you love someone, you don’t want them to suffer. You want to take that suffering away from them. You say God loves us, so why doesn’t God take away suffering?”
“It’s difficult, I know. There’s a whole book in the Bible about suffering—the dude Job had it tough. It’s about trusting God’s purposes in the midst of suffering, even when we don’t know what those purposes are.”
“That’s taking a lot on faith,” I said skeptically.
“Exactly,” he replied. “It’s about faith. God ‘will wipe out every tear from their eyes, and death will be no more, neither will mourning nor outcry nor pain be anymore.’ That’s from Revelations.”
“Sounds like a cop-out to me.”
He sighed.
“Don’t say that, Blue. It fuckin’ kills me that you can’t see how much God loves you, how special you are.”
“You’re here with me, but you still believe?”
His face creased with pain.
“Yes.”
“Your seed is still inside me from last night, Gabriel, dripping out of me, pouring out of me. Do you think it landed on barren soil?”
I was lying my little ass off. I’d been on the shot since I hit puberty. But he tensed, and I held my breath.
“You would make beautiful babies, Blue, and I … fuck, I don’t know. I’m Father Gabriel Thorne, and I have no idea what it takes to be a father. Would you keep our child, Blue? Would you?”
I’d never met any guy who really wanted their woman to have kids. Getting knocked up was a fact of life, not the gift that Gabriel seemed to think it would be.
I let out the breath I’d been holding. “Yes.”
“Thank God,” he whispered. “Thank God.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Gabriel
A baby?
The past, present and future crashed together in an explosion of unfamiliar and terrifying emotions.
I touched her belly, a false hope burning in my chest. It would be almost poetic. I took Luke’s life and then I created a life with his daughter. I would raise Luke’s grandchild.
I pushed this dreaming, yearning deep down somewhere I didn’t want to access, somewhere I couldn’t reach. I had no right thinking of a future with Blue. We had no future. As I kept repeating to myself over and over, I was a priest. And I knew that I wanted to remain being a priest. I helped people, I liked helping them find their path to Faith. It meant so much to me.
But not everything, the Devil on my shoulder whispered.
What I’d shared with Blue was healing, beautiful, and exhilarating. But it was wrong. Why couldn’t I stop sinning with this woman? Never before had doing wrong felt so good. Why her? Why now?
God’s voice was silent.
Free Will.
I had to decide for myself. I had to choose.
Don’t choose, whispered the Devil. Just be. Just live. Or was it Luke’s voice I was hearing?
Guilt burned through me.
“Blue,” I croaked, “we need to figure out what’s going to happen with you. With us, I mean. Of course, if you are pregnant that would change everything. But I’m not going to touch you again. And if you aren’t pregnant, there is no future for us. I will remain a priest. But I won’t abandon you. Not now, not ever. But I can’t have you around me. I can’t handle the temptation. This is on me, not you. It breaks my heart to say this to you, to do this to you, but we have to end this.”
Her face fell, bitterness taking its place, and my internal hatred of myself rose in my chest. I was a jerk. I was a fool. I was a careless, thoughtless brute, barging through her messed-up life. And I’d hurt her. Again. Despite her behavior and anger towards me, she did care. I felt it deep in my soul, mixed with hatred and lust, Blue did love me.
“So now what?” she hissed, her voice full of scorn. “You just gonna kick me back out on the streets? Once you got your rocks off?”
“Blue, stop,” I begged, burning with shame and the weight of her judgment crushing me. “It’s not like that and you know it. I have dedicated my life to being a priest. And I will remain being a priest as long as I’m able. I won’t abandon you. I will figure out something for you. I will help you find a place. A job. Enroll you in school. Gather some money together until you can support yourself.”
She nodded coldly. “And now I’m just another problem for you to solve. The big, bad, ex-SEAL. You gonna fix me, Gabriel? You gonna make me better? Whole? Maybe you should fix yourself first.”
She aims, she shoots, bullseye. God knew I’d been trying to fix myself for 20 years.
I plowed on.
“You should be receiving Luke’s death benefits; I’ll help you get those. Whatever it takes.” I paused and looked at her again, her bottom lip quivering. I looked away. “And although I can’t be your boyfriend, I do hope we can remain friends.”
The word friends hung heavy on my own lips. I didn’t deserve her friendship and I definitely didn’t deserve her love. But how could I let her go? I expected another bitter, smartass
comment to come out of her mouth but none did.
“That would be nice. I mean, the benefits. And my own place. And not having to work for a bit. I’ve always worked.”
The sadness in her voice broke me in a way that her bitterness hadn’t. I didn’t even know I still had the ability to be broken into even smaller pieces. Dust to dust.
After Luke’s death, there’d been an enquiry. I’d been put on administrative leave for six months until I was finally reinstated. That had been a long, lonely six months, and I’d thought about killing myself many times then. Instead, I’d learned to cut myself off from so many emotions. And now, they were brimming to the surface. I took her hand and she didn’t pull it away. “What about my friendship? Will you stay in my life? Please don’t cut me out.” Those words were honest. Real. Raw. Would she reject me when I needed her the most?
“A friend who says he can’t be in the same room as me? Gee, maybe we can be penpals!”
I hung my head. “It’s all I can give you, Blue.”
She looked into the distance and I wondered what she was seeing.
“I’ll take it.” She forced a smile. “Sure. I can use a friend.”
But the look on her face was empty.
Chapter Thirty
Mariana
I left the warmth of Gabriel’s arms reluctantly. He persuaded me to go back to the rectory, but I had to promise to apologize to Father Neil, Mrs. O’Cee and the arch-hypocrite Father Miguel Angel.
I wasn’t happy about that last one, but Gabriel insisted. He said if I stayed the ten days until I was due to be shipped off to the nuns’ hostel, he’d help me find my own place. When he said that, I imagined it being our place, somewhere we could go and just be us, not the Whore of Babylon and Father Gabriel—just us.
And I didn’t know what that would mean, but I was too giddy and excited by the possibility to care. Surely then he’d come to me? Surely then we’d be together?
I’d become a complete cliché, infatuated by a gray-eyed god with a mind so dark and scarred, I was quietly amazed he could function at all.
I didn’t know what to do with all these new feelings he’d awakened. No one had ever cared about me or for me, never. I wasn’t used to accepting help, and I wasn’t used to being anything other than alone. Part of me remembered the hatred and anger that I’d harbored for him for so long. And even though I knew I’d been horribly, terribly wrong, those feelings weren’t going anywhere overnight. It was like a muscle-memory and I needed time to overlay them with something better. But in my stupidity and naivety, I refused to face the fact that there was no future for us: a Catholic priest couldn’t be with a woman: ever. Gabriel was a believer—I wasn’t. Gabriel’s guilt was a simmering lake under volcanic pressure—I was young and believed myself … in love? I thought it was love, it felt like love—or what I’d read that love was supposed to be: ‘Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs’. I remembered that from a movie—well, I wasn’t there yet, but I wanted to be. I wanted good things for Gabriel more than I wanted them for myself. Was that love?
All I knew was that I wanted him again. I felt safe with him, like all the darkness and shit from my whole life disappeared when he was around.
Mrs. O’Cee welcomed me and Lolly back to the rectory with open arms and a warm hug, telling me off and squeezing my body with equal enthusiasm. Father Neil smiled at me and readily accepted my apology. Father Miguel Angel shot Gabriel a frosty look when he reappeared with me and coldly listened to my insincere apology. He quoted something that might have been from Proverbs, but I couldn’t tell if it was aimed at me or Gabriel—probably both.
‘A man of great anger will bear the penalty, for if you rescue him, you will only have to do it again.’
Then he turned on his heel, his cassock whipping out behind him, and headed for the library.
“Well, now,” said Mrs. O’Cee after an awkward silence. “Let’s feed you, child. You look as skinny as a stick.”
I set the table with silverware and real linen napkins that Mrs. O’Cee insisted on, Gabriel opened a bottle of whiskey and poured shots for everyone. Lolly got a saucer of kitty food.
We sat and we ate and we talked. Father Neil told us about the time a parishioner brought a goat to the pets’ blessing at the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi service, but the horny old goat had tried to mount the lady who did the flowers and then shat up and down the aisle while Father Neil chased it with a broom. Mrs. O’Cee laughed loudly as she served up huge helpings of lasagna with green salad and garlic bread.
It was the closest I’d ever come to family, because for once, I wasn’t on the outside.
We sat late, drinking and chatting until Mrs. O’Cee groaned that she was too old for such ‘shenanigans’ and limped off to bed, closely followed by Father Neil who seemed a little concerned that she’d manage the steep stairs after several glasses of whiskey. I heard their laughing voices floating into the night.
“I want to kiss you,” Gabriel whispered across the table, reaching out to take my hand. “But I can’t. Do you understand that?”
I nodded slowly. “Yes. That doesn’t mean I agree, but yeah, I get it.”
He looked relieved, but I could tell that he was still worried because he ran his free hand over his short hair.
“I’m not ready for this evening to be over,” he sighed.
“Me neither. It’s been … fun,” and then I laughed, because it had been fun, and it had been so long, so very long since anything had been easy or light or just fun. “Father Neil is great,” I said with a grin. “I’d like to have seen that goat.”
“You definitely get to see some strange sights as a priest,” he smiled at me.
“Sad things too, though, right?”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “Part of my job is to carry the burden of other people’s pain until they can bear to carry it themselves. To relieve their suffering by taking it on myself.”
“You really believe in this, don’t you? I mean, being a priest.”
“I really do.” His gray eyes were dark and intense. “And there shouldn’t be anything else to say. But … you know how I feel about you, Blue. And fuck it, I’ll be 40 next birthday, but you make me feel like a high schooler all over again. Before I took my vows. There were … a lot of women. Since I took my vows, only you.” And his voice dropped to a whisper. “It goes against everything in me as a priest, but as a man…”
“What are we going to do?”
He blew out a long breath. “We’re both going to get a good night’s sleep and then tomorrow we’ll start looking for a place for you. And we’ll see what sort of welfare assistance you can apply for until we can get your dad’s benefits to kick in.”
My dad. Hearing Gabriel call Luke my dad tormented me. “That’s not what I meant.”
He gave me a sad smile. “I know.”
I went to bed like a good girl, but I couldn’t sleep. I was tossing and turning, desperate for the touch of Gabriel’s hands on my body, desperate to hear his whispered words, desperate to be reassured that I wasn’t swimming in this ocean of stormy emotions by myself.
But instead of going to him, I sat up and used my phone to Google facts about Catholic priests and sex. It wasn’t good, and I began to understand that Gabriel’s vows meant that he had sacrificed his own worldly pleasures to be of service to others, to God. Forever.
I didn’t get it. Obviously, I understood the words, but why would someone like Gabriel promise never to fuck anyone for the rest of his life? Or Father Neil. He was a sweetheart and there’d be a load of guys out there who’d go for someone like him. As for Father Miguel Angel, he preferred theology books to people.
More importantly, how much was Gabriel hurting right now? Was he awake, alone, praying for forgiveness, praying for an end to his pain? Should I go to him?
I listened for a
ny sound that told me others in the rectory were awake, but there was only silence and the soft sounds of the house settling into sleep. So I tiptoed down the stairs, missing out the steps that squeaked, then paused outside Gabriel’s room, listening.
I heard the soft murmur of his deep voice and for a moment wondered if he was talking to someone on his cell, but realization settled in quickly: he was praying.
Unwanted tears pricked my eyes: his faith mattered to him; his belief in God mattered to him; praying mattered to him—and I’d gone out of my way to make him break all his vows. Even after I’d found out he hadn’t murdered my father in cold blood, I’d still taunted and tempted him.
But even now as I heard the anguish in his quiet voice praying to his God, I still wanted him.
I listened for several more seconds without discerning any words, then, my heart crisscrossed with more scars, I crept back upstairs and lay in my narrow bed, sad and alone.
Chapter Thirty-One
Gabriel
My mind was spinning. This evening had felt so normal. Dinner as a family felt right. As if we belonged together. But what if I was confusing those feelings when really they were nothing more than my testosterone mixed with … hope? Or was the truth staring me in the face? I looked up at the crucifix nailed to my wall.
Forgive me, Lord.
I wanted to nail Blue to the wall.
I was a fucking mess. And I’d been the one to beg her to be friends with me. Friends?! Ha! Like I deserved her friendship. Like I deserved anything from her. Newsflash—I didn’t. I didn’t deserve shit. Not her friendship. Not my clerical collar. Not my position as shepherd to my flock. Not my role as a leader in the community. Definitely not her love. Definitely not Jesus’ love.
And now, through Luke, I had created a way for her to stay close. Find her a place, get her benefits.
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