Brokenhearted tears covered her cheeks in a frosted skating rink. Her cheeks were rosy with the bite of the wind and rain, dark licks of hair already soaked and freezing against her forehead and shoulders. She looked every part the lost lamb, and I did the only thing I knew how to do.
I went to her.
“What’s with the disappearing act?”
“I needed air.” She averted her eyes.
“Let’s go.” I gruffed, the frigid air crackling with energy between us.
“No, Bastien.” She said.
Irritation simmered. I was hopelessly drawn to her like a moth to a flame. “I won’t have you risking your life out here.” I spit.
“I’m risking something bigger in there.” She gestured to the church behind us.
“Tressa,” I growled, doing the only thing I’d been thinking of and pressed my lips to hers in a searing hot kiss. She opened her mouth and our tongues tangled together, my force slow and measured first and then dominant and controlling the next.
“What are you doing to me, Tressa?” I traced her bottom lip with the pad of my thumb. “Now please, inside.”
“No.” She shook her head violently, tears streaming as every ounce of me waged a war inside of myself. Take her into my arms, cover her in my protection, love her for as long as she’d let me, but I knew that life would never be ours to live. Time was precious. And I’d vowed mine to God.
“Just this once listen to me for your own good.”
She swallowed, eyes hanging heavy with drops of water, and in the shadowed light I wiped her tears away, molding her damp cheeks to my palms until I felt my own emotion simmer up, regret and loyalty weaving themselves inseparably together in my mind.
“I don’t know why I keep doing this to myself.” Her body finally deflated. I enveloped her, the warmth of my body radiating against her chilled form as I rubbed my palms up and down her bare arms to generate warmth.
“People have done crazier things than run into the rain to find themselves.” I offered as I led us back toward the church steps. She snake an arm around her waist and leaned the full weight of her body into me. And the closer she nested herself in my warmth the more violent the jolts of arousal I struggled to keep at bay.
“Look at me crying in the rain, you must think I’m insane.”
“Insanely brave.” I breathed at her ear as we reached the steps. “You’ve been forged in fire, there’s no shame in honoring the grit that brought you here, I’m grateful for it more than I can say.” My finger hovered at the dip of her chin.
A soft frown darted down her face before she breathed. “You’re kind to frame it like that—the truth is, I’ve always felt like a mess—incapable of running my own life.”
“Not everyone is given the tools to perform well from birth,” I teased, “you’re growing into them, lessons wouldn’t be lessons without growing pains.”
She took in my words, eyes trailing up the to tiny peaked roof that covered the front stoop of the church and sheltered us from the icy rain.
“I think I need to find him,” she finally announced.
I nodded. “I’ll help you in any way I can if you think it will help. You know I’m always here for you.”
She cast her eyes back to her feet before pushing through the doors of the church. “I think finding my father is something I have to do, maybe just talking to him could ease some of this crazy feeling in my head. I don’t know how many nights it took with that professor to make me realize no one deserves that treatment—” she shook her head and wiped at a tear, “it made me realize I’ve been cycling through clinging to people and then rejecting their love my entire life because deep down—I didn’t think I deserved it—because the man that was supposed to mean something left me to fend for myself against…” she paused, shoulders beginning a slow shake as she unravelled with her thoughts, “the monster that was supposed to be my mother.”
My heart broke, her quest to finding her father starting right here on the steps of St. Mike’s, at my feet. “I’ve give anything to take this pain away from you, Tressa, I’d risk my life if I thought I could give you the answers your heart needs.” I swallowed her in my arms once we were inside the vestibule, her tears taking over her form then as she truly came apart. The real her shone through for the first time, through all the rivers of pain and tears, she shed them all into my shoulder and released some darkness she’d been carrying on her shoulders for longer than anyone should.
“Please, let me take you back to bed—I’ll throw more logs on your fire—let me take care of you.”
She shook her head. “Everything about you is so light—so angelic—I’m too dark, the longer I stay here, the more likely I’ll drown you.”
“Even a rose needs some darkness to bloom, Tressa. The destruction you’ve caused is real and permanent—you’ve already left your mark on my heart—is there anything more destructive than that?” I caught her face in my palms. “And I don’t think you’re broken because you cry in the rain—that’s the part that makes you human.” I swept my fingers across her cheekbones, wiping away fresh tears, “And that’s what makes me love you.”
ELEVEN
Tressa
Words like temptation and deliverance weighed heavy on my thoughts as I spent the next few days operating on autopilot after Bastien rescued me in the rain and confessed his love. My thoughts still reeling about the course of my life, working alongside Lucy in the daycare with 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—all to keep away my thoughts of him.
Instead of Bastien, I thought about the decorations and dancing, the games for kids and adults, organized 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. Or because he was busy repenting for every interaction he had with me. I clung to the community St. Mike’s offered: Ms. Watson 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. 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.
* * *
Women Who Love Priests
I type
d 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, my professor and advisor, had saved my life in many ways.
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.
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.
I spent another hour printing applications for what few jobs in the health industry I was qualified for, filling out each of them longhand before writing down the physical addresses in my planner and then picking out the most professional secondhand outfit my budget could buy.
I wasn’t sure if white was allowed in winter or if navy shoes went with a black belt after all, but it would have to do. One thing Mom had taught me was that a warm and friendly smile went further than a dollar ever could. I didn’t know if she was right about that, but it was all I had to work with, so I was rolling with it.
My plan was to go in guns blazing tomorrow, thousand-watt smile on my face.
I needed out of St. Michael’s.
Away from Bastien.
Closer to me.
And in a wild, roundabout way, I had Dr. Grady to thank for my meeting Bastien at all.
That night could have turned out so very differently.
I’d called the number on that card that night in the hours before I’d found myself sleeping in my car outside of St. Michael’s.
After losing my scholarship, the checks from the grants no longer depositing into my account meant I couldn’t even feed myself. The funding for my student housing terminated.
My life. In ruins.
I’d called the number that night because I didn’t have anywhere else to turn.
I told myself I didn’t know what I was getting into, but I think, really, I did.
I knew by the flirtatious grin and cocky tilt of his eyebrow that he was trouble.
I should have hung up when he forced me to beg him for the meeting.
He complained that he was too busy for college dropouts.
I was a dime a dozen now.
I assured him I wasn’t.
Begged him to give me a chance, desperation cracking my voice.
A chance at what? I wasn’t sure, but the naïve part of me hoped for a secretarial job or maybe personal assisting. But within minutes of climbing into his black Suburban, I recognized the error in my judgment. His hand was crawling up my thigh, fingertips tickling the nape of my neck, and he was telling me he required a taste of all the goods before he hired anyone to work for him.
Flames of fury lit in my stomach, and I’d done the very first thing I could think to do.
Balled up my fist and nailed him in the balls with all the rage I could muster.
He probably could have pressed charges against me.
He barked at the driver to pull over and kicked me square on my ass on the curb. I’d walked the dozens of blocks to where I’d left my car parked, then driven to every shelter I could think of, before finally landing at St. Mike’s. It was all fortunate, really, because Father Bastien had been clearing the steps of St. Michael’s when I’d, almost literally, landed at his feet in the morning light.
My in the flesh, real-deal, cassock-wearing saint.
He was my guardian angel.
The last time I had been under the roof of St. Michael’s, I was eight and innocently blabbing the reality of my existence to Father Martin. The idea that the pious man here now was somehow becoming special to me felt like utter nonsense.
Because it was.
Whatever else Bastien and I were, at the heart, we would always be nonsense.
TWELVE
Tressa
Some mornings, I woke up justifying our secret brand of sin. My footsteps all day were filled with hope ending with nights that inevitably left me raw, my heart a little bloodier for even considering a love for him after I watched him skirt my presence each day. Living alongside Bastien without being with him had, itself, become a form of suffering. My mind grew a little more determined to find a way out.
I’d considered every possible option. Staying with my mom was off the table, her life since I’d left for college worse off than when I’d been with her. Countless medical issues after a lifetime of abusing her body were finally taking their toll.
I hadn’t seen her since I’d left anyway, and usually, the only time she called was when she needed money. I was okay with that, and on the rare occasion I could help her out, I did. But more often than not, I was forced to tell her no out of pure necessity. There were plenty of nights I had no choice but to eat noodles out of a cup just to buy textbooks for class, and still, those days seemed simpler than now.
I swallowed down the ache that always gripped my throat when I thought about things from my past lives. My eyes drifted to the file on my computer that held the application for low-income housing in a newer development across town. I’d found the article about the new apartments on the newspaper’s website, so the likelihood I would be picked wasn’t great, mostly because I didn’t have a salary to support much of a monthly rent payment.
I’d been thinking, if Bastien was willing to train Lucy, maybe she could take over some of his office work, and coupled with the nursery and the event organizing I was trying to implement, perhaps a full-time position at St. Michael’s was possible for her. At least enough to get her through the pregnancy with a roof over her head and a small community to look out for her.
The sense that it was time for me to move on was growing greater by the day. I felt it deep in my bones every time I locked eyes with him a
cross the church pews during Mass.
And maybe down even deeper than that, I was running from a familiar rut.
A rut my mother had been stuck in all too often during my childhood. A rut where staying and loving a man who didn’t love her back was easier than leaving.
Well, maybe our circumstances weren’t quite the same, but at the core, as I saw it, they were.
I refused to stay the course when the course finished in a dead end.
Maybe even with a few epic crash and burns along the way.
That was not the life I intended to live.
Not the one I’d wished on stars for.
I wouldn’t stay and love a man who couldn’t love me back.
Bastien was married to the man upstairs, and I was his mistress.
Bile nearly choked me.
The idea that I could get certified as a nurse’s assistant suddenly sounded like a better fix than staying here for any longer than I had to.
Watching him. Feeling him in every part of me when he entered a room. Being so close, yet mountains apart. The rules in his world and the rules in mine were different. And his forbade his love for me.
I shifted in the hard wooden chair. Tucked as I was in a corner of the sacristy, ancient holy relics and silence permeated the room.
I stood out in this place.
Gold- and silver-plated items decorated the shelves, memories of evenings after Mass, watching Bastien clean and straighten the precious metals with such care and precision would leave a lasting ache in my heart forever. The way his hands had cradled the items, the bronze of his skin sending lightning strikes of pleasure careening between my thighs.
REBEL PRIEST Page 8