Esther, displaced from her homeland, found solace in service and courage, in an unwavering love for her people. I’d always believed that God provided each of us divine moments to alter circumstances. It was our responsibility to be ready—or he would find someone else. Then, I wasn’t the man she needed, I was a chipped shell trying to hide the many cracks in my belief. Yet now that we were side by side, the desire to build a world of love around us, to treat religion as a verb, and act through a lens of compassion and kindness, had become my new mission.
I’d been feeling for a long time like my religion had been hijacked.
But somehow, through her, I’d found transcendence.
I could be a steward of God by her side. I could be the shepherd and the wolf—and maybe even a husband.
“Penny for your thoughts, Padre?” Tressa’s soothing Spanish lulled me.
“Been saving that in your back pocket, huh?” I traced the pad of my thumb down the center of her bare breastbone, goose bumps erupting in a riot.
Dawn split over the mountains, filtering light through the window and creating a halo effect around her head. I closed my eyes a beat, saving this moment to memory.
“You know I have. Now spill it, Father,” she giggled in English, rolling herself onto my hips, straddling me with her hair falling in a curtain around both of us. She was mystery and mysticism and white-hot magic, and she was solely responsible for showing me how to believe again.
“I was just thinking about faith and how you make me question all of it.” I caught her lips in a slow kiss.
She moaned, hips working softly as her hands trailed up to cup my face. “The Jesuits didn’t warn you about faithless girls with daddy issues tempting you to the dark side?”
I kissed her again, landing a soft smack on her behind as I did. “You’re far from faithless, sweet dove. Your faith just looks different from mine. Faith carried you here, across an ocean, back into my arms. Faith walked along with you when you stood strong against the injustice you hate so much. When you stumbled, when you triumphed, when you loved, and when you worked to help others.” I traced the fine features of her face with my warm gaze. “Love is an act of faith, and we do it better together.”
My lips swallowed any chance of a reply in the well of love she overflowed with. Everything about what transpired between us felt right, even if the timing wasn’t. We’d weathered many seasons apart, grown and rooted to ourselves in deeper and more profound ways, and that seemed to be the very thing to make all the difference.
Her hips hit just the right angle, and she slipped me fully inside of her. “You wanna know what I believe?”
My hands tangled up in her hair, lips trailing down the line of her neck as we rocked together. “Always.”
“It’s not as fancy as what you said, but the one common thread that runs through all major religions is compassion, so…I choose that.” She nipped my ear, taunting and teasing with perfect precision. “Compassion is my religion, Father.”
My hands melded to her body, already warmed by heat and the morning light. “Good answer, sweet dove.” My lips hovered over hers. “I love you with far greater depth and breadth than I knew was possible.”
Her hands cupping my neck, our foreheads pressed together, she murmured, “I love you, Bastien, so much.”
EPILOGUE
Tressa
My fingers worked feverishly over the keys, composing a final email to another set of volunteers in Portugal who were set to start a mission next week. Someone had canceled unexpectedly, so I’d taken it upon myself to browse the wait list to handpick a replacement. Bastien had had the incredible idea of pairing our charity with the one Cruz, his nephew, had started: A Rose Blooms in Brooklyn. While our focuses differed, we found ways to help each other as we both grew with the goal of helping as many people as we could. It turns out Bastien had been a life-changing force of good in Rose’s life when he’d visited Cruz in Brooklyn the summer before his return to Cuba. That was just one of the things I loved most about Bastien—when the darkness came, he never let it phase him, only pulled out his flashlight and went to work brightening the world with his special brand of love. The man had a gift and he’d touched so many with it.
It was no surprise he was such an incredible dad to our kids.
I pressed a hand to my back and stretched, sunlight flooding in through the wide, expansive windows and lighting up the hand-painted Spanish tile under my feet.
I wiggled my toes, feet too swollen for just about anything other than bare feet at this stage.
Pregnancy.
God’s last laugh for women everywhere.
I rubbed at my belly, standing to take in the view. The window overlooked a bold ocean cliff that erupted from the landscape after untold volcanic landslides left steep debris fields in its wake. Verdant green and dark rock and the azure ocean beyond dominated my vision. When Bastien had said his Spanish ancestors had come through the Canary Islands, I hadn’t thought that one day I’d find myself here, a woman on a mission to heal the forgotten people in the farthest reaches of the world.
I traced the ancient stone of the chapel we now called home with my fingertips, gratitude filling all the chambers of my heart. The old, battered copy of The Alchemist from the man on the bus that day held pride of place on the tiny shelf beside the window.
I smiled, incredulous that a decade later, this book could have such an effect on both Bastien’s and my life. That our sons would read it, that the quiet wisdom contained within its covers would bring us here, across the world to the land where the story unfolded. Epic inspiration sprinkled on so few pages.
We’d moved to the Canary Islands just over a year ago, right into the tiny little church Bastien suspected his own ancestor had once offered communion at. To say it was a full circle moment for him to walk through these narrow hallways was an understatement. The way his eyes lit up at the sheer, holy ancientness of it filled me up in a way I hadn’t expected. Watching Bastien follow his bliss fueled mine.
And with the fact that our youngest son would be born here, an emotion unlike anything else filled me entirely. Ms. Carmelita’s Santería fertility tea had worked miracles.
While my husband devoted his entire life to his family and others, in his free time, Bastien had begun researching his own ancestry, convinced that he came from an ancient line of holy people, maybe even dating back to The Knights Templar and the Holy Crusades. I loved that when he threw himself into something, he went there all the way. We’d already spent countless weekends hiking the mountains around our new home, searching for clues of former spiritual rituals or buildings or artifacts. The boys thought of it as some sort of modern treasure hunt, and seeing them engaged with the world their people came from lent entirely new meaning to the feeling of wholeness.
Searching for Bastien’s ancestors filled up my husband in a way nothing else could.
Bringing our kids along for the journey, biological and adopted, brought him to life in a new way. Watching him discover his past was a gift for me to witness, along with growing our newest little addition.
“Feeling good, mama?” Bastien walked through the rounded archway of my small office, light cutting across all of the right angles of his face and drawing me to him, a moth to a flame, just like always.
“Feeling amazing,” I whispered when he kissed me on the forehead, both palms cradling my tummy tenderly.
And because life had a way of taking me by storm like that, my life’s greatest work and born from the hardest rain appeared out of the clear blue sky.
“Did you know Spain is called the land of the setting sun?” Our oldest son, Javi, walked in behind Bastien, thick book of Spanish history propped open in his palms.
“Really?” I tipped my head, admiring the way the dark slash of eyebrows and the wild waves of uncontrollable brown hair reminded me so much of his dad.
It was funny how many times I’d thought of my own father in the decade since I’d last seen him. I stil
l kept the stubbed-out cigar, thinking maybe I could send it in for a DNA test, or perhaps give it to Luce for Luca someday. It could provide closure and answer questions about his—and his father’s—paternity.
Casey Maniscalco. The boy with the backpack. The St. Mike's Bomber. My brother.
Knowing that I likely shared blood with Casey softened my opinion of him, though to this day, I couldn’t understand or excuse his actions, no matter how unfair the hand he felt life dealt him. I wondered if Father Martin had stayed, if Casey’s life would have been better. If the Church had been open about priests who dealt with these issues, maybe there would be fewer broken homes and fewer…well, I wasn’t sure what. Bastien was fond of reminding me that the more answers I got, the more questions I had, and that sometimes instead of answers, maybe a better aim was peace.
But from time to time, I still pulled the stub out of the little cigar box I’d tucked it into before we left Cuba for the Canarys.
I wasn’t sure why I even took the time to open the box and inhale the stale tobacco scent. I never even saw Padre Juan smoke, but somehow, all the potential of what my father could have been was locked in the years of old smoke and memories tucked inside of its four corners.
Bastien’s soothing palms worked at my shoulders then, pulling me back into my very beautiful reality.
“We should go to Spain for a weekend. Did you know the Nazis had an escape route through the mountains, hiding out at rural churches and protected buildings until they could make it to the coast and sail to Argentina? And there’s a cathedral just over the border that might have some Templar art. Worth checking out, I think,” Javi rattled off, as if it were normal for a nine-year-old to care about those sorts of things.
“Oh?” Bastien’s amused eyebrows rose, suddenly intrigued.
I had to stifle my laugh. “Can you go call your little brothers in to wash up for lunch?”
“Sure, Mamá.” Javi nodded, turning dutifully, eyes trailing the sentences in his book as he walked away.
“He’s fearless.” Bastien shook his head in awe.
“And he couldn’t be more like you.” I grinned. “Anyway, someone sort of wise told me once that fear is the feeling of trusting in your own power, it’s only up to you to get out of the way.” He had told me that once, when I’d expressed reservation about expanding humanitarian missions across international borders.
If it weren’t for Bastien pushing me then, we wouldn’t be here now.
And here was so good.
“The gospel of Thomas says that if you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.” Bastien might not quote scripture by vocation anymore, but my knees still went weak when he did.
“Mm, my favorite apostle.” I straightened the raven collar of Bastien’s button-down shirt. He’d never quite dropped the habit of wearing clerical blacks, his shirt and slacks always the same shade of midnight. The only thing missing from his former holy ensemble was the dove-white collar at his throat.
His collar, the visual reminder of the doomed trajectory of our love story.
The noose that choked out love.
“Sweet Bastien, still my rebel saint.”
His forehead grazed mine, gentle sigh igniting my bloodstream. Our heartbeats crushed together, he breathed, “I hope you don’t think I’ve let you off the hook for confession just because I’m not a practicing seminarian anymore.” Warmth seeped from the deep, dark depths of his eyes. “I’ve got your number, sweet dove, even after all these years. Vow or no vow.”
I laughed, placing a kiss on his upturned lips. “Nice try—every day is like confession with you.”
His barrel laugh radiated through my chest, shaking my belly, firing me up down to the tips of my toes. Pulling me into his arms, he cradled me against the safe haven of his body. “Do you think that we were always meant to be right here, right now, with each other?”
He cupped my cheeks in his hands and whispered like a prayer, “I believe love is preordained. I believe it’s destined to find each of us—no matter what it looks like and, sometimes, whether we want it to or not.” He caressed my lips with his. “I know I cannot live without my soul.” He dusted a kiss on my eyelids. “It has been homesick and searching for you since the day I was born, sweet dove.” Another slow kiss. “For your kiss, I would cross every continent over a thousand lifetimes, happily defy the laws of gravity and space and time. For this bliss, I would risk a bullet. For you, my dove, I would take a bullet.”
THE END
Read on for the first chapter of Savage Rose,
Cruz and Rose’s torrid love story set on the streets of Brooklyn
—available for pre-order on Amazon now!
SAVAGE ROSE
(Love & Other Drugs Duet #2)
From USA Today Bestselling author Adriane Leigh comes a new emotional and riveting standalone love story that proves sometimes it takes falling apart to fall back together again…
Rose Huntington doesn’t have a normal family. She ran away at sixteen to escape parents more into their snobby socialite friends than her—and her only brother abandoned them all long ago—but she has music.
With a talent for setting the ears of Brooklyn on fire, she’s finally starting to feel like she’s found something permanent. Until one bad night threatens to derail everything.
Her life collides with Cruz Castaneda in an epic crash and burn kind of love. But secrets spread like flames, simmering and smoking sweetly, suffocating all else until truths are unveiled that may destroy them both.
*Savage Rose is book two in the Love & Other Drugs Duet: all books are standalones with interconnected characters. Reading book one, Rebel Priest, first is not necessary to enjoy this story.
ONE
Abandoned.
That’s the word that ran through my head when I opened the closet door and found her sobbing on the floor among a dozen shades of polar fleece.
When I first heard the soft crying from the hallway I was sure my ears were mishearing things. Amid the noise of the Sigma Pi house party I bent my knees, hovering waist-level at the door when another short sob found my ears. At first I thought a college couple were hooking up in the only private place they could find, but when the sound of fresh tears erupted behind the scuffed wooden door, I knew something was wrong.
Scanning the drunk crowd around me, I found not a single soul aware of my existence at their feet, and so I twisted the doorknob and pushed into the dark closet.
“Room from one more? All the cheap tequila is killing my vibe.”
I nestled into the tight space among the ski jackets. I sensed the stranger, small and impossibly quiet, legs trembling at my side.
“I’m a thousand percent sure they’re over capacity out there.”
Still trembling.
I frowned, growing a little more concerned.
“Feel’s like the earthquake’s in here and whoever switched out the DJ about fifteen minutes ago should reevaluate their life decisions.”
A small hiccough hidden behind a neon green polar fleece. Progress, at least.
“Finally, someone who agrees with me.”
The trembling finally calmed and a voiced breathed, “I’m the DJ of fifteen minutes ago.”
I turned, staring into the dark abyss, searching out the faceless voice.
“Well that leaves me with more questions than answers.”
I inched closer until I felt her presence, and not just heard it. With a pinky finger working its way to her in the darkness, I paused when the pads of our fingers touched. “I think I speak for everyone in this house when I say you’re sorely missed out there.”
A dance club mix of an old Britney song bled through the cheap speakers, rattling the hinges of the door we sat behind.
“The people need you.”
A soft gasp ruffled the clothing.
“Ah, was that a laugh upon my ears?�
�
The song outside did an annoying scratching noise and then started with a hip-hop remix of a country song from the ’90s.
“If you don’t go back out there we may incite a mob. Whoever’s spinning tracks now needs to be ousted.”
A hand caught my thigh in the darkness, causing a flame of sensation to engulf my nerves.
I gulped, not sure if I was ready to find out what was behind the closet curtain after all.
“He would make you eat your words if he heard you say that.”
“He, huh?”
Out of the darkness, she appeared, crawling across my lap, hands working over my muscles as she steadied herself in the darkness.
The feel of her against my body was an assault on my senses.
“I’ve never been so sober and so violated at the same time.”
I inhaled sharply when her fingernails dug into my biceps, preventing her tumble. On instinct, my hands went to her waist, cradling her against my chest and forcing a breath of sweetly-scented notes of her into my nostrils.
I felt her smile, muscles relaxing against me for a brief moment. “Look at me, popping your cherry. Consider me honored.”
A laugh barked out of me before I could stop it. “Let me guess, sophomore?”
One of her palms left my upper arm and fumbled through the darkness. She pulled a chain and a dim light lit the top half of our faces only. “How’d you know?”
“All the sarcasm tipped me off.”
I assessed her then, dark eyebrows highlighting angular cheekbones and a soft gloss of light blonde locks. She looked a bit like a demonic angel, shrouded in a dim closet as she was.
“So sophomore, mind tellin’ me why you’ve locked yourself in a closet?”
“Most people call me Rose, and if I said it was a port-key to another dimension, would you believe me?”
REBEL PRIEST Page 21