“There was one family there with a teenaged daughter. The parents were wealthy but both very busy. The daughter had come to our Sunday school, she joined the choir. She started having trouble in school. Nothing too alarming, skipping school and hanging with the wrong crowd, but they wanted counseling for her.”
This time even I fell silent, reluctant to hear how his peace was shattered. Nervous to learn of the woman I’d reminded him of, at least at first.
“She told me…She said she’d been waiting until she was of age, she said. It wasn’t the first time a parishioner had confessed to a crush, but it was the first time she wouldn’t take no for an answer. I was uncomfortable… embarrassed. I told her I couldn’t speak to her one-on-one anymore. I considered talking to her parents, but then she was nineteen and living on her own. She started having regular sessions with Norm, and I figured the problem was solved.”
He pulled me tighter, so tight I couldn’t breathe. I stroked him, running my fingers over the goose-bumped skin on his chest.
“I didn’t realize it, but she was saying the same things to him. Earning his trust. He thought she loved him. He loved her back. And then she told him that I’d taken advantage of her. That I’d touched her even though I hadn’t. Not ever.”
“I know,” I said quietly, though I was sure he wasn’t listening. He was tense, sweating, back in the past that hurt him.
“He called the police. They showed up to take me away in handcuffs while he watched from the curb. He wouldn’t listen to me, refused to talk about me or see me. I was convicted without ever hearing him speak another word to me.”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
He laughed. “He left the cloth for her. I don’t know why, maybe he got suspicious or she just needed to confess, but somehow she ended up telling him the truth. Did she think he would stay with her anyway? He got proof to my lawyer, and they overturned the sentence. In a way, it was too late for me. I was already so fucked up. So many fights…those nights in the ER…I didn’t want to be like this. I had to survive. I couldn’t…”
“I know. I understand. You couldn’t let them.”
“The craziest part of the whole thing was when I was released from prison. I got it into my head that he’d be there waiting for me. He would apologize, and I’d already forgiven him. I knew I could never go back to the priesthood, but at least I’d have a friend.”
I pulled myself up to face him. “You have a friend.”
He tucked a strand of hair behind my head. “I don’t deserve one. You, least of all.”
“I know I’m pretty great,” I said blithely.
He grinned. “A saint.”
I rested my forehead against his the way I had in his truck. It brought me closer to him, like I could pull the pain from him and take it into my own body. He did the same for me, really, and we were both conduits for the pain, the currents between us grounding us together. He was the god of thunder, retreating from the world that had rejected him. I was the maiden he’d caught going over the edge, who he’d secreted away in his lair beneath the falls.
“Sometimes I think Norm was a bastard. A stupid, horrible person,” he continued, “and I curse him to Hell. Then other days…I knew my friend too well. He believed her. Maybe he was blindsided by her looks or interest in him. Or maybe he was too messed up by what he’d already seen. But either way, he truly believed it of me and that hurt the worst. He’s been out there, somewhere, feeling like shit, and I can’t stop it. I don’t even want to care about that, but I do.”
I knew the feeling exactly. My mother wasn’t the best, but she hadn’t wanted me hurt. She hadn’t realized what Allen was doing to me until it was too late. Like Hunter, too late.
And yet, he
re we both were. Two second chances. Almost a miracle.
“Forgive yourself. It’s the only way we can be together.”
His lip quirked. “Are you preaching to me, Evie?”
“You know what they say. Those who can, do. Those who can’t, preach.”
“Do they say that?”
“I have no idea. I’ve spoken to approximately five people my whole life.”
He grinned and kissed me, his lips curved as they pressed against mine.
It was the first time we had really kissed. His tongue met mine in a sensual meeting, a languid caress followed by another and another. He explored me there as thoroughly as he knew the rest of my body, learning each contour and sweetly sensitive shadow.
Though I felt the usual heat flaring between us, there was no urgency, no expectation that it would turn into more. It touched me that he would spare me sex now when he thought I was weak, but he still didn’t quite realize that sex with him strengthened me. It was the most intimate of embraces, a show of support and desire unequaled.
Anticipation warm in my belly, I began to kiss my way down his neck, his chest, and lower, lower, but he stopped me.
Glancing up, I asked, “No?”