“I’m not an angel,” Dree said. “I’m a woman. I want a husband and a family. I want to be a wife and a mother to my own children, as well as to be a nurse. I want that love around me all my life, and I don’t want to give that up.”
Maxence’s body tightened under her hands. “I see.”
“You want to be a Jesuit. You want to dedicate yourself to something bigger than yourself, and you—” She sighed. “I saw you at the pulpit. That wasn’t an accident. That’s what you are meant to do. You and I have no future together. You have your future, and I know what I want in mine. They aren’t the same.”
He lifted her hand and kissed her fingers, then the back of her hand, then the inside of her wrist. “We could meet sometimes.”
Dree shook her head. “You’ll break my heart.”
He pressed her hand to his chest between the rounds of his pecs. “You’ll always have mine.”
She wrestled the covers and her body around to push herself up on her elbows. “You don’t seem to want to live the life of a priest.”
“Of course I do,” he said, his eyes drifting away from her.
She didn’t have to confront him on that. It wasn’t her place, or this wasn’t the time. “I’m not going to be the woman you run to for an easy lay when you can’t take it anymore. I’m not your temptation, and I’m not going to wait for the rest of our lives for you to change your mind.”
He nodded, still looking away from her. “But we have the rest of this trip.”
She shook her head. “Tomorrow, I’m going back to Kathmandu and then Paris.”
His muscles tensed under her hands, not like he’d almost jumped up, but like she’d landed a punch to his gut. “You’re burned out.”
“It’s not burnout. I’m a nurse in an inner-city hospital. I work eighteen-hour shifts all the time. I’ve worked forty-hour shifts with a four-hour nap during crises, and I’ve done that for weeks on end when the need is great. I can’t do thiswith you. I can barely stand the thought of leaving tomorrow. If we did this for two more weeks, I don’t know what I’d do when we had to walk away. I know addiction when I see it, and that’s what’s happening to me. You would tear me apart. My mom always said that when you find yourself in a hole, the first thing you do is stop digging. I have to stop digging myself deeper into this whatever-it-is with you. I need to leave, and I need to leave tomorrow.”
He didn’t say anything for a few long minutes.
Instead, he kissed her slowly, his mouth taking its time to plunder hers, and then he did the same thing with his body.
And she held him in her arms, cradling him as he moved gently in her, their souls melding as their breath mingled in the night.
In the early morning, he dressed and kissed her, saying, “I’ll meet you downstairs before you go to the airport. The first helicopter flight to Kathmandu isn’t until ten.”
Dree curled her arms and knees around a pillow after he left, crushing it so she wouldn’t cry. If she let herself cry, if she allowed the gaping emptiness within her to coalesce into tears and flow through her, she might not leave.
And she had to leave.
Showering again and throwing herself and her backpack together took just a few minutes, and she walked downstairs, feeling a little guilty, to see if Isaak was there yet to take her to the airport with him.
Before she made the last turn on the stairs, male voices from the lobby rose into the stairwell.
Maxence’s voice said,“No.Irenounce.I renounce itall.”
Was Father Booker there, and was Maxence renouncing his deacon vows?
Horror at her influence and exultation warred in Dree—Yes,he was going to walk away from the priesthood, he was going to behers,they had achance,there was a path for them.
And then the timbre of his voice leaked through her hopes.
Anger harshened his voice in the way men express terror as outrage.
Dree ran down the stairs.
Chapter Sixteen
Renunciation
Maxence
